St Louis - Shooting - Riots - Anonymous Threats

[seemslikeadream]

Darren Wilson and Cops of His Ilk Are Guard Dogs for White America
Darren Wilson is not a monster; he is the mundane face of white supremacy.

November 26, 2014 |
When Darren Wilson dropped his secretive mask in an exclusive interview on ABC, the world saw an unremarkable face. Wilson is a common man with a forgettable face and build; he is elevated by his police uniform, badge and gun into someone who “matters.” This is the greatest power of the police uniform—the ability to transform a small man into someone important.

When asked about his deadly encounter with Michael Brown, Darren Wilson told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he “has a clean conscience” and no regrets.

Some might respond to those comments with the conclusion that Wilson’s confidence in his deeds is a sign of sociopathy. Others might read Wilson’s comments on ABC and his grand jury testimony as evidence of his racism and a casual disregard for the lives of black people. That conclusion is much more compelling, as it is factually grounded in Wilson’s expressed beliefs that Michael Brown was a “giant negro,” a “demon” with superhuman speed and strength who grunted like a feral beast and possessed the ability to resist bullets.

Ironically, Darren Wilson’s answers to Stephanopoulos that “he was doing his job,” and would do nothing different if given the opportunity, are the most honest claims in an investigation and jury process riddled with impropriety, conflicts of interest and corruption.

Police officer Darren Wilson is not a monster; he is the mundane and day-to-day face of white supremacy as experienced by people of color in the United States.

Liberals would love for Wilson to be a monster or some beast from the beyond, a caricature of deranged whiteness, because he could be vanquished, one more shadow of the past forced into the light and out of the public square.

Conservatives would also love for Wilson to be a monster. He would be an outlier that the white right could use as proof that racism is largely nonexistent in American public life and that people of color are unreasonably obsessed over the uncommon and rare.

Darren Wilson, who is not a monster, is the human embodiment of an institutionally racist society that devalues the lives of black and brown people. The criminal justice system is one of the primary means through which white supremacy is maintained, furthered and enacted. Wilson, like many millions of fellow officers, is a mere cog in a system of institutional racism and white supremacy.

Monsters can be killed with relative ease; dismantling centuries-long racist social norms, bureaucracies and laws is a far more difficult task.

The mundane truth that Wilson “was just doing his job” of enforcing a white supremacist racial order when he killed the unarmed Michael Brown, is a constant in American history.

In the United States, modern police departments can trace their origins to the slave patrols whose job was to intimidate, bully, capture, and if necessary kill black slaves who dared to flee the plantation and forced servitude. Police were the strong-arm paramilitary forces of Jim and Jane Crow and its system of racial terrorism. After the end of the formal slavery regime in 1865, African Americans were subjected to imprisonment in slave labor camps under the convict lease system, through which white industrialists and the state benefited from stolen labor.

During the post-civil rights era and the age of Obama, black and Latino youth are subjected to racist (and unconstitutional) stop-and-frisk harassment searches by police.

As Michelle Alexander and others have documented, the American criminal justice system is racist and class-biased at every level from the initial police encounter through to trial and parole. As Yale University’s Vesla Weaver has demonstrated in her work on “custodial citizenship,” black Americans who are innocent of committing any crimes are much more likely to be stopped and harassed by police than white Americans who are actual criminals.

In continuity with the above examples of white supremacy and racism as historic and contemporary features of the criminal justice system, Darren Wilson—like the convict lease system, prisons that hire out black and brown labor at below-market prices, and private property confiscated by police from innocent citizens and others—has shown that black life is cheap, but killing and exploiting black people is remarkably lucrative.

How?

Darren Wilson received hundreds of thousands of dollars in blood money. The homicidal ideation of Darren Wilson’s supporters for his killing of Michael Brown, and their racist paranoia translated black flesh into lucre and financial security. The mundane nature of that transaction is central to American political, economic and social history along the color line.

White Americans are seemingly aghast at, and shocked by events like the killing of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and so many other unarmed black men and boys by police and white-identified vigilantes. White privilege allows them to feign surprise and shock in response to what are the lived experiences of black and brown people in the United States. And by design, white privilege is a bubble that allows its owners and participants to live in a fantasy world of their own making.

