June 2020, United States: The Unfolding

[cptmarginal]

Oh! Now it's Joey Baloney! Brings back pleasant memories.

Here are two fantastic Twitter accounts that are attempting to track incidents:

https://twitter.com/greg_doucette
https://twitter.com/camerongrey

T. Greg "Bouquet of F*ckery" Doucette is up to #401 so far, and he even posts follow-up information on previous events.

[cptmarginal]

This is why I did not waste my time posting dozens of bookmarked videos here

Activists Create Public Online Spreadsheet of Police Violence Videos

Lawyer T. Greg Doucette and mathematician Jason Miller have been working to compile the videos in the Google Sheet titled “GeorgeFloyd Protest - police brutality videos on Twitter.” The database currently has 428 videos. Doucette started the effort as a Twitter thread. Miller saw that and realized it was going to be long and unwieldy so he wanted to create a way for people to easily access and sort the videos. For those who aren’t obsessively scrolling through their timelines all day, the spreadsheet can help easily locate videos of police violence in their area because they can be sorted by city and state. The activists have also created a Google Drive with backups of all the videos.

Links in original.

[JackRiddler]

It's very important that's being done. I hesitate to check it out. All of these are so horrible.

If ever a post needed a trigger warning, maybe this one.

Four Indianapolis policemen beat two women with batons and fired projectiles: AP video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sY_q3njJAE

As of June 5 the cops "have been assigned to support duties pending the outcome of an investigation."


"Collateral"

OSU graduate, 22, dies after attending protests in Columbus
BOB JACOB | MANAGING EDITOR bjacob@cjn.org Jun 5, 2020 Updated Jun 5, 2020

A 22-year-old Ohio State University graduate died May 30 following protests in Columbus, according to television station WCMH.

The woman was identified on Instagram as Sarah Grossman, who was among protesters showing support for George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis when white former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25.

This led to protests across the state and the country, including in Columbus.

Grossman was in a group sprayed by a chemical agent, according to reports. She may have had respiratory issues, according to social media posts.

She died at Sycamore Medical Center in Miamisburg, a suburb of Dayton.

The city of Columbus posted on Twitter it had seen social media reports of a young woman passing away as the result of being sprayed during a protest in Columbus, but it had no reports of EMTs being dispatched to the scene.

Grossman worked at Stauf’s Coffee Roasters, which posted a statement on Facebook ...

[...]

The Brick Lie

theintercept.com
White House Forced to Retract Claim Viral Videos Prove Antifa Is Plotting Violence
Robert Mackey
robert.mackey@​theintercept.com
@RobertMackey
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/04/whi ... -violence/


The White House engaged in an extraordinary act of rumor-mongering on Wednesday, releasing a compilation of viral video clips posted on social media recently by people who believed, wrongly, that the piles of bricks they came across had been planted there by anti-fascist activists, known as antifa, to inspire violence at protests.

“Antifa and professional anarchists are invading our communities, staging bricks and weapons to instigate violence,” a caption for the video posted on the official White House Twitter feed claimed. “These are acts of domestic terror.”

[Follow link for embedded stuff!]

A screenshot of a video and caption posted on the White House Twitter feed on Wednesday.

Within minutes, journalists discovered that most of the clips included in the video posted online by the White House had already been investigated and debunked. A short time later, without explanation or apology, the White House deleted the video from its official Twitter and Facebook feeds — but only after it had been viewed more than a million times on Twitter alone.

[Follow link]

A screenshot showing that a video was removed from the White House Facebook feed on Wednesday.

Although the White House tried to hide the video once it became clear just how riddled with errors it was, The Intercept saved a copy before it disappeared.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1EfNL7gnXQ

The video is worth examining in detail, since it shows just how unconcerned with the truth people in the White House are, as they conduct a frantic search for evidence to support the president’s baseless claim that the protests over racial injustice and police impunity have been hijacked by phantom “professional protesters.”

The compilation includes seven clips showing bricks, rocks or paving stones that the people who filmed them found suspicious. Three of the clips were broadcast a day earlier in a report from “Inside Edition,” which told its viewers that “police say small bands of the so-called ‘professional agitators’ are taking advantage of the crisis and hijacking peaceful demonstrations.”

“Piles of bricks have also appeared at the scenes of major demonstrations,” a reporter for the tabloid news show added. “There is speculation they may have been planted there by Antifa, for use as projectiles aimed at cops and storefront windows.”

However, as open-source investigators for BBC News, Buzzfeed and Vice had already reported before the White House compiled the clips, almost all of the video included in it showed ordinary piles of bricks used in construction projects which were underway before the wave of protests began in response to the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by Minneapolis police officers last week.

In the first clip, recorded in Dallas on Saturday night, a young black protester addresses the camera, and shares the conspiratorial idea that a pallet of bricks outside a courthouse must have been planted there to provoke a riot.

“This is a set-up,” the young man says to the camera in the original video, which was posted on Twitter by a black activist. “You got to do better,” the man adds, wagging his finger in a sarcastic scolding of the slipshod provocateurs he imagines were responsible. In the background, another protester can be heard saying, “there ain’t no damned construction around here.”

That is not quite correct, however. Photographs and video shot on May 5 at the same location, outside the Dallas County Courthouse — during a protest by the far-right Oathkeepers in support of Shelley Luther, a salon owner who was jailed for reopening her business during the coronavirus lockdown — showed that there were extensive roadworks and piles of bricks at that same street corner three weeks before George Floyd was killed.

