PRIMARY SOURCE

By MICHAEL BELL | August 15, 2014
POLITICO

Ten years later, we in Wisconsin passed the nation’s first law calling for outside reviews.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]fter police in Kenosha, Wis., shot my 21-year-old son to death outside his house ten years ago — and then immediately cleared themselves of all wrongdoing — an African-American man approached me and said: “If they can shoot a white boy like a dog, imagine what we’ve been going through.”

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I could imagine it all too easily, just as the rest of the country has been seeing it all too clearly in the terrible images coming from Ferguson, Mo., in the aftermath of the killing of Michael Brown. On Friday, after a week of angry protests, the police in Ferguson finally identified the officer implicated in Brown’s shooting, although the circumstances still remain unclear.

I have known the name of the policeman who killed my son, Michael, for ten years. And he is still working on the force in Kenosha.

Yes, there is good reason to think that many of these unjustifiable homicides by police across the country are racially motivated. But there is a lot more than that going on here. Our country is simply not paying enough attention to the terrible lack of accountability of police departments and the way it affects all of us—regardless of race or ethnicity. Because if a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy — that was my son, Michael — can be shot in the head under a street light with his hands cuffed behind his back, in front of five eyewitnesses (including his mother and sister), and his father was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who flew in three wars for his country — that’s me — and I still couldn’t get anything done about it, then Joe the plumber and Javier the roofer aren’t going to be able to do anything about it either.

***

I got the phone call at 2 a.m. on Nov. 9, 2004. It was my oldest daughter. She said you need to come to the hospital right away, Michael’s been shot by the police. My first gut reaction was, “Michael doesn’t do anything serious enough to get shot by a police officer.” I thought he’d gotten shot in the leg or whatever. When I arrived, I saw the district attorney huddled with about five police officers. The last time I saw my son alive he was on a gurney, with his head wrapped in a big towel and blood coming out of it. I learned that an officer had put his gun up directly to Michael’s right temple and misfired, then did it again, and shot him.

From the beginning I cautioned patience, though Michael’s mother and sister were in an uproar. They had watched him get shot. But as an Air Force officer and pilot I knew the way safety investigations are conducted, and I was thinking that this was going to be conducted this way. Yet within 48 hours I got the message: The police had cleared themselves of all wrongdoing. In 48 hours! They hadn’t even taken statements from several eyewitnesses. Crime lab reports showed that my son’s DNA or fingerprints were not on any gun or holster, even though one of the police officers involved in Michael’s shooting had claimed that Michael had grabbed his gun.

The officer who killed my son, Albert Gonzalez, is not only still on the force ten years later, he is also a licensed concealed-gun instructor across the state line in Illinois—and was identified by the Chicago Tribune in an Aug. 7 investigative story as one of “multiple instructors [who] are police officers with documented histories of making questionable decisions about when to use force.”

From the beginning I allowed the investigation to proceed and didn’t know it was a sham until many of the facts were discovered. But before long I realized a cover-up was under way. I hadn’t understood at first how closely related the DA and the police were—during his election campaign for judge, the DA had been endorsed in writing by every police agency in the county. Now he was investigating them. It was a clear conflict of interest.

The police claimed that one officer screamed that Michael grabbed his gun after they stopped him, for reasons that remain unclear though he was slightly intoxicated, and then Gonzalez shot him, sticking the gun so close against his temple that he left a muzzle imprint. Michael wasn’t even driving his own car. He’d been out with a designated driver, but the designated driver drank and was younger, and so my son made the decision to drive.

Wanting to uncover the truth, our family hired a private investigator who ended up teaming up with a retired police detective to launch their own investigation. They discovered that the officer who thought his gun was being grabbed in fact had caught it on a broken car mirror. The emergency medical technicians who arrived later found the officers fighting with each other over what happened. We filed an 1,100-page report detailing Michael’s killing with the FBI and US Attorney.

It took six years to get our wrongful death lawsuit settled, and my family received $1.75 million. But I wasn’t satisfied by a long shot. I used my entire portion of that money and much more of my own to continue a campaign for more police accountability. I wanted to change things for everyone else, so no one else would ever have to go through what I did. We did our research: In 129 years since police and fire commissions were created in the state of Wisconsin, we could not find a single ruling by a police department, an inquest or a police commission that a shooting was unjustified. There was one shooting we found, in 2005, that was ruled justified by the department and an inquest, but additional evidence provided by citizens caused the DA to charge the officer. The city of Milwaukee settled with a confidentiality agreement and the facts of that sealed. The officer involved committed suicide.