Research suggests that even when white people are made aware that the criminal justice system is racist against black people, their support for those policies remains intact. White support for a racist criminal justice system is a function of a deeply held beliefs that black people are a unique race of criminals and a profound threat to white society. Here, the human rights of black and brown people are made secondary to white racial paranoia and old-fashioned bigotry.

Who made Darren Wilson and his quotidian racism and violence against Michael Brown? He is the product of a white America, drunk on law-and-order fantasies, and with a deep historical and cultural bias toward black people’s humanity. Darren Wilson and cops of his ilk are the guard dogs for white America. White America worships them as public servants who are there to protect and serve.

But what happens when that prized guard dog turns and mauls a white child? White America will have no excuse for surprise and upset. The Darren Wilsons of the world are their creation

[Nordic]

Yes indeedy.



Found this over at reddit/conspiracy

[seemslikeadream]

Did Police Set Autos On Fire During Ferguson Protests?
Ferguson vehicle on fire

EDUCATE! FERGUSON, MILITARIZED POLICE, POLICE ABUSE
By Che Lank, http://www.youtube.com
November 30th, 2014
Powered by Translate

This video captures images worthy of investigation. The video seems to show military-clad police setting fire to a car outside of auto parts store. The store and the one next to it burned down. In other videos where fires were started or stores had windows broken you can hear protesters saying ‘leave that store alone’ or ‘don’t start a fire’. We know organizers in Ferguson trained 600 people in nonviolent resistance tactics. Burning cars and looting building is not part of that training, indeed typically people are taught that the idea is to grow the movement into a larger movement and that looting and rioting is counterproductive. We are not saying that all the fires were started by police, but this one raises questions that deserve investigation — were fires started by police?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT0uaZ5Ymeo


This is what Che Lank says: “Para-military Police CAUGHT ON FILM methodically setting fire to a vehicle in front of Advance Auto Parts in St. Louis MO. This happens on W Florissant Ave., the same street where nearly every fire occurred. Despite having this building locked down, Advance Auto Parts burnt down to the ground!

Here is smoking gun irrefutable proof that police were methodically and deliberately setting the fires after the announcement of the Grand Jury Decision not to indict Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown.

I think the owner of that building might want to see this footage!

UPDATE: The white pickup truck seen in the Fox News photograph of the Advance Auto Parts building can also be seen in the original footage of the police lighting a car on fire. Also, I have confirmed that these are SWAT personnel as can be seen by the matching uniforms and vehicles of SWAT on W. Florissant in the following video @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyt7G…

Also notice that the nearby buildings are on fire but “rioters” are no where to be seen. I suggest these buildings were being methodically torched by SWAT/Para-military Police operatives to create the illusion that this was done by Protesters/Looters.”

[BOOGIE66]

The media painting this as a race issue does nothing but make the racists feel that the shooting was justified because "blacks are violent out of control etc" and sets the narrative as a black vs white issue which is bullshit divisive nonsense that allows the real issue (police abuse of power) to be ignored yet again

If it was presented as it is, another sign of the US police state and abuse of police power, something might get done. Cops also kill unarmed white people and get away with it all the time (remember Kelly Thomas) by saying they feared for their safety.

Just because the cop was white and the victim black it isn't necessarily a racial issue.

Maybe people should read about what happened at the grand jury and the bullshit circular logic that was used to protect a killer cop, and think about how the guy is protected not because he is white, but because he is a cop.

[Project Willow]

^Really? The media made it a race issue? Guess all those black folks got it wrong again. They must not know anything about their lives.

Aye Caramba.

Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-ferguson-race-data

http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white

[BOOGIE66]

^Really? The media made it a race issue? Guess all those black folks got it wrong again. They must not know anything about their lives.

Aye Caramba.

Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-ferguson-race-data

http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white

Learn to read you condescending bitch.

[82_28]

Hoo boy, how do you do? No bueno, cabron. Not just because of Willow, but if you want to stick around at all, I would best pull that comment quick. Unnecessary and way out of bounds.

