Showing posts with label Para-Military Style Policing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Para-Military Style Policing. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Looks like there may be no indictment

October 29, 2014 Darren Wilson , Ferguson 0 Comments
Police In Ferguson Stock Up On Riot Gear Ahead Of Grand Jury Decision

Photo via Flickr
Ryan J. Reilly, Oct. 28, 2014, Huffington Post

The St. Louis County Police Department has stocked up on tear gas, less-lethal ammunition and plastic handcuffs in anticipation of massive protests in the suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, if a grand jury doesn't indict the police officer who killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. The jury is expected to reach its decision sometime in November.

Many protesters in Ferguson do not believe that Officer Darren Wilson will be indicted and contend that recent grand jury leaks are meant to prepare the public for that decision.

“It’s going to be a war because they’re not going to indict him,” one protester told The Huffington Post in October.

 Read more: www.huffingtonpost.com

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Friday, September 12, 2014

Think blacks hate cops?

September 12, 2014 Kristen West Savali , Para-Military Style Policing 0 Comments
Poll: Blacks, Like Whites, Support 'Aggressive' Policing

By Kristen West Savali, Sept. 2, 2014, Theroot.com

Despite the looming specter of police brutality, which casts shadows over street corners, neighborhoods and homes across black America, 56 percent of black voters in New York City support “broken windows” policing tactics, compared with 61 percent of the city’s white voters, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

The controversial policing style frames community disorder and signs of neglect—such as broken windows, littering and loitering—as indicators of encroaching crime that will lead to more dangerous communities and must be addressed with the full force of the law.

In theory, broken-windows policing, and its variants stop-and-frisk, zero-tolerance and quality-of-life policing, are tactics used by officers who are hyperinvested in keeping communities safe, clean and crime-free. In practice, however, they provide opportunities for racial profiling and resulting antagonistic and abusive encounters between law enforcement and people of color.

This has been evidenced recently by the extrajudicial killing of 43-year-old Staten Island man Eric Garner, a father of six who died after being placed in an illegal choke hold by New York City police Officer Daniel Pantaleo. Garner’s crime? Allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. He can be heard in the heart-wrenching minutes before his death telling officers that their continued harassment of him “ends today.” Moments later, the asthmatic man painfully wheezes his last words: “I can’t breathe.”

Read the full story:  www.theroot.com

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Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Oops!

September 02, 2014 Congressional Black Caucus , Para-Military Style Policing 0 Comments
If Democrats Seek to "Rally Blacks" Against Police Militarization, They Might Start with the Congressional Black Caucus

By Nick Gillespie, Sept. 1, 2014, Reason.com

The New York Times reports that, "At Risk in Senate, Democrats Seek to Rally Blacks." Specifically, the Times says

Democrats are trying to mobilize African-Americans outraged by the shooting in Ferguson, Mo., to help them retain control of at least one chamber of Congress for President Obama’s final two years in office....

“Ferguson has made it crystal clear to the African-American community and others that we’ve got to go to the polls,” said Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia and a civil-rights leader. “You participate and vote, and you can have some control over what happens to your child and your country.”

Lewis might want to start with his colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, many of whom were blase about police militarization as recently as June. As Ed Krayewski has noted, in June, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) sponsored an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4355) that would have prevented federal giveaways of military equipment to local police departments around the country. "My amendment," explained Grayson, "would prohibit the Department of Defense from gifting excess equipment, such as aircraft—including drones—armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, and bombs to local police departments. Those weapons have no place in our streets, regardless of who may be deploying them."

Read the full story:  www.reason.com

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Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Not exactly Mayberry

August 26, 2014 Charleston Johnson , Crime Statistics 0 Comments
Ferguson: A History Of A Small Suburb With Big Violence Problems

Source:  Wiki commons / Gotnews.com
By Charleston Johnson, Aug. 21, 2014, Gotnews.com

A debate about police brutality and black urban crime was touched off by the tragic shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Left unexamined is the history of violence within Ferguson’s black community as well as violence against the police, notably a 2012 killing of a St. Louis County police employee by a Ferguson man as well as numerous assaults on police officers.

GotNews.com examined the past assaults against police officers in Ferguson, MO and the history of violence in the St. Louis suburb relying only on Missouri news reports. The investigation shows that police officers and their lives are often under threat in the small town and might explain the behavior of Officer Wilson.