Even if the roadwork had been largely or entirely completed by last Saturday, it seems far more likely that the bricks had just not been cleared away than that they were removed and then planted again, outside a courthouse, by left-wing agitators.

In an interview, the man who recorded this video and posted it online, Reuben Lael, told me that he took the threat of “interlopers,” meaning “anarchists or any other anti-America groups,” using violence to distort the meaning of the Black Lives Matter protests very seriously. “America is vulnerable and on the radar of people who want to destroy the country,” he said. Lael argued that it was important to him “to protect the young protesters” and “kind of keep the narrative clear” by at least letting the young man who suspected the bricks might have been a set-up make it plain that he was not a rioter and not interested in violence.

Another clip used by the White House, and “Inside Edition,” shows a pile of bricks in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in video that was posted on Twitter on Saturday. However, as Benjamin Strick of The BBC reported on Tuesday, the bricks were clearly visible at the same spot in video posted on YouTube on May 24, one day before the killing of George Floyd.

The Fayetteville Public Works Commission also confirmed to Strick’s colleague, Shayan Sardarizadeh, on Tuesday that the paving stones had been placed on that sidewalk last week ahead of planned work to restore the cobblestoned street following work on water and sewer lines beneath the pavement.

In the White House compilation, that video from Fayetteville is the fifth clip, and, as Strick pointed out on Twitter, the pile of paving stones in it appears to be identical to those shown in the second clip in the sequence, which seems to show the same stones (surrounded by the same traffic cones and brick wall) at a different time of day.

The third clip in the White House video, of a police officer removing blue boxes of stones from a street corner in Gravesend, a part of South Brooklyn where there have been no protests or rioting, was posted on Twitter on Tuesday morning by someone who claimed, without evidence, that they had been placed there by Anifa. “Bricks have been places strategically around Brooklyn in anticipation of protests,” a conservative Brooklyn resident named Yaakov Kaplan wrote in his video caption without evidence. “ANTIFA is way more organized than politicians pretend.”

That video was shared on Twitter on Wednesday morning by Commissioner Dermot Shea of the New York Police Department. However, Mark Treyger, a New York City Council member who represents that area responded to the commissioner’s tweet a short time later, calling his accusation that the stones had been placed there by antifascists false. “This is in my district. I went to the site. This construction debris was left near a construction site on Ave X in Gravesend,” Treyger wrote on Twitter.

It is nor clear where the fourth clip in the White House compilation was shot, but it shows what look like ordinary construction materials.

The sixth clip, of young protesters in Manhattan picking up bricks during a march on Saturday night, was edited by the White House to cut out the start of the scene, in which they could be seen first breaking down a barrier around a clearly defined construction site in the East Village. The original clip, posted by a reporter, showed a yellow fence around the building materials and a sign reading “LANE CLOSED CAUTION,” before it was pulled down by the protesters to get at the bricks.

The seventh and final clip offered by the White House as supposed proof of anti-fascists “staging bricks” was perhaps the most embarrassing mistake. That viral clip showed several piles of large rocks inside six metal cages on a sidewalk in Sherman Oaks, California, which people on social platforms speculated were caches of ammunition for future riots.

In fact, as the Chabad of Sherman Oaks had already explained on its Facebook page on Monday, in response to the viral rumor that these were stones prepared for rioting, the structures were in fact security barriers that had been in place outside the Jewish center for nearly a year.

“Nevertheless to alleviate people’s concern that they may be vandalized and used by rioters, they were temporarily removed,” the center said in a message posted on Facebook with a photo of the cages after the rocks had been removed.

A screenshot of a Facebook message posted on Monday, debunking a viral rumor.

The White House social media director, Dan Scavino, did not reply to a request for comment on why the video was posted after most of its contents had already been debunked, and why it was removed without explanation.

Despite a lack of evidence, belief in the president’s conspiracy theory that “outside agitators” from the ranks of the anti-fascists are infiltrating protests to spark violence has become an article of faith among his supporters, and has been echoed from senior officers in some police departments. On Monday, Terence Monahan, the chief of department and the highest-ranked uniformed police officer in the NYPD, told a local television crew that it was time “to get those groups out of here — from California, from all over this country, who are being paid to take this movement, which is a good movement, and turn it into violence” against police officers.

Other departments have found themselves forced to debunk viral rumors of imminent attacks from anti-fascists, who use the term antifa as a nickname, but are not members of an organized group, as Trump and his followers seem to believe.

On Monday, a police department in Idaho wrote on Facebook that a viral rumor spread by a rightwing militia group, that “Antifa has sent a plane load of their people into Boise and three bus loads from Seattle into the rural areas,” was entirely untrue. “The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has been monitoring social media posts that have stated FALSE information,” the department wrote. “The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has not had contact with and has not verified that Antifa is in Payette County. The Payette County Sheriff’s Office has not given any specific warnings to our citizens about Antifa or other organizations.”

Ahead of a protest on Sunday, the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce tweeted that it “had received tips from unnamed sources that protesters from outside of Sioux Falls planned to attend the rally and incite violence.”

Sioux Falls Police Chief Matt Burns told The Argus Leader, a local newspaper, on Monday “that authorities were looking for the buses and didn’t find any evidence of them arriving and unloading protesters.”

But unverified claims that “pallets of bricks” have been mysteriously delivered to protest sites have also been embraced by some anti-Trump activists on the left. The podcaster Tonya Tko used many of the same viral clips of bricks in her own video analysis posted on Facebook on Monday, in which she concluded that the government must be trying to undermine peaceful protests in favor of racial justice by inciting people to violence. Tko’s video, “Bricks Planted in Protest Cities Across the U.S.: IT’S A SET-UP!” in which she also suggests that the Covid-19 pandemic might have been part of a wider government plot, has already been viewed 3.4 million times.