[Pele'sDaughter]

Hoo boy, how do you do? No bueno, cabron. Not just because of Willow, but if you want to stick around at all, I would best pull that comment quick. Unnecessary and way out of bounds.

Ya know, BOOGIE66, your comment says everything about you and nothing at all about Willow.

[seemslikeadream]

Hundreds of Police Killings Are Uncounted in Federal Stats
FBI Data Differs from Local Counts on Justifiable Homicides

By ROB BARRY And COULTER JONES
Updated Dec. 2, 2014 10:33 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—When 24-year-old Albert Jermaine Payton wielded a knife in front of the police in this city’s southeast corner, officers opened fire and killed him.

Yet according to national statistics intended to track police killings, Mr. Payton’s death in August 2012 never happened. It is one of hundreds of homicides by law-enforcement agencies between 2007 and 2012 that aren’t included in records kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest data from 105 of the country’s largest police agencies found more than 550 police killings during those years were missing from the national tally or, in a few dozen cases, not attributed to the agency involved. The result: It is nearly impossible to determine how many people are killed by the police each year.

Interactive: Justifiable Homicides by Law Enforcement

Public demands for transparency on such killings have increased since the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Mo. The Ferguson Police Department has reported to the FBI one justifiable homicide by police between 1976 and 2012.

Law-enforcement experts long have lamented the lack of information about killings by police. “When cops are killed, there is a very careful account and there’s a national database,” said Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia University. “Why not the other side of the ledger?”

Police can use data about killings to improve tactics, particularly when dealing with people who are mentally ill, said Paco Balderrama, a spokesman for the Oklahoma City Police Department. “It’s great to recognize that, because 30 years ago we used to not do that. We used to just show up and handle the situation.”

Three sources of information about deaths caused by police—the FBI numbers, figures from the Centers for Disease Control and data at the Bureau of Justice Statistics—differ from one another widely in any given year or state, according to a 2012 report by David Klinger, a criminologist with the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a onetime police officer.

To analyze the accuracy of the FBI data, the Journal requested internal records on killings by officers from the nation’s 110 largest police departments. One-hundred-five of them provided figures.

Those internal figures show 1,825 police killings in those 105 departments between 2007 and 2012, 47% more than the FBI’s tally for justifiable homicides in those departments’ jurisdictions, which was 1,242, according to the Journal’s analysis. Nearly all police killings are deemed by the departments or other authorities to be justifiable.

The full national scope of the underreporting can’t be quantified. In the period analyzed by the Journal, 753 police entities reported about 2,400 killings by police. The large majority of the nation’s roughly 18,000 law-enforcement agencies didn’t report any.

“Does the FBI know every agency in the U.S. that could report but has chosen not to? The answer is no,” said Alexia Cooper, a statistician with the Bureau of Justice Statistics who studies the FBI’s data. “What we know is that some places have chosen not to report these, for whatever reason.”

FBI spokesman Stephen G. Fischer said the agency uses “established statistical methodologies and norms” when reviewing data submitted by agencies. FBI staffers check the information, then ask agencies “to correct or verify questionable data,” he said.

The reports to the FBI are part of its uniform crime reporting program. Local law-enforcement agencies aren’t required to participate. Some localities turn over crime statistics, but not detailed records describing each homicide, which is the only way particular kinds of killings, including those by police, are tracked by the FBI. The records, which are supposed to document every homicide, are sent from local police agencies to state reporting bodies, which forward the data to the FBI.

The Journal’s analysis identified several holes in the FBI data.

Justifiable police homicides from 35 of the 105 large agencies contacted by the Journal didn’t appear in the FBI records at all. Some agencies said they didn’t view justifiable homicides by law-enforcement officers as events that should be reported. The Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, for example, said it didn’t consider such cases to be an “actual offense,” and thus doesn’t report them to the FBI.

For 28 of the remaining 70 agencies, the FBI was missing records of police killings in at least one year. Two departments said their officers didn’t kill anyone during the period analyzed by the Journal.