[dropcap]I’m not anti-cop[/dropcap]. And I am finding that many police want change as well: The good officers in the state of Wisconsin supported our bill from the inside, and it was endorsed by five police unions. But I also think the days of Andy Griffith and the Mayberry peacekeeper are over. As we can see in the streets of Ferguson, today’s police are also much more heavily equipped, armed and armored— more militarized. They are moving to more paramilitary-type operations as well, and all those shifts call for more transparency and more rules of restraint. And yet they are even less accountable in some ways than the U.S. military in which I served. Our citizens need protection from undue force, here in our own country, and now.

Michael Bell is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force.

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Ferguson Reexamined —

Paul Craig Roberts

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ew, if any, of the correct questions were asked in the grand jury hearing to decide whether policeman Darren Wilson would be indicted for killing Michael Brown.

The most important unexamined question is whether police are trained to use force immediately as a first resort before they assess a situation or determine if they are at the correct address. Are the police trained that the lives of police officers are so much more valuable than the lives of possible suspects, or a houseful of people into whose residence a heavily armed SWAT team enters, that police officers must not accept the risk of judicious behavior when encountering citizens? If this is the case as all evidence indicates that it is, then the police when they gratuitously murder members of the public are merely doing what they have been trained to do. As police are trained to use violence as a first resort, the police cannot be held accountable when they do.

There are a large number of videos available online that show that the first thing that police do when they arrive is to use force.

No sooner is Michael Brown in the grave than Cleveland cops kill a 12-year old boy who has a toy gun that shoots plastic pellets. The child is threatening no one–indeed there is no one else present. The boy seems to be playing a fantasy game in his head. A busy body calls the police. The police arrive and instantly shoot the kid down.

Here is a selection of videos and reports. Some of the videos are compressed to save the viewer time. They range from 59 seconds to the full 7:51 minute video, which shows the kid is just walking up and down the sidewalk. All the action comes at the end. The police arrive and instantly open fire, making no effort whatsoever to assess the situation.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-cleveland-cop-shoot-12-year-old-tamir-rice-n256656

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2850234/Video-released-showing-police-shooting-Tamir-Rice-12-carrying-BB-gun.html

http://www.wkyc.com/story/news/local/cleveland/2014/11/26/tamir-rice-shooting-video-released/19530745/

http://nypost.com/2014/11/27/cops-release-video-of-officer-fatally-shooting-12-year-old/

The US justice system is no longer concerned with justice, but with the careers of prosecutors, punishing the powerless, and protecting the powerful.

Just a few days before Michael Brown is killed, Ohio police murdered John Crawford inside a Walmart store. What had Crawford done? He had picked up a BB rifle from a Walmart shelf and was on the phone with the mother of his two children, perhaps checking with her whether he could purchase it for the kids. A busy body named Ronald Ritchie felt threatened and called the police. The police rush in and shoot Crawford. The police claim that they ordered Crawford to drop the rifle, but the video shows the police shooting Crawford on sight. The busy body Ritchie actually caused two deaths, as the incident of Crawford’s murder caused Angela Williams to die from a heart attack as she fled the store in response to the police gunfire. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/25/ohio-wal-mart-surveillance-video-shows-police-shooting-and-killing-john-crawford-iii/

Yes, you guessed it. The grand jury decided the police were justified.

Here is another video that demonstrates that policemen shoot instantly without cause. http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/dashcam-shows-cops-shooting-an-unarmed-man-333655619609 This is a rare case in which the policeman was held accountable, most likely because the video prevented authorities from fabricating the usual story of police justification.

In this video, police shoot down an unarmed black man in the street. After shooting Kajieme Powell ten times, the cops hold guns on the dead body while they handcuff a dead man. Like an almost endless number of other such videos, this one shows that either psychopaths are recruited for the police force, or police training turns cops into psychopaths. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_68bmTlGtQ8

These two reports examine Officer Darren Wilson’s story of why he shot Michael Brown and conclude that Wilson’s story doesn’t make sense. http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7281165/darren-wilsons-story-side and http://www.vox.com/2014/11/25/7287443/dorian-johnson-story Most likely, Michael Brown was just another victim of the gratuitous violence that police are trained to use. Darren Wilson’s use of deadly force was in keeping with his training.

The problem with the grand jury and prosecutor in Ferguson and everywhere else is that the real problem–the training of police to use deadly force as a first resort–was not identified as the cause of Michael Brown’s death.

The Ferguson grand jury’s decision is not an exoneration of Wilson’s use of deadly force. Anyone familiar with the American criminal justice (sic) system knows that any prosecutor can get or prevent an indictment from a grand jury. Prosecutors are allowed to determine what evidence is presented. Prosecutors are permitted to bribe witnesses with money or dropped charges, and they can coerce false witness testimony by threatening a witness with charges. Seldom does an indictment or refusal to indict turn on the true facts.