Last Updated: Friday, June 5, 1:30 a.m. PDT
This article was updated to add comments from Reuben Lael, who filmed a protest in Dallas, to report Tonya Tko’s video analysis, and to note reporting from Benjamin Strick of the BBC indicating that the second and fifth clips in the White House compilation video seem to show the same pile of paving stones in Fayetteville, North Carolina, at different times of the day. Screenshots were also added to show the video on the White House Twitter feed, before it was deleted, and the error message that appeared after it was removed from the White House Facebook feed.

JUNE 7, 2020
Top 16 Euphemisms US Headline Writers Used for Police Beating the Shit Out of People
NEIL DEMAUSE

NBC: Urgent New Calls for Police Reform Amid Use of Force

NBC: "aggressive tactics" in Minneapolis
What NBC (5/31/20) described as “more aggressive tactics” included firing paint ball rounds at residents as they stood on their porches.

“After Curfew, Detroit Police Act Aggressively to Disperse Protesters Who Refused to Leave” (Detroit Free Press, 5/31/20)

“Minneapolis Officers Use More Aggressive Tactics Against Protesters as Rallies Flare Around US” (NBC News, 5/31/20)

“An Agitated Trump Encourages Governors to Use Aggressive Tactics on Protesters” (CNN, 6/1/20)

“Police Turn More Aggressive Against Protesters and Bystanders Alike, Adding to Disorder” (Washington Post, 5/31/20)

“After Curfew, Protesters Are Again Met With Strong Police Response in New York City” (New York Times, 6/4/20)

“Six Atlanta Police Officers Charged in Forceful Arrests of College Students in Car” (ABC News, 6/2/20)

“Despite Curfews and Heavy Police Presence, Protests Persist Across the Country” (NPR, 6/2/20)

“Low-Flying Helicopters, Heavy Police Presence Used to Disperse Protesters After DC Goes Under Curfew” (Washington Business Journal, 6/2/20)

“While Tensions Between Police and Protesters Boiled Over in Some Cities, Other Officers Joined the Movement” (CNN, 6/1/20)

“’Rush the Crowd’: Protesters Clash With Officers at End of Peaceful Rally” (WDJT, 6/4/20)

“Fiery Clashes Erupt Between Police and Protesters Over George Floyd Death” (New York Times, 5/30/20)

“Clash Between Police and Protesters in Brockton Brings Out Fireworks and Tear Gas” (WBTS, 6/2/20)

“De Blasio Denounced After Police Forcefully Clash With Protesters” (New York Times, 6/4/20)

“Mayor Downplays Rough Police Treatment of NYC Protesters” (AP, 6/5/20)

“Floyd Protests Suppressed in NYC as Police Enforce Curfew” (KIRO, 6/3/20)

“Retreat or Deploy? Nation’s Police Try to Balance Protest Response” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5/30/20)

[JackRiddler]

A man filmed four cops holding down Eric Garner while one of them kept him in a chokehold while he repeated "I can't breathe" until he died. Although disemination of the video helped spark a movement, only one person went to prison in the wake of this incident. Predictably, that was Ramsey Orta.

Ramsey Orta, Man Who Filmed Eric Garner’s Arrest, Has Been Released From Prison
Orta, who had been serving four years on gun and drug charges, was given early release because of the COVID-19 pandemic

By BRENNA EHRLICH
JUNE 8, 2020 5:49PM ET
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/cu ... e-1011646/

Ramsey Orta — who shot video of Eric Garner’s 2014 arrest that lead to death by police chokehold — was released from prison on May 28th. Orta’s fiancée, Deja Richardson, confirmed the news to Rolling Stone via email; a Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesperson also confirmed his release. His prison sentence is officially over on July 11th; after that, Orta will remain under court supervision until January 2022.

The DOCCS spokesperson also said that they are currently reviewing the incarcerated population for candidates for early release in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, 898 individuals have been moved back into the community.

Orta was sentenced to four years in prison in 2016 for possession of a weapon as well as drug charges, according to the New York Daily News. In July of 2014, Orta, then 22, recorded cops as they approached Garner near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal and accused him of selling loose cigarettes. One officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put his arm around Garner’s neck and pulled him to the ground. Garner repeatedly told officers that he couldn’t breathe and died soon after the altercation. The video that Orta shot set off a wave of protests and inquiries into police practices. “I Can’t Breathe” became a phrase history has not forgotten. Pantaleo was fired in August of 2019 without pension, according to CNN, after being found guilty at a disciplinary trial for using a chokehold on Garner.

According to Time, Orta was arrested several times since 2014 for criminal possession of a weapon and various drug-related incidents. A year after filming Garner’s death, Orta told the publication he regretted being involved; the public attention was sometimes too much. “It just put me in a messed-up predicament,” he said.

Orta has claimed in the past that he has been a target for correctional officers due to filming Garner’s death; he reportedly filed a lawsuit in 2015 claiming that rat poison was put in his food during his time at Rikers Island.

There’s currently a GoFundMe campaign raising money for Orta following release; it has raised upwards of $60,000. Orta’s name has recently resurfaced in the press as protests rage across the country due to the police killing of George Floyd, whose death was filmed and spurred outrage around the world.

[JackRiddler]

@realDonaldTrump

Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
8:34 AM · Jun 9, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
32.4K Retweets 40K Likes

[Harvey]

Anyone who's ever confronted power already knows that standard operating procedure is to accuse the accuser. Ask Julian.