About a dozen agencies said their police-homicides tallies didn’t match the FBI’s because of a quirk in the reporting requirements: Incidents are supposed to be reported by the jurisdiction where the event occurred, even if the officer involved was from elsewhere. For example, the California Highway Patrol said there were 16 instances in which one of its officers killed someone in a city or other local jurisdiction responsible for reporting the death to the FBI. In some instances reviewed by the Journal, an agency believed its officers’ justifiable homicides had been reported by other departments, but they hadn’t.

Also missing from the FBI data are killings involving federal officers.

ENLARGE
Police in Washington, D.C., didn’t report to the FBI details about any homicides for an entire decade beginning with 1998—the year the Washington Post found the city had one of the highest rates of officer-involved killings in the country. In 2011, the agency reported five killings by police. In 2012, the year Mr. Payton was killed, there are again no records on homicides from the agency.

D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said she doesn’t know why the agency stopped reporting the numbers in 1998. “I wasn’t the chief and had no role in decision making” back then, said Ms. Lanier, who was a captain at the time. When she took over in 2007, she said, reporting the statistics “was a nightmare and a very tedious process.”

Ms. Lanier said her agency resumed its reports in 2009. In 2012, the agency turned over the detailed homicide records, she said, but the data had an error in it and was rejected by the FBI. She referred questions about why the department stopped reporting homicides in 1998 to former Chief Charles H. Ramsey, now head of the Philadelphia Police Department. Mr. Ramsey declined to comment.

In recent years, police departments have tried to rely more on statistics to develop better tactics. “You want to get the data right,” said Mike McCabe, the undersheriff of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office in Michigan. It is “really important in terms of how you deploy your resources.”

A total of 100 agencies provided the Journal with numbers of people killed by police each year from 2007 through 2012; five more provided statistics for some years. Several, including the police departments in New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Austin, Texas, post detailed use-of-force reports online.

Five of the 110 agencies the Journal contacted, including the Michigan State Police, didn’t provide internal figures. A spokeswoman for the Michigan State Police said the agency had records of police shootings, but “not in tally form.”

Big increases in the numbers of officer-involved killings can be a red flag about problems inside a police department, said Mike White, a criminologist at Arizona State University. “Sometimes that can be tied to poor leadership and problems with accountability,” he said.

The FBI has almost no records of police shootings from departments in three of the most populous states in the country—Florida, New York and Illinois.

In Florida, available reports from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement don’t conform to FBI requirements and haven’t been included in the national tally since 1996. A spokeswoman for the state agency said in an email that Florida was “unable” to meet the FBI’s reporting requirements because its tracking software was outdated.

New York revamped its reporting system in 2002 and 2006, but isn’t able to track information about justifiable police homicides, said a spokeswoman for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. She said the agency was “looking to modify our technology so we can reflect these numbers.”

In 1987, a commission created by then-Governor Mario Cuomo to investigate abuse of force by police found that New York’s reports to the FBI were “inadequate and incomplete,” and urged reforms to “hold government accountable for the use of force.” The spokeswoman for the state criminal-justice agency said it isn’t clear what the agency did in response back then.

Illinois only began reporting crime statistics to the FBI in 2010 and hasn’t phased in the detailed homicide reports. “We cannot begin adding additional pieces because we are newcomers to the federal program,” said Terri Hickman, director of the Illinois State Police’s crime-reporting program. Two agencies in Illinois deliver data to the FBI: Chicago and Rockford.

In Washington, D.C., councilman Tommy Wells held two hearings this fall on police oversight. He said he was surprised that the department hadn’t reported details of police killings to the FBI. “That should not be a challenge,” he said.

More than two years after the knife-carrying Mr. Payton was shot and killed by D.C. police, his mother, who witnessed the killing, said she is still looking for answers. Helena Payton, 59, said her son had many interactions with local police because of what she said was his mental illness. “All the cops in the Seventh District knew him, just about,” she said.

The officers who arrived that Friday afternoon in August, in response to a call from Mr. Payton’s girlfriend, had never dealt with her son, she said. According to Ms. Payton, her son walked outside holding a small utility knife. As he approached the officers, they fired dozens of bullets at him, she said. He died soon after.