Various media reports notwithstanding, Ferguson isn’t as peaceful as its small size might suggest. The St. Louis suburb is remarkably violent for its small population (21,203 according to the 2010 census) and size 6.201 square miles.

While it’s technically true that there hasn’t been a murder in Ferguson this year, there were murders of Ferguson residents elsewhere and there was one late last year.

Authorities filed murder charges on Terry L. Simmons, 30, for fatally shooting Quinton Luckett, 28, in the head in the 200 block of South Barat Avenue in Ferguson. Simmons’ rap sheet included convictions for domestic assault and robbery and a pending charge for dealing crack cocaine. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 14, 2013).

And while there were no murders in Ferguson, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

In May, a Ferguson man drew a Tec-9 with an extended magazine holding 30 rounds on St. Louis County officers. An officer shot and killed the Ferguson man.

Also this past May a Ferguson teen shot a 47-year-old man in back after the man refused to buy the teen and his friend beer at a convenience store. Carlos Blue, 17, left his victim for dead and robbed him. He was charged with first-degree assault, first-degree robbery, and two counts of armed criminal action. (“Teen shot man who wouldn’t buy him beer at Pine Lawn store, police say,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 14, 2014)

Many of the killings in Ferguson revolve around the drug trade. In August 2, 2013, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported one such typical instance:

James D. Kinnard, 24, of the 5900 block of Hamilton Terrace, was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in prison in a drug-related 2011 fatal shooting in Ferguson. Kinnard pleaded guilty July 11 to charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the killing of Santauri Dixon, 29, of Ferguson… Police said Kinnard fatally shot Dixon on Oct. 22, 2011, outside an apartment building in the 1300 block of Sharondale Circle. Authorities said Kinnard shot Dixon because he believed Dixon had robbed his drug boss. Kinnard must serve 85 percent of his sentence before he is eligible for parole. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 2, 2013).

Other times the killings are identified with no suspect listed. Three days after Kinnard was sentenced police identified “a man found slain in Kinloch as Clement Sonnier, 31, of the 9200 block of Ellison Drive in Ferguson. Sonnier was found shot to death on Gregory Drive near Mable Avenue…” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 5, 2013).

There were many crimes to choose from but these are the ones that are truly heinous.

  • In September 2012, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published the following story with this headline: “Two women are killed in apartment shooting 1-year-old daughter of one victim was found near her body, unharmed.”

 Read the full story:  www.gotnews.com

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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Armed citizens=less need for cops

August 19, 2014 Ferguson , Jamelle Bouie 0 Comments
The Militarization of the Police
By Jamelle Bouie, Aug. 13, 2014, Slate.com

he most striking photographs from Ferguson, Missouri, aren’t of Saturday’s demonstrations or Sunday night’s riots; they’re of the police. Image after image shows officers clad in Kevlar vests, helmets, and camouflage, armed with pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, and tear gas. In one photo, protesters stand toe-to-toe with baton-wielding riot police, in another, an unarmed man faces several cops, each with rifles at the ready.

What’s more, Ferguson police have used armored vehicles to show force and control crowds. In one photo, riot gear-clad officers are standing in front of a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, barking commands and launching tear gas into groups of demonstrators and journalists.

This would be one thing if Ferguson were in a war zone, or if protesters were violent—although, it’s hard to imagine a situation in which American police would need a mine-resistant vehicle. But an episode of looting aside, Ferguson police aren’t dealing with any particular danger. Nonetheless, they’re treating demonstrators—and Ferguson residents writ large—as a population to occupy, not citizens to protect.

This is part of a broader problem.

In his book The Rise of the Warrior Cop, journalist Radley Balko notes that since the 1960s, “law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M–16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield.”

This process ramped up with the “war on drugs” in the 1980s and 1990s, as the federal government supplied local and state police forces with military-grade weaponry to clamp down on drug trafficking and other crime. And it accelerated again after the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when the federal government had—and sent—billions in surplus military equipment to state and local governments. Since 2006, according to an analysis by the New York Times, police departments have acquired 435 armored vehicles, 533 planes, 93,763 machine guns, and 432 mine-resistant armored trucks. Overall, since Congress established its program to transfer military hardware, local and state police departments have received $4.3 billion worth of equipment. Accordingly, the value of military equipment used by these police agencies has increased from $1 million in 1990 to $324 million in 1995 (shortly after the program was established), to nearly $450 million in 2013.

Read the full story:  www.slate.com

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