[liminalOyster]

Twtitter user in small town has police show up threatening to arrest based on his tweets:

IDK if this is related to my recent tweets but #portlandme police are at my home now and threatening arrest, they won’t say why

They're making it pretty clear they're upset with my recent tweets. One cop told my wife "I know about your preconceived notions of police - I know them for a fact"

https://twitter.com/c_milneil/status/1270348066307145729

[JackRiddler]

.

Friends of Gugino with his group, Witness Against Torture, respond to this sickness:

@realDonaldTrump

Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
8:34 AM · Jun 9, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
32.4K Retweets 40K Likes

June 9, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Matthew Daloisio, 201-264-4424
https://mailchi.mp/e63926d62f64/recappi ... rd-2672580

WAT RESPONDS TO TRUMP'S MALICIOUS TWEET

Trump callously lied this morning on Twitter about Witness Against Torture’s friend and fellow activist, Martin Gugino – the 75-year-old elder who was shoved to the ground and stepped over by the Buffalo police force while protesting the death of George Floyd. WAT organizer Jeremy Varon has written the following op-ed, exposing the person Martin really is and what is truly at stake in this moment.

Martin Gugino — The “Buffalo Protestor” and our Friend
By Jeremy Varon

I too reacted with horror at seeing the video of a 75-year-old man bleeding from the head after being shoved to the ground by Buffalo police. My stomach turned tighter when I realized, “Wait, I know that guy.” And now the president has tweeted about him, spinning the grotesque falsehood that his fall and terrible injury were somehow a set up.

The man is Martin Gugino. For years we worked together in Witness Against Torture, a close-knit group dedicated to closing the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo and opposing torture. Our community is beside itself.

None of us is surprised that it was Martin meeting the police line in a posture of non-violence. Martin is gentle, principled, and undaunted. Allied with the Catholic Worker tradition, he is also deeply committed to a tapestry of causes, from fair housing to immigrant rights. Guiding his activism is belief in the sacred power of non-violent resistance to injustice. If that makes him an “agitator,” as Buffalo’s police chief slandered him, then the world needs more agitators.

The video of Martin is already part of the iconography of our times, in which every disturbing visual seems a metaphor for something bigger. Eulogizing George Floyd, Reverend Al Sharpton used the image of the policeman’s knee on his neck as a symbol for centuries of anti-black oppression.

Each video clip of police brutalizing protesters points to a much larger system of law enforcement abuse, endemic in communities of color. I saw in my friend’s vulnerability and the scene surrounding him other meanings as well, useful for understanding our troubled society.

A galling aspect of the video is how rows of officers strut indifferently past an aged man lying still and wounded, as if dead. It made me think of the tens of thousands of elder Americans needlessly lost to Covid-19 and the callous disregard shown them by the Trump administration. Its catastrophic response to the virus has entailed the seemingly willful sacrifice of our seniors to Trump’s strongman fantasy of a virile nation. Shove the old, decrepit people out of the way. Step over them. Don’t help them. They were going to die anyway.

Covid-19 is as well an infuriating story of race, with Blacks greatly more likely to die from the virus than whites. The death of Black seniors — often in poorer health and homed in under-resourced facilities — feeds that disproportion.

The shared root of the twin crisis of Covid-19 and racism is the stunning disposability of certain lives in America, no matter its capacities and ideals. The difficult lesson of the current protest movement is to think about that failure in a new way. The police have not lapsed in their mission to serve and protect. For many communities, the police are built to dominate and abuse. Our health care system has not failed to keep us healthy. It is designed to keep only some of us healthy, while lining corporate pockets.

Martin’s abuse signals as well the perverse priorities of our current government. Among the state’s solemn obligations is to protect the lives and well-being of its people. So too, it must protect the nation’s ideals. For America, the true meaning of “national security” must be the defense of life and liberty. And yet, rather than tirelessly working to mitigate the virus and safeguard our freedoms, the Trump administration has declared the urgent need to rid public space of the people exercising basic rights. Like in Buffalo, police departments have gotten the message.

My last thoughts about the video are linked to the anti-torture activism Martin and I shared. In his eulogy for George Floyd, attorney Benjamin Crump named what was done to him as “torture.” It was a striking description I had not heard before. Floyd’s lynching needs no added indignity to stir our outrage. But torture has a special sting, both because of its willful cruelty and its supposed alienness to America.

For years, we in Witness Against Torture vigorously protested what was in fact America’s systematic use of torture after 9/11. Like other human rights groups, we wanted the detained men to be subjects before the law, with basic protections and access to US courts. In our work, we did not think much about race.

Yet Black Lives Matter and other activists impressed on us an uncomfortable truth: that many of the abuses in War on Terror prisons, like solitary confinement, are routine in America’s domestic prisons, holding predominantly people of color. Access to the law, moreover, is no guarantee of justice. Sometimes the law is the problem.

We began to see torture as part of a continuum of state violence, including in its racial aspect. Almost exclusively, the victims of post-9/11 torture have been brown-skinned Muslim men, demonized with the label “terrorist.” Despite the innocence of most of the men historically held at Guantanamo, the law has been all but useless in freeing them. No one responsible for their torture has been held to legal account, including during the Obama administration. Going forward, our group sought to highlight the parallels between domestic and overseas abuses in a vast system of dehumanizing violence.