The U.S. attorney’s office is reviewing the incident, as is customary in all police shootings in Washington. A spokesman for the office declined to comment on the status of the case. The Washington police department, citing the continuing investigation, declined to provide the officers’ names, a narrative of what happened, or basic information usually included in the reports to the FBI, such as the number of officers involved in the shooting.

The officers involved are back on duty, according to D.C. authorities, but the case isn’t closed.

How One Woman Could Hit The Reset Button In The Case Against Darren Wilson
BY JUDD LEGUM POSTED ON DECEMBER 2, 2014 AT 10:45 AM UPDATED: DECEMBER 2, 2014 AT 4:58 PM

For a week, the airwaves have been filled with news of the decision by the Ferguson grand jury not to indict Darren Wilson. Prosecutor Bob McCulloch gave a dramatic press conference. Wilson hit the interview circuit. Protesters filled the streets of West Florissant Avenue.
But legally speaking, nothing has happened. We are in exactly the same legal position as before the prosecutors made their (extremely unusual) presentation to the grand jury.
If McCulloch wanted to, he could present evidence in the case to a new grand jury and seek an indictment of Wilson. Although a constitutional protection known as “double jeopardy” says you can’t be tried for the same crime twice, the provision has not yet been triggered since Wilson was never even charged.
Of course, McCulloch would never pursue new charges because — as he made clear in his press conference — he vehemently believes Wilson is innocent. It is McCulloch’s vocal allegiance to the defendant that has caused many legal experts to question the process.
So in order for the evidence to be presented to a new grand jury, a new prosecutor would have to be appointed. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has the power to appoint a special prosecutor for the case. But Nixon, through a spokesman, said he would not appoint one. Most people have treated this as the end of the story.
It’s not.
There is a provision of Missouri Law — MO Rev Stat § 56.110 — that empowers “the court having criminal jurisdiction” to “appoint some other attorney to prosecute” if the prosecuting attorney “be interested.” (The term “be interested” is an awkward legal way to refer to conflict-of-interest or bias. The statute dates from the turn of the 20th century.)
The court with jurisdiction over Darren Wilson’s case is the 21st Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri. That means the power to appoint a special prosecutor is held by Maura McShane, the Presiding Judge of the 21st Circuit.
Missouri courts, at times, have interpreted their power to appoint a special prosecutor broadly, to include not only blatant conflicts — like the prosecutor being related to the defendant — but also subtler conflicts that reveal themselves through the prosecutor’s conduct in the case.
In the 1996 case of State v. Copeland, a Missouri court replaced the prosecutor because the judge “sensed that [the prosecutor’s] sympathies for [the defendant] may have prevented him from being an effective advocate for the state.” The judge “found the adversarial process to have broken down in that [the prosecutor] appeared to be advocating the defendant’s position.”
The criticism of the prosecutor in Copeland largely mirrors the criticism of McCulloch and his team in Wilson’s case. Ben Trachtenberg, a professor at the University of Missouri School of law, told ThinkProgress last week that McCulloch’s statement after the grand jury decision “read like a closing argument for the defense.” Marjorie Cohn, a professor of criminal law and procedure at Thomas Jefferson School of Law agreed, saying “It was clear the prosecutor was partisan in this case, and not partisan in the way prosecutors usually are, which is to get people indicted.” Another expert, Susan McGraugh, an associate professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law, also criticized McCulloch’s conduct. “His duty is not to be a defense attorney,” McGraugh said.
In an interview with ThinkProgress, Washington University law professor Mae Quinn said she believed an appointment of a special prosecutor by Judge McShane would still be possible under the law. Quinn said, “this case was treated very very differently from every other case before the grand jury in St. Louis County.”
Indeed, Bob McCulloch admitted as much, telling the grand jury at the start of the proceeding that the case would be “different from a lot of the other cases you’ve heard, that you’ve heard during your term.” A grand jury returns an indictment in the overwhelming majority of cases.
Quinn also noted that the prosecutors vouched for the police to the grand jury, linking the credibility of their office to the credibility of the police. McCulloch introduced assistant prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh, who was one of the main attorneys presenting evidence to the grand jury, as someone who has been “working with the police… on this since the very beginning.”
Alizadeh told jurors, just before Wilson testified, that the “policies of the police department” don’t “have anything to do with your decision” because a separate federal investigation would look into those issues. She also “instructed grand jurors on how to decide the case based on a statute that was invalidated by the U.S. Supreme Court two decades ago.” The statute “said that officers can use any force they deem necessary to achieve the arrest of a fleeing suspect.” It was invalidated as unconstitutional in 1985.
Alizadeh and another assistant prosecutor were also criticized for their gentle handling of Wilson and aggressive examination of any witness that was adverse to his defense.
Quinn told ThinkProgress that it appears Judge McShane, based on the authority granted to her under the statute, could appoint a new prosecutor at any time. (The legal term for this kind of decision, which doesn’t come at the prompting of any party, is sua sponte.)
Another approach would be for members of the community, perhaps Brown’s family, to claim standing in the case and file a motion pursuant to the statute asking Judge McShane to appoint a special prosecutor. Absent a formal motion, members of the community could also contact the court and request Judge McShane to appoint a special prosecutor to the case.
A special prosecutor could take a fresh look at all the evidence to seek an indictment from a new grand jury, charge Wilson directly or decline any prosecution.
Quinn said she could imagine “the justice system deciding upon a second look, particularly given the stakes here, just to be on the safe side.”

