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And if they truly cared about law enforcement crimes and search warrants... [1]
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Date: 2022-08-19
And they just keep getting louder.
x YouTube Video
They argue that this is all “Political Persecution” (as if Drumpf didn’t have classified documents in his basement) and they argue this has “never happened in America” before.
Except that it absolutely did — with COINTELPRO.
They performed illegal surveillance and planted evidence against the Black Power Movement, the Anti-War movement, the Civil Rights movement, the Feminist Movement, the American Indian movement the United Farm Workers and the New Left. They surveilled the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. then sent him a letter demanding that the commit suicide or else they would reveal that he had had an affair. They had a confidential informant who lied and then suppressed exculpatory evidence in the murder case prosecution of Black Panther Geromino Pratt which kept him in prison for over 27 years. They raided the home of members of the Black Panthers in Chicago and shot Fred Hampton to death in his bed.
So did we hear anyone in the right-wing ever complain about any of this? I didn’t. But then that was decades ago, and the FBI has been dramatically reformed since then. Hasn’t it?
What could happen to you now when cops try to arrest you or serve a search warrant?
Well, under the Trump administration, you could be arrested by a Secret Police Officer in an unmarked van and taken for interrogation to an undisclosed location.
As protests erupted in May following the police killing of George Floyd, Donald Trump vowed that his government would “step in and do what has to be done.” It was an ominous threat, and he made good on it a few days later: As demonstrators in D.C. demanded justice, Attorney General William Barr “[flooded] the zone” with heavily-armed federal law enforcement. The administration’s authoritarian crackdown was disturbing enough. But it was made all the more disconcerting by the fact that it was executed by unidentified police in riot gear. A similar scene has been playing out in Portland. Federal officials, reportedly wearing camouflage and in unmarked vehicles, have engaged in similar tactics since the president deployed them to the city this month. During a protest Saturday, 26-year-old demonstrator Donavan La Bella was shot in the head with what appeared to be an impact munition, leaving him severely injured. Federal officials, who have continued to fire munitions and tear gas at crowds, have also reportedly begun to seize protesters. On Wednesday, Mark Pettibone, a 29-year-old demonstrator, said he was grabbed off the street by men in military uniforms as he left a peaceful protest, taken by an unmarked gray van to a federal courthouse, and detained without being told why, being charged him with a crime, or being provided with a record of his arrest before he was let go. “I was terrified,” he told the Washington Post.
And, sure, that’s not Marxist or authoritarian at all.
And then there’s this. (Explicit content from body cam of Minneapolis police shooting of Amir Lock, a black man, during a no-knock raid.)
Did we hear any Republicans or anyone on Fox News complaining about a person with a God Given 2nd Amendment Right to defend himself being shot down by police? I didn’t hear it, did you?
Or perhaps this where Denver police shoot 7 people in a crowd without reason, and bodycam footage shows they shot people who had already disarmed themselves.
Or perhaps we should ask the NRA and the right-wing where they were after Philando Castille — a legal gun owner — was shot to death by Minneapolis Police just because he mentioned that he had a gun permit.
Were they talking about “Civil War” back then? Or were they talking about “Bad Apples?” Did they become enraged when that officer was acquitted? Nope. None of the above.
The probable worst search warrant case — even worse than Amir Locke — has been the case of the no-knock search warrant served on the home of Breonna Taylor which falsely claimed that her ex-boyfriend, who was wanted on drug charges, was still collecting his mail at that address — and then after her boyfriend defended her with his weapon (as the NRA says he should), she was shot to death in her pajamas by reckless officers who later conspired to cover the entire sordid event up.
Charging documents state that three of the officers, Jaynes, Meany and Goodlett, lied in order to obtain a warrant they used to search Taylor's apartment in an act that violated federal civil rights laws and led to Taylor's death, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a news conference. "We allege that the defendants knew their actions in falsifying the affidavit could create a dangerous situation, and we allege these unlawful acts resulted in Ms. Taylor's death," Garland said. Jaynes, a former Louisville Metro Police Department detective, Meany, a current LMPD sergeant, and Goodlett a current LMPD detective, also "took steps to cover up their unlawful conduct" and "conspired to mislead federal, state and local authorities who were investigating the incident," Garland said.
Now, lets recall that this federal case is actually second bite at this apple. Local prosecutors originally didn’t even ask their Grand Jury to consider charges against the officers over Taylor’s death. Instead, they charged office Hankison for recklessness for shooting into the wall of a neighboring apartment, but not for shooting and killing Taylor. Also, not that shockingly like the officer who killed Castille, a Jury found him not guilty of those charges.
What did Fox News say about Breonna Taylor? They brought on the Republican DA who didn’t charge the officers for killing her on to defend his decision and to attack BLM and Democrats.
As it turns out DA Daniel Cameron was wrong. Total wrong. He failed in this case, completely. Tucker attacked people who grew violent and protested in the streets over this — “there’s no room for violence.” Oh really? There isn’t in the Taylor case but apparently there room for “Civil War” when Mar-A-Lago gets a search warrant?