Dismantling anti-black racism is today’s urgent priority. But abuses of power crave synergies, making other causes relevant. Recall that president Trump is an avowed supporter of torture. His former lawyer John Dowd wrote a bizarre letter, tweeted out by Trump, describing the peaceful protestors cleared from Lafayette Park as “terrorists.” Trump’s own tweet branding Martin as a member of “Antifa” is of a piece with this nonsense that uses baseless fears to justify repression.

Such rhetoric makes an enemy of the American people, threatening to sic on them the tactics of the War on Terror. It seems, as yet, more a sign of desperation than strength — like heavily armored police pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground and the President lying about it. Martin will get up, god-willing, and be back on the streets. The more of us who are there, the more pitifully desperate and disarmed those opposing the tides of change will become.

Jeremy Varon – Professor of History, The New School

jvaron@aol.com

[JackRiddler]

When it's this good, it's all the more a problem that several times Oliver has been full of shit and served the bad guys. It's partly the conundrum of weekly or daily production for the money, and maintaining an audience that shows up for it on schedule -- shit is always better than nothing. Nothing once becomes nothing always. Off the treadmill is end of career. I wonder how many of the times that's the underlying dynamic when we discover someone we liked or thought wise turned out to be doing bad or betrayed the truth in some way. Still can't forgive the Venezuela episode. One time helping a CIA crime means done and out, no forgiveness, or does it?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Wf4cea5oObY

.

[Harvey]

^However fine it may be, I won't watch it. John Oliver is dead to me for many of the reasons you stated. His Venezuela shit piece was unconscionable, that alone crossed every red line I have.

[liminalOyster]

I wouldn't trust John Oliver to hold my sandwich and haven't shifted from seeing a mockingbird to a freebird in my view of him. But my gut says this one comes from the heart. I'm naive sometimes and hardly immune to constant streams of propaganda for all I try.

Nonetheless, this video helped, IME, tp expalin prison/police abolition to at least two people over the age of 75.

[JackRiddler]

I wouldn't trust John Oliver to hold my sandwich and haven't shifted from seeing a mockingbird to a freebird in my view of him. But my gut says this one comes from the heart. I'm naive sometimes and hardly immune to constant streams of propaganda for all I try.

Nonetheless, this video helped, IME, tp expalin prison/police abolition to at least two people over the age of 75.

I have the same gut feeling that Oliver's cops episode comes from the gut, and I have a theory for why. It applies not just to him, but to the vast number of PNEOCs (people not exactly of color) of the middle and upper-middle and even the rich classes in the United States.

They have more or less seen the actual activity and role of police departments and most "law enforcement" in this country, in a way that cannot be unseen.

It took more videos of just out-and-out murder than it required for most black people, but it seems (to borrow a term from PD Scott) a prevailing majority of white people now get or are about to finally understand the part about Black Lives Mattering (and yeah, lives of other people the cops just out-and-out murder for sport or out of incompetence also mattering).

Perhaps more importantly for changing them, this PNEOC majority are figuring out, in a way that represents a sea change and not just a notion, that protecting the welfare of humans by stopping or preventing or solving human crime against other humans is maybe 5-10 percent of what the police currently do and are budgeted for.

Also, that among their main roles beyond that are

a) things that other professionals should be doing, like social workers or nurses or psychologists or doctors or first responders or employment agents or housing agents or mediators or community judges, or inspectors and TAX COLLECTORS (hello!), or a much smaller number of unarmed school security guards, or teachers or librarians or various kinds of technicians, traffic cops, bureaucrats, et al.; and

b) things that no one should be doing, specifically including: starting riots; causing riots; participating in organized crime; infiltrating political groups; dispatching provocateurs; blackmailing people; routinely and arbitrarily pushing and intimidating people on the street, fucking up people's lives just because they're doing drugs or selling irrelevant quantities thereof; capturing civilian governments and budgets, turning mayors into political hostages, acting as though there were gangs and political clubs with guns and badges; and engaging in arbitrary, aggressive and routinely violent suppression of any and all public peaceable assembly and/or protest that isn't for profit and didn't ask for a permit.

Perhaps a majority has seen this shit now. I hope it's turning into a matter of conscious self-interest for a majority.

.

[liminalOyster]

If there's two groups whose righteous squabbling is both myopic and entrenched enough to blow it for all of us in a moment this fertile, it's gotta be the bickering between euphoric anarchists and decolonial activists.

[JackRiddler]

.

Mike O'Meara, New York City Patrolmens' Benevolent Association (PBA) chief: "Stop treating us like animals and thugs." Speech helpfully illustrated with street footage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNcH5aAXwaA


Limits of Copaganda

‘The Cop in Me Wants to Kick My Own Ass’: NYPD Lt. Who Kneeled with Protesters Says He’ll Feel ‘Shamed’ for Life

JERRY LAMBE
Jun 11th, 2020, 2:54 pm
https://lawandcrime.com/george-floyd-de ... s-own-ass/

A lieutenant in the New York City Police Department who knelt with protestors demonstrating against police brutality following the police killing of George Floyd last month sent an email to his colleagues apologizing for his conduct, saying it is something that will haunt him for life, the New York Post reported Thursday.

In a June 3 email to others police officers obtained by the New York Post, Lt. Robert Cattani of the Midtown South Precinct wrote that he regretted his “horrible decision to give into a crowd of protesters’ demands” by taking a knee during demonstrations in Lower Manhattan’s Foley Square. Cattani told his fellow officers that “the cop in me wants to kick my own ass.”

In the email, Cattani couched his decision to kneel as one taken out of fear, confusion, and a desire to de-escalate what appears to be a peaceful protest, as evinced by footage posted to Twitter by Gothamist reporter Jake Offenhartz.