The US justice system is no longer concerned with justice, but with the careers of prosecutors, punishing the powerless, and protecting the powerful. As justice has largely departed the justice system, it is hardly surprising that police lack any concept of justice.

Note: Here is a video of the goon thugs in Albuquerque murdering a white man who was doing nothing but carrying some break pads. Notice how the handful of cops pretend the man who is shot to pieces is still dangerous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBuwceiQ5Ik

The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

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Carry a Badge and Gun? Carry a Body Camera.

OpEds

Joe Giambrone

The video camera idea is an idea whose time has come. Pictured is San Jose Police Department officer Michael Ceballos wearing a video/audio recording device during a press conference at SJPD headquarters on Dec. 18, 2009. (Dai Sugano/Mercury News)

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et a real evolutionary leap come out of this Ferguson fiasco. Police will be required to wear body cameras at all times when on duty. Their actions will be recorded and not fall into the black hole where only one side of a story remains, as dead men tell no tales.

Police are to be held to a higher standard than the rest of us for several reasons. It is their job to enforce laws, and they are given discretion as well as deadly weaponry to do so. Regular citizens have no such priviledge. Police are a special case where accountability, oversight, accuracy, and the public trust need to be maintained. Right now these are all at an all-time low.

Where cameras have been in use, “public complaints against officers plunged 88% compared with the previous 12 months, and officers’ use of force fell by 60%.”

A combination body camera radio microphone from Wolfcam is seen during a press conference at City Hall September 24, 2014 in Washington, DC. The Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department is embarking on a six- month pilot program where 250 body cameras will be used by officers. AFP PHOTO/Brendan SMIALOWSKI (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Paterson, Newark and Jersey City plan on equipping their forces with body cameras, and this is just the beginning. “The federal court in New York has ordered some police officers to carry cameras, while departments in Albuquerque, Fort Worth, Texas, and Oakland, California, have voluntarily started the practice.”

This is still a land of sovereign citizens with Constitutionally protected rights. As such we need to make sure that these rights are not systematicallly stripped away by law enforcement that operates above the law, beyond the law, outside the law. How much more difficult would it be for a dirty cop whose shifts are recorded? Think about it.

The citizens’ demand for police body cameras (along with patrol car cameras) should be universal, irrefutable, and irrepressible, implemented even in jurisdictions whose officials resist such regulations. Either by an act of Congress, or by referendum, this is a development that can no longer be denied.

In the UK, another state where police abuses are rapidly escalating, body video cameras are also being tested.

In a land where the police are turning into militarized organizations from out of 1984, or The Hunger Games, we are now at a crossroads. Either all that rhetoric about freedom, liberty, rights, law and order was meant to be taken seriously, or else we are to tolerate a fascistic system of double standards and unaccountable state power, including the wholesale murder in the streets of the poor and of minorities.

The White House has already responded to a petition demanding body cameras on police officers. Empty rhetoric so far, the usual bland say nothing, do nothing vapidity of politicians. This is going to take citizens to stand up and demand a just system of justice. It will take awareness, political pressure and local action across the land. The structures of police departments are largely local and respond to local pressure.

Even the ACLU has gotten on board the recording of on-duty police officers. While the unaccountable surveillance of the public remains a violation of the 4^th Amendment, the oversight of policing falls into a different category. ACLU policy analyst Jay Stanley said that, “all parties stand to benefit — the public is protected from police misconduct, and officers are protected from bogus complaints.” Interactions with police tend to be kept to a higher standard when there is a video record of everything said and done.

Google. These are not taken as seriously as an official record, from the officer’s own body camera. Yet they are all one would need to make a reasoned case that it is time to hold police to the standard of the law.

Society only works when the social contract is honored by all parties. The citizens of Ferguson are telling us this week that one party has broken this contract.

Joe Giambrone publishes Political Film Blog.

—

Joe Giambrone
The Political Film Blog
http://politicalfilm.wordpress.com/
polfilmblog@gmail.com

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The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost

Gilbert Mercier

NEWS JUNKIE POST
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[dropcap]P[/dropcap]olice violence in the United States should not surprise anyone. In Ferguson, Missouri, we have witnessed the use against US citizens of Iraq-tested war technologies. On August 17, 2014, a police force using armored vehicles and military tactics fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at peaceful protesters who had been demanding justice against Darren Wilson, a killer cop who took the life of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. Wilson discharged 12 shots. According to an autopsy, Michael Brown was shot six times: four times in the right arm and twice in the head. One of the head shots blasted his right eye, rattled through his head, then came out through his jaw to penetrate his collar bone; another penetrated his head from above, which could indicate an “execution style” for the killing attributed to Wilson.