Again, Cameron didn't even ask the Grand Jury to consider charges related to Taylor. He never even brought the subject up.
After spending six months investigating the shooting in which Taylor was killed in her own home, he only recommended charges of wanton endangerment to just one of the three officers who fired a total of 32 shots into her apartment on March 13. That single charge was the only one jurors were allowed to consider — whether former officer Brett Hankison endangered neighbors when he shot through Taylor’s apartment, not whether any of the officers committed murder or even manslaughter in regards to Taylor. Cameron also didn’t immediately admit that this was the only charge he presented to jurors. And after a judge ordered Cameron to release the grand jury recordings earlier this month, some argued that he heavily relied on witnesses that supported the officers’ version of events. For example, Cameron’s team presented testimony from a witness who said he heard the officers knock on Taylor’s door that night, but did not present testimony from the dozen other witnesses who said police had not knocked, according to attorneys for Taylor’s family. All of this has left advocates casting doubt on Cameron’s process — and questioning the vast amount of latitude he’s been afforded.
If not for the intervention of the FBI and the DOJ — there wouldn’t be any prosecution here at all, just as the local prosecutor in the George Floyd case originally dropped it and let the officers go. It took the intervention of State Attorney General Keith Ellison to bring charges and convictions in that case.
What did Fox New say about that? Again, not that shockingly, they attacked Ellison and Chauvin’s prosecution claiming that is was “Political” and “Jury Intimidation.” They said that it was “Mob Justice.”
x x YouTube Video Seeing mobs trying to influence this trial should shock and horrify you. [...] But after 11 months of BLM, Americans just decided to pay the ransom. They told us American is on trial, not just Derek Chauvin. It’s not just one cop from Minneapolis on the stand, no, it’s all of us on the stand. Our history, our culture, our system. And we internalize that, and we went along with it, but we were foolish to go along with it. A wise country stands on it’s principle, it puts down mobs. It does not obey mobs. Mobs are never sated. It doesn’t matter what demands you follow, they will demand more.
Yes, they will demand more. And more. They will never be sated. Interesting that Tucker got that right, but too bad that he can’t see the mob that Trump and other Fox hosts have ginned up and now batter at the ramparts of our Democracy — and yet, they will demand more.
On a certain level they are entirely right to be afraid when they wonder “what can they do to you?” because until now — until the FBI executed a search warrant on Mar-A-Lago they didn’t really have anything to fear. The police are not a serious threat to rich white right-wing people.
For generations, starting with the slave patrols, the main purpose of the police has been to protect the rich, the privileged and the white people in our nation. Those people are their main constituency. Their job hasn’t been justice, it’s been the systematic suppression and oppression of black and brown people. It’s been to reduce the threat of rebellion and retaliation that they are believed to pose for the centuries of crimes that have been perpetrated against them. White guilt and paranoia causes continuing black punishment and suffering. Even though black and white people use and sell drugs at roughly the same rate —roughly 3-4 times more black people are stopped and search on suspicion of having guns and drugs, even when they actually find less guns and drugs on them.
Los Angeles police officers stop and search black and Latino drivers at significantly higher rates than white people, even though white residents are more likely to be carrying drugs and weapons, a new report shows. Traffic stop data from a recent 10-month period across LA revealed that black drivers and passengers were four times more likely to be searched by police than white people, and that Latinos were three times as likely to face searches, the Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday. In stops across the city, 24% of black drivers and passengers were searched, compared with 16% of Latinos and 5% of white people. White drivers were found with drugs or other contraband 20% of the time, a higher rate than other groups; the contraband rate was 17% for black people and 16% for Latinos.
The practice begs the obvious question: if they’re finding less guns and less drugs — why are they stopping, searching, arresting and killing them so often?
Unfortunately, the question answers itself. Because it’s not about what they’ve done — it’s about who they are. It’s because they’re black, brown and poor. Arresting and charging a poor kid means you won't have to explain to a high priced lawyer where you found “probable cause.” Targeting the right people, people who are already struggling to survive and are disenfranchised from the levers of power makes it all easy peasy.
And it gets worse after the arrest as the disparity between black and white grows to 5:1 on who gets charged, and then 7:1 on who actually goes to prison and does time. Our prisons are filled with black and brown faces — who did exactly the same crime as white people who remain free.
But what if that were to change? What if rich, white and right-wing people were actually stopped, searched and arrested in proportion for what they’ve actually done? Imagine if that were to happen? Imagine if they suddenly lost their magic veneer of innocence — their ultimate white privilege of being always beyond and above suspicion?
This is what truly scares them about the Mar-A-Lago raid.
“This could happen to you.”
This is why Rudy Giuliani suggest that they may want to “assassinate Trump.”
Like they assassinated George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Philando Castille. Amir Locke. And so many hundreds of others.
They’re afraid that what’s been happening to us for decades, just might possibly start happening to them.
And that possibility has them terrified. NOW, they want Justice. NOW, they want “equality” under the law. NOW, they want “fairness.”
NOW, just might be too late.
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