[Luther Blissett]

^Really? The media made it a race issue? Guess all those black folks got it wrong again. They must not know anything about their lives.

Aye Caramba.

Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-ferguson-race-data

http://www.propublica.org/article/deadly-force-in-black-and-white

Learn to read you condescending bitch.

The grand jury was definitely motivated by race. He was protected for being a white cop.

[seemslikeadream]

it wasn't the grand jury that was motivated by race...it was the prosecutor Bob McCulloch and his racist ass ... a black man killed my daddy ...instructions...acting like Wilson's defense attorney rather than a prosecutor

[Luther Blissett]

My intuition tells me that the jury was divided upon racial lines. I could always be wrong.

[seemslikeadream]

I am sure of that also but they had to follow a racist McCulloch's prosecutor defense attorney instructions. If he had done his job correctly I am sure the out come would have been different

[Wombaticus Rex]

Learn to read you condescending bitch.

Thank you for a perfectly formulated example of How To Get Banned in 2014.

[Iamwhomiam]

I'm surprised by BOOGIE's reaction. Not a good way to open dialogue to better understanding if one feels they've been misunderstood.

But Boogie, the initial militarized police response has brought about dramatic change in the minds of everyday Americans about the military appearance and approach used in community policing. Many communities now know about the direct transfer of weaponry to police agencies without governmental oversight and have taken action to disallow this practice.

The question of whether our police departments need to be militarized at all has been put front and center. Some are questioning their need to be armed at all; that merely arming civilian police instigates greater abuses and reactions, rather than keep the peace.

To argue race is becoming the issue rather than police abuse is foolish, just as was saying "Just because the cop was white and the victim black it isn't necessarily a racial issue."

We are talking about Missouri, aren't we? Black victim of acknowledged police abuse once again exercised by a white police officer, and it doesn't have to be about race? Of course it is. We live in a racist society. And of course, it is also yet another example of such police abuse against the population most frequently exposed to such military tactics by civilian police.

As Willow so kindly pointed out, whites rarely suffer from the most extreme form of police abuse, so how can it not be a racial issue when it's nearly always a racist issue?

The media painting this as a race issue does nothing but make the racists feel that the shooting was justified because "blacks are violent out of control etc" and sets the narrative as a black vs white issue which is bullshit divisive nonsense that allows the real issue (police abuse of power) to be ignored yet again

Unfortunately, racists feel all murders of minorities are justifiable, no matter who does the killing. There's not anything much deeper to their philosophy.

But it is nice to see a white man outraged about a black man being killed by a white policeman for even the wrong reasons. I'd bet they're glad you're finally joining their cause to fight police abuse.