Jake Offenhartz
@jangelooff
· May 31, 2020
Replying to @jangelooff
I commuted to the Manhattan protest — follow @GwynneFitz & @scottheins for Brooklyn uodates. Thousands of protesters now marching down Broadway (heaping pile of trash for scale)

View image on Twitter

Jake Offenhartz
@jangelooff
In Foley Square, resounding chants of “NYPD take a knee.” Eventually, four cops kneel to huge chants. “We just want to get home safely, same as you,” says one protester.

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“The conditions prior to the decision to take a knee were very difficult as we were put center stage with the entire crowd chanting. I know I made the wrong decision. We didn’t know how the protesters would have reacted if we didn’t and were attempting to reduce any extra violence,” Cattani wrote.

The video shows that protestors were chanting, “NYPD, take a knee,” but after Cattani and three other officers obliged they were met with cheers and applause.

In the email, Cattani conflated protesters with rioters.

“I thought maybe that one protester/rioters who saw it would later think twice about fighting or hurting a cop. I was wrong. At least that [sic] what I told myself when we made that bad decision. I know that it was wrong and something I will be shamed and humiliated about for the rest of my life,” he wrote.

The police lieutenant closed his email by saying kneeling “wrongly shamed” the NYPD uniform.

“I could not imagine the idea of ever coming back to work and putting on the uniform I so wrongly shamed,” he continued. “However, I decided that was the easy way out for me and I will continue to come to work every day being there for my personnel.”

[what a guy, etc. etc., more at link]

Courtesy-Professionalism-Respect: Press Relations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G25d12GCJuM


Respect for Lawyers

"Round Up The Green Hats": NYPD Accused Of Deliberately Targeting Legal Observers In Brutal Bronx Mass Arrest

BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ
JUNE 8, 2020 5:13 P.M.
https://gothamist.com/news/round-green- ... ass-arrest

On Thursday evening before curfew, Rex Santus was standing alone on a quiet Mott Haven street corner when he caught the attention of NYPD officers passing in an unmarked minivan. As eight officers surrounded him, the 28-year-old CUNY law student identified himself as a legal observer with the National Lawyers Guild, and explained his intention to monitor a nearby protest against racist police brutality.

The officers accused him of “illegal counter-surveillance against police,” Santus said. They seized his notebook, reading from it and mocking him for writing that some cops had obscured their badge numbers. As the officers feigned ignorance about the role of legal observers, Santus recalled, an apparent warning blared from their police radios: “A lot of LOs out tonight.”

The National Lawyers Guild’s legal observers (“LOs”), instantly identifiable in their neon green hats, have served as a consistent presence at New York City protests for decades. The NYPD patrol guide acknowledges the observers' right to monitor police activity and record the names of arrestees. Like medical and jail support workers, legal observers were exempted from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s 8 p.m. curfew.

But none of that seemed to matter when the NYPD carried out its violent mass arrest of peaceful marchers in Mott Haven on Thursday. Just before 8 p.m., hundreds of protesters — as well as journalists and legal observers — were suddenly trapped on a narrow street by officers, who charged them from either direction while wielding batons and bikes. On top of the 260 people arrested, at least 11 legal observers with the National Lawyers Guild were detained, in some cases violently.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=OLn2iy-ia24

While legal observers have been arrested in the past, leaders of the NLG said Thursday’s incident represented an unprecedented show of force, seemingly authorized by top NYPD officials, against the volunteer bystanders. The operation was supervised by Chief of Department Terence Monahan, the NYPD's highest ranking uniformed officer.

In a letter sent to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea on Sunday, the local chapter of the NLG alleged that officers engaged in “targeted harassment” of legal observers, with the goal of intimidating them and interfering in their efforts to hold police accountable. By detaining them and seizing their notes and identification, the NYPD violated legal observers' 1st and 4th Amendment rights, the attorneys association alleged.

A police department spokesperson did not respond to numerous questions about the arrests, but provided the following statement: "The NYPD’s mission is to ensure public safety and uphold the law and any claims of targeting are baseless. Police officers were enforcing a curfew, non-essential workers were not permitted to be out after 8pm."

Members of the de Blasio administration have confirmed to attorneys and elected officials on numerous occasions that legal observers are exempt from the curfew, according to emails shared with Gothamist. When one legal observer attempted to show an NYPD officer documentation of that exemption, the officer allegedly snatched the paper, crumpled it, and threw her to the ground.

[...continues with video & many more details...]

...more with photos from Bronx...

NYPD’s Ambush Of Peaceful Bronx Protesters Was "Executed Nearly Flawlessly," City Leaders Agree
BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ, NICK PINTO AND GWYNNE HOGAN, WNYC
JUNE 5, 2020 3:34 P.M. • 121 COMMENTS • 30 PHOTOS
https://gothamist.com/news/nypds-ambush ... ders-agree

Courtesy to Bikershttps://vimeo.com/426847270


Kindness to Students
(Five thousand! Among other functions turning every school into a mini-precincts is a fucking employment program for redundant police.)

Citing a ‘huge safety challenge,’ de Blasio says NYPD should stay in NYC schools
By Alex Zimmerman Jun 10, 2020, 4:13pm EDT
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/6/10/2128 ... ypd-police

School districts across the country are reconsidering their relationships with police departments and some are cutting ties entirely. But changes won’t be coming soon to New York City.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday that he continues to support police department control of school security, which includes about 5,000 agents stationed in schools, and would oppose transferring that responsibility to the education department.

