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Post by WaTcHeR on Mar 22, 2006 18:03:48 GMT -5
03/21/2006 - Police brutality has reached epidemic proportions in communities of color across the nation. Police terror from Benton Harbor, Mich., to Boston to Cincinnati to Houston to Los Angeles to Milwaukee to New York City is institutionalized within this capitalist society especially in relation to oppressed communities and youth, including lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth. A March 2 article—“Hub youths say police harassment is constant”—in the African American weekly The Boston Banner describes the wholesale occupation and terror of oppressed communities in Boston. Numerous Black, Latin@ and Cape Verdean youth, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, described semi-apartheid conditions. These included police wantonly stopping and frisking, racist verbal and physical threats, coercion and beatings, random questioning and worse before, during and after school and work hours. “I basically get stopped every day,” said one youth of color to the Banner. “They ask you questions: ‘What’s your name? What’s your address? What school do you go to?’ They search you. They know us all. But they do it all the time. And they always ask us the same questions.” Other youths reported to WW that in the evening and late-night hours nothing less than police-state occupations take place where local, state, and federal agents invade oppressed communities under the guise of fighting “the war on drugs, gangs and violence,” when their real role is to terrorize and subjugate mostly working and poor people of color. If arrested, these youths and others’ names are placed into a Massachusetts state database called “criminal offender record information” or CORI, where an arrest, even if later dropped, is accessible by employers, schools, government agencies, newspapers and more. Attemp ting to expunge a so-called “record” can take years and thousands of dollars in legal fees, reports the Banner. Bishop Filipe Teixeira is a well-known anti-police-brutality activist in the Greater Boston area and member of the Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Coalition (BRPHRDC). He supports those like 18-year-old Devone Jacques, a Haitian man brutally beaten on Feb. 24 by the Boston Municipal Police in front of his home in Dor chester, a borough of Boston. Teixeira, along with over a dozen witnesses including Jacques’ mother, witnessed 10 to 12 police officers kicking Jacques on the ground as he was cuffed at his wrists and ankles. The police then picked him up and threw him into a police van from which Jacques slid out and banged his head on the street. Upon throwing him back in the van, police Maced him. Jacques was slowly transported to the hospital, placed in jail for three days and released on bail after being charged with assault and battery on a police officer. Despite police harassment against supporters like Teixeira, who has been issued minor municipal citations such as parking tickets after speaking out, a network is developing to support Jacques and all youth in the city terrorized by the police and other state agents. www.workers.org/2006/us/boston-0316/
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Post by WaTcHeR on Mar 23, 2006 13:01:44 GMT -5
03/23/2006 - Ida Brown, spokeswoman for the San Antonio Observer, freely admits the newspaper's current cover is audacious. "Yes, it's extremely bold," said Brown of the doctored photograph that features a San Antonio police officer holding a handgun and wearing the white hood of the Ku Klux Klan. The newspaper superimposed the hood and firearm onto the original photograph. The Observer, circulated predominantly among African Americans on the East Side, intended the image to provoke discussion on the subject of racism within the Police Department. Police are calling the depiction false, and one said the newspaper's method of communication crossed a line. "(The editors) chose to go beyond their First Amendment rights and create a situation where none existed," wrote Assistant Chief Tyrone Powers in an official statement. Police spokesman Joe Rios on Saturday could not clarify Powers' contention that the newspaper abused its freedom of expression or say whether the department is considering legal action. Powers was not available for comment Saturday. But Rios maintained the photograph defamed the character of the officer in the photograph. "You can clearly read his badge number," Rios said. "I can tell you that the officer who was depicted in that picture is very upset." But Brown disputed that the officer's badge number could be discerned on the cover and said the image was not intended as a personal attack. "Primarily, the picture shows that there are racist police officers on the force, and they do target minorities who are innocent," Brown said. The photograph invites readers to a letter to the editor on the newspaper's second page. It's written by local civil rights attorney James Myart. In it, Myart berates the Police Department for "unjustified shootings, excessive force, unprovoked beatings, racial profiling, false police reports, and just plain meddling and rudeness by SAPD officers." Responded one officer who patrols the East Side, "We don't like it because it's not going on." The officer, who is black, asked that his name not be used. "We're on the East Side of town, where it's predominantly Hispanic and black," he said, rejecting the accusation that he and his fellow officers target minorities. "We're here to support. We're not here to hurt," he said.
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Post by KC on Mar 24, 2006 21:05:07 GMT -5
Report: American police abuse gays
03/24/2006 - A new report by human rights group Amnesty International accuses United States law enforcement agencies of widespread homophobia and violence against LGBT people. The report, titled "Stonewalled—Still Demanding Respect," was published on Thursday and is based on interviews conducted between 2003 and 2005. Amnesty says those interviews revealed not only a pattern of discrimination by the very agencies that should protect gay people, but they also uncovered beatings, sexual violence, harassment, and humiliation at the hands of law enforcement officers. Amnesty says those assaults occurred against sexual minorities in detention centers, prisons, at home, and on the street. The report highlights a 2004 incident in which a woman from Athens, Ga., says she was forced into her apartment at gunpoint by a former county deputy and raped because she is a lesbian. She said the officer vowed to "teach her a lesson." A Native American transgender woman told Amnesty that in 2003 she was stopped in Los Angeles by two police officers as she was walking late at night. She said the officers handcuffed her and drove her in a police car to an alley, where she was beaten, verbally abused, and raped. After the ordeal, she says she was thrown to the ground and told "that's what you deserve." Amnesty says many such victims do not report the crimes because they fear a hostile or abusive response from the police. The group calls on federal and state authorities to fully enforce antidiscrimination laws and to investigate all allegations of sexual, physical, and verbal abuse against gay people by their officials.
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