A return to violent tactics rather than the community policing promised by the authorities to the people of Ferguson, and a decision by Governor Jay Nixon to call up the National Guard were very much part of an escalation.

For decades and all over the world, the US has worked to spread “freedom and democracy” via warfare. As long as this was being done in the towns of Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, ordinary Americans often applauded the endeavor, lured by the disinformation, but mostly they ignored the crimes being committed in their names, because these were not in their own backyard. As the streets of Ferguson look more and more like those of Fallujah, it is impossible to dismiss that the US’ best exports, warfare and civilian repression, have come home to roost. When the war machine runs out of places to occupy abroad, it mutates into an occupying force at home, starting in Black or Latino neighborhoods, and it manifests itself as police violence, curfews and a state of emergency. This is what happens when the military-industrial complex becomes the cornerstone of an economy.

The US economy is a war economy. Together with fostering warfare aboard, a climate of insecurity at home has become a necessary business model for the growth of the war and security business. Between 2001 and 2014, US military spending more than doubled to exceed the staggering level of $700 billion dollars a year. This represents about 20 percent of the overall federal budget despite not including retirement and medical care for veterans, which represent an additional 3.5 percent of the budget. Furthermore, this 23.5 percent of the budget per year does not include emergency and supplemental bills for the specific wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor does it include moneys for the vast domestic “security” apparatus that comprises the Department of Homeland Security, FBI counter-terrorism or NSA intelligence gathering.

To give a sense of the gargantuan size represented by a more than $700 billion expenditure on defense per year, consider the fact that the US spends more on its military per year than on benefits for federal retirees, transportation infrastructure, education, and scientific research combined. Or if you prefer, consider the fact that the US spends more on its military budget per year than the military expenditures of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Australia and Canada combined.

Police and military have become almost impossible to tell apart due to two little-known Federal programs: the Department of Defense Excess Property Program (DOD 1033) and the 1122 Federal Program. The DOD 1033 Program lets the DOD provide surplus equipment to state and local police under the pretext of “counter-narcotic, counter-terrorism operations and to enhance public safety.” The 1122 expansion was voted in 2009 under the Duncan Hunter National Authorization Act. According to the US General Service Administration, the 1122 Program “offers Americans peace of minds.” The 1122 Program enabled state and local police to become militarized by getting gear from the Pentagon, which is allowed to give local US forces billions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons of war, including high-caliber automatic weapons, armored vehicles, armed drones, and stun grenades. The 1122 Catalog for “all your local war needs” is extensive. The state of Missouri benefits from both the DOD 1033 and the 1122 Federal Programs.

Police officers are supposed to enforce the public safety against crimes. Community policing should never include high levels of militarization, systematic intimidation and denial of constitutional rights. Police officers were never supposed to be used to crack down on dissent and protest. Some people still call them “peace officers,” although this is a role they no longer fulfill. It is not surprising that protests and riots have erupted in Ferguson. What is surprising is that they have not occurred simultaneously in more towns on a much larger scale.

Many times in the past few years, unacceptable police brutality went largely unchallenged. In Florida, for example, an unarmed 22-year-old Haitian called Raymond Herisse was riddled with 116 bullets by killer cops in Spring 2011. This followed the killings of six other youths in Florida by police in 10 months, without so much as an investigation. In New York, the death of Jamaican 18-year-old Ramarley Graham at the hands of a policeman in Summer 2012 was one of three police killings of black youths in one week. The reaction in Ferguson was the first time since the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992 when people, driven by a need for justice, took their anger to the streets. Popular anger is justified when the clear and present danger to freedom is the introduction of a militarized force into our vanishing democracies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gilbert Mercier is the Editor in Chief of News Junkie Post and one of its co-founders. Mercier is a French journalist, photojournalist and filmmaker — writer/concept writer, director, producer and art director — based in the United States since 1983. In the early 1980′s Mercier hosted and produced “Performance”, a radio show in France.

Mercier’s coverage of New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina received international praise. Over the years, he has been a guest as an analyst on television and radio programs for RT (Russia Today), BBC World News, Progressive Radio Network, Al Hurra TV and Radio Islam. Mercier’s articles have been republished by Alternet, Truthout, CounterPunch, Z Communications, Signs of the Times, Popular Resistance, and Global Research Canada and quoted by news outlets including The Atlantic and MSNBC.

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Behind the Video of Eric Garner’s Deadly Confrontation With New York Police

What I Did After Police Killed My Son

Ferguson Reexamined —

Carry a Badge and Gun? Carry a Body Camera.

The US War Culture Has Come Home to Roost