“School safety as it’s currently configured has done a lot to reduce crime and violence in our schools,” de Blasio told reporters. He added that there is still a “huge safety challenge in our schools” and “school safety is necessary in its current form to keep ensuring the safety of our kids and all personnel in our schools.”

The mayor has faced withering criticism over the police department’s forceful, and often violent, response to largely peaceful protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.

Hundreds of city educators have signed petitions in recent weeks calling for the city to transfer control of school safety back to the education department, which oversaw school security until Mayor Rudy Giuliani successfully pushed for an overhaul in the late 1990s.

De Blasio said he favors reforms to the school safety division, such as a “neighborhood policing” approach, instead of changing who is in charge. Last year, the city overhauled the agreement between the police and education departments in an effort to limit police interactions with students.

De Blasio did not offer details about what additional reforms he believes are necessary. He said a city task force would look into education department control of school security, though last year the mayor rejected a proposal from a separate mayoral task force to study the issue.

Although unsurprising, the mayor’s comments disappointed some advocates, who pointed to school systems in Minneapolis, Denver, and Portland, which have either cut ties with the police or are seriously considering doing so. Some also noted that de Blasio has repeatedly bragged about improved school safety — a position in tension with his view that schools are not safe enough to remove police oversight.

“The mayor can’t have it both ways: He can’t say [schools] are the safest they’ve ever been, but they’re so dangerous that we need a militarized police force in the hallways,” said Johanna Miller, an education policy expert at the New York Civil Liberties Union.

There have been some notable examples of school violence in recent years, which the mayor’s critics have sometimes seized on. In the most serious example, a student was fatally stabbed at a Bronx school in 2017, though such incidents are extremely rare.

School safety agents, who are generally unarmed and stationed in every school, play a variety of roles: greeting and signing in visitors to school buildings, deploying metal detectors at some schools, responding to fights, and even issuing arrests. In many cases, they’re called to respond to student mental health crises.

Civil rights groups have raised concerns about their role for decades, arguing that they criminalize low-level misbehavior, disproportionately among black and Hispanic students.

Arrests and summonses in city schools have been falling in recent years, according to a New York Civil Liberties Union analysis. But stark racial disparities have persisted: In 2019, 90% of arrests and 93% of summonses issued in schools went to black and Latino students, who represent 66% of city public school students.

The vast majority of arrests and summonses in schools are conducted by regular patrol officers who are called into school buildings, not school safety agents, suggesting meaningful reforms will require a holistic approach, Miller said.

The city has budgeted $427 million for school safety next fiscal year — more than Boston spends on its entire police force. That represents a 1.3% increase, compared to this year’s budget. Facing pressure from activists who want to see police funding go instead to social services, de Blasio has committed to unspecified cuts to the police department’s budget to support youth programming.

A City Hall spokesperson did not immediately say whether the cuts would include the school safety division.

Redacted

Louisville, KY Police Filed Nearly Blank Report After Killing Breonna Taylor
JUN 11, 2020
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/11/headlines

Calls are growing for the arrest of the Louisville police officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old African American emergency room technician who was shot to death by police inside her own apartment in March. On Wednesday, the police department finally released its incident report from that night — but the report is almost entirely blank. It lists Taylor’s injuries as “none,” even though she was shot eight times. The report claims there was no forced entry by police, even though officers used a battering ram to knock down her door.

Meanwhile, Louisville police are investigating sexual assault allegations against Brett Hankison, one of the officers who shot Taylor. Two women have claimed he sexually assaulted them after giving them rides home in his police vehicle.

Gangsters Slashing Tires in Parking Lots

Video Shows Cops Slashing Tires Across Minneapolis During Protests
A spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety says they were scared people would drive too fast.
BILLY BINION | 6.8.2020 5:28 PM
https://reason.com/2020/06/08/video-sho ... d-protests

New video footage shows several police officers slashing car tires during Minneapolis protests without provocation.

In one clip, cops clad in military-style uniforms can be seen stabbing tires during a protest led near the state's I-35 West highway. But in a more puzzling turn, additional footage shows a parking lot full of slashed tires at the local Kmart.

[...]

"Every car that's parked here has their tires slashed," notes content producer Andrew Kimmel in a video he posted on Twitter. "Every single car. Unbelievable. I can't get home now." Another vandalized car reportedly belonged to a local reporter covering the protests.

Bruce Gordon, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, conceded that police were responsible, according to The Star Tribune.

"State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires in order to stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement," he told the paper. He added that officers also honed in on vehicles "that contained items used to cause harm during violent protests," such as rocks or concrete, though it's difficult to believe every car at Kmart contained such items.

Anoka County Sheriff's Lt. Andy Knotz admitted that deputies from his department assisted in the effort after receiving orders from Minnesota's Multiagency Command Center.

[...]

'I can't breathe,' Oklahoma man tells police before dying. 'I don't care,' officer responds.
Newly released video of the 2019 incident shows officers restraining Derrick Scott, 42, who is heard asking repeatedly for his medicine and saying he can’t breathe.

'I can't breathe': Oklahoma City police release video from in-custody death
June 10, 2020, 8:55 PM EDT
By Tim Stelloh
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/i- ... i-n1229586

In the May 20, 2019 footage, released this week by the Oklahoma City Police Department, three officers are seen restraining the man, Derrick Scott, 42, who can be heard asking repeatedly for his medicine and saying that he can’t breathe.

Body camera video during the arrest of Derrick Elliot Scott on May 20, 2019 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.Body camera video during the arrest of Derrick Elliot Scott on May 20, 2019 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.OCPD
“I don’t care,” one of the officers, Jarred Tipton, can be heard replying at one point. “You can breathe just fine,” another officer can be heard saying a couple of minutes later.

Scott, who appears unresponsive several minutes into the footage, was later pronounced dead at a local hospital. An autopsy obtained by NBC News lists his cause of death as a collapsed lung.

The incident began after officers were called to an area south of downtown Oklahoma City shortly before 2 p.m. after someone reported that a black man was arguing with people and brandishing a gun, Oklahoma City police Capt. Larry Withrow said in a statement.

The footage shows Scott running from officers after Tipton asks if he has any weapons. After the police tackle and restrain him, one of the officers can be seen removing a handgun from Scott’s pocket.

Later, an officer tries to administer CPR before paramedics arrive.

The autopsy said the police response did not result in “fatal trauma” and listed several other “significant” factors that contributed to his death, including physical restraint, recent methamphetamine use, asthma, emphysema and heart disease.

His manner of death was listed as “undetermined.”

Winthrow said an investigation into the incident by the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office cleared the three officers — Tipton, Ashley Copeland and Sgt. Jennifer Titus — of misconduct.

Winthrow attributed Tipton’s comments to the “heat of a conflict.”

“Certainly that may be something an officer says,” he told NBC affiliate KFOR. “Just understand — the officers are fighting with someone at that point.”

[...]

[JackRiddler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4JaQMxbC3c

America's top general has apologized for appearing in a photo-op with President Donald Trump following the forceful dispersal of peaceful protesters outside the White House last week, calling the move a "mistake" and saying his presence "created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics."
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a pre-recorded speech released that he regrets accompanying Trump on a walk from the White House to St. John's Church last week where he was photographed wearing his combat uniform and moving with the President's entourage through Lafayette Square.
The images provoked a swift wave of criticism from lawmakers and several senior former military officials who said they risked dragging the traditionally apolitical military into a contentious domestic political situation.
Milley also said that he was "outraged" by the killing of George Floyd and added that the protests it sparked spoke to "centuries of injustice toward African Americans."

.

Remember, Barr organized these deputized extra uniformed and armed battalions of police forces without identifying badges out of federal agencies.

And at least they're not talking about Russia.

1,250-Plus Former DOJ Employees Call for Investigation of Bill Barr’s ‘Role in Ordering’ Use of Force Against Protesters

JERRY LAMBE
Jun 10th, 2020, 3:47 pm
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/mo ... rotesters/

More than 1,250 former employees of the Department of Justice signed their names on an open letter on Wednesday, formally requesting that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz open an investigation into Attorney General William Barr’s “role in ordering” law enforcement to clear protesters outside the White House earlier this month.

“We are deeply concerned about the Department’s actions, and those of Attorney General William Barr himself, in response to the nationwide lawful gatherings to protest the systemic racism that has plagued this country throughout its history, recently exemplified by the brutal killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by sworn law enforcement officers acting under the color of law,” stated the letter, which was posted on the website Medium.

“In particular, we are disturbed by Attorney General Barr’s possible role in ordering law enforcement personnel to suppress a peaceful domestic protest in Lafayette Square on June 1, 2020, for the purpose of enabling President Trump to walk across the street from the White House and stage a photo op at St. John’s Church, a politically motivated event in which Attorney General Barr participated.”

The Trump administration previously confirmed that the decision to push the protesters back came from Barr, though the attorney general himself has been less forthcoming.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany later said the White House had “no regrets” about using force to clear protesters, but noted that “it was Barr who made the decision to move the perimeter.”

In an interview with the Associated Press, Barr claimed law enforcement officers were already moving to push protesters from Lafayette Square upon his arrival, saying he did not give the command to disperse the crowd, but supported the decision.

In a CBS News interview, Barr said the media has media “has not done a very good job of covering” what happened:

I came over on- on Monday morning for a meeting. The night before had been the most violent, as one of the police officials told us, the D.C. police, it was the most violent day in Washington in 30 years, something that the media has not done a very good job of covering. And there had been a riot right along Lafayette Park. I was called over and asked if I would coordinate federal civil agencies and that the Defense Department would provide whatever support I needed or we needed to protect federal property at the White House, federal personnel. The decision was made to have at the ready and on hand in the vicinity some regular troops. But everyone agreed that the use of regular troops was a last resort and that as long as matters can be controlled with other resources, they should be. I felt, and the Secretary of Defense felt, we had adequate resources and wouldn’t need to use federal troops. But in case we did, we wanted them nearby.

In their letter, the DOJ alumni argued that it was critically important to get to the bottom of Barr’s role in the decision because it likely violated the U.S. Constitution.

“If the Attorney General issued orders to officers of a variety of federal agencies, including U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Park Police, D.C. National Guard, and U.S. Military Police, it is unclear under what purported authority he did so,” the letter stated. “Based on what we now know, these actions violated both the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which protects freedom of speech and the press, and the right to assemble; and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable seizures, to include objectively unreasonable uses of force by law enforcement officers. None of us would ever have considered directing or engaging in such actions to be consistent with our oaths to support and defend the Constitution.”

The letter also asked Horowitz to investigate the DOJ’s deployment of federal officers “throughout the country,” particularly singling out reports of officers that bore no identification and refused to say anything other than that they worked for the DOJ.

Also on Wednesday, House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wa.) said U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had repeatedly refused to respond to the Committee’s requests for answers to questions about “the use of military forces in response to peaceful protestors” in D.C. and the potential deployment of “active duty troops around the United States” if the president were to invoke the Insurrection Act.

[Image via Win McNamee/Getty Images.]

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