From a media release by Green News – DC:
GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org
For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-904-7614, [email protected]
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, [email protected]
The Green Party urges the establishment of independent citizens’ review boards to probe surges in police violence and prosecute abuses
• Report cited on the extrajudicial killing of Blacks once every 36 hours in the US
• Greens seek measures to prevent police violence against peaceful protesters outside upcoming Republican and Democratic conventions
WASHINGTON, DC — The Green Party called two recent reports on police violence evidence of systematic abuses of power by police departments, especially in their treatment of young black and brown men and of people who engage in public protest.
Green candidates and leaders said the reports are supported by numerous reports of incidents in which police used deadly force against people of color, immigrants, and nonviolent protesters.
“The police abuses taking place in many cities and states require independent investigation by citizens’ review boards, followed by prosecution,” said Don Cook, Green Party candidate for Congress in Texas’ 22nd District and Harris County Green Party liason with the National Black United Front, New Black Panthers, and others in the Black Justice Tuesday Coalition. “When such crimes go unpunished, police believe they have a license to commit further crimes. Unless these patterns of crime and impunity change, we can consider ourselves to be living in a police state. This is not law, security, or order. It’s the opposite of law, security, and order.”
The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has published a “Report on Black People Executed without Trial by Police, Security Guards and Self-Appointed Law Enforcers January 1 – June 30, 2012″ which documented the extrajudicial killing of a Black person once every 36 hours on average for the first half of 2012. The number includes “the killing of 13 year-old children, fathers taking care of their kids, women driving the wrong cars, as well as people with mental health and drug problems.” See:
http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/07_24_Report_all_rev_protected.pdf
http://mxgm.org/report-on-the-extrajudicial-killings-of-110-black-people/
Greens also cited recent shootings and violent reprisals by police against Latino residents in Anaheim, California, in the wake of the killing of Manuel Diaz by an officer, as well as out-of-control border patrols, humiliating stop-and-frisk policies that usually target young people of color (most famously in New York City, with Mayor Bloomberg’s support), police harassment and arrest of bystanders and citizens attempting to record police actions on cell phones and cameras, and the use of “Homeland Security” resources for civilian police work.
“What we need in our Latino communities is support for the people who live there — support for hard working families regardless of their immigration status. We don’t need taxpayer-funded violence which only serves to promote more violence. We need investment in our communities, not violations of the human rights of Latinos and African Americans,” said Isabel Espinal of the Green Party’s Latino Caucus.
See also “Stein, Honkala deplore shooting of unarmed citizens,” press release from Green presidential nominee Jill Stein and vice-presidential nominee Cheri Honkala, July 24, 2012.
Green Party leaders noted that President Obama has used the drug war as a job stimulus program, increasing funding for President Reagan’s Byrne program and reinstating President Clinton’s COPS program. These programs channel millions in federal funding to local police forces who wage the drug war locally by targeting communities of color, despite the fact that the majority of US drug users and dealers are white (See ‘The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness‘, book by Michelle Alexander.
“The latest surges in police abuses can’t be separated from developments in law enforcement and incarceration in recent years. The US has the world’s highest prison population, with mostly black, brown, and poor people locked up to feed a private prison industry that profits from filling up cells. The War on Drugs has destroyed families and communities by placing thousands of young people behind bars, very often on nonviolent offenses. Zero tolerance and mandatory sentencing have also expanded the Prison-Industrial Complex,” said Ken Wolski, Green Candidate for the US Senate from New Jersey.
“Stopping the failed and wasteful War on Drugs, ending the assaults on judicial discretion, and systematic remedies to end systematic police violence are taboo topics for Democratic and Republican politicians. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney will discuss them,” said Julia Willebrand, Green candidate for New York State Assembly in the 67th Assembly District (Upper Westside Manhattan).
Greens said that similar mindsets and policies in many police departments have placed Americans in danger for exercising their First Amendment rights to public protest, especially after police responses to the Occupy protests since Fall 2011. In many cases, police escaped punishment by hiding their names and shield numbers.
A report published by the Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law) and Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic (Fordham Law School) found “frequent alleged incidents of unnecessary and excessive police use of force against protesters, bystanders, journalists, and legal observers; constant obstructions of media freedoms, including arrests of journalists; unjustified and sometimes violent closure of public space, dispersal of peaceful assemblies, and corralling and trapping protesters en masse. Pervasive surveillance of peaceful political activity, arbitrary and selective rule enforcement, and restrictions on independent protest monitoring also raise serious concerns.” (“Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the US Response to Occupy Wall Street“).
“If violence occurs outside the Republican and Democratic conventions, it is reasonable to believe that the cause will be police, either by direct assault or provocation, used against peaceful protesters,” said Howard Switzer, Green candidate for the US House in Tennessee (District 7). “We seek guarantees against such tactics. The Green Party supports the right to such nonviolent protests and we anticipate that many Greens will join them. The federal government’s training, aid, and assistance for civilian police operations, especially under the Homeland Security banner, means that the White House shares the responsibility for police abuses and that the abuses we’re seeing should be considered an extension of larger security policy.”
See also:
“Green Party seeks abolition of Prison Nation and Police State abuses in the US”
Green Party press release, March 16, 2012
“Greens Call on Deal to End Torture in Georgia Prisons”
Georgia Green Party press release, June 25, 2012
“Langdon condemns RPD arrests of anti-capitalist protesters”
Drew Langdon for State Assembly (Green candidate in Rochester, NY),
July 22, 2012
“Accusations of Police Misconduct Documented in Lawyers’ Report on Occupy Protests” By Colin Moynihan, The New York Times, July 25, 2012
MORE INFORMATION
Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org 202-319-7191
• 2012 Green Party Presidential Nominating Convention, July 12-15 in Baltimore, Md. http://www.gpconvention2012.com
• Green candidate database and campaign information: http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Ballot Access Page http://www.gp.org/2012/ballot-access.html
• Video Page http://www.gp.org/video/index.php
• Green Papers http://www.greenpapers.net/
• Google+ http://www.gp.org/google
• Twitter http://twitter.com/gpus
• Livestream Channel http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus
• GP-TV Twitter page http://www.gp.org/twitter
• Facebook page http://www.gp.org/facebook
Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States http://gp.org/greenpages-blog
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Comments removed from this thread; see archive.org to find them.
I wish this was true.
“Roger Roots // Aug 8, 2012 at 11:51 am
People who call themselves liberals or progressives have been calling for ‘citizens review boards’ for years. Why don’t they call for police budgets to be scaled back?
In the long term, this is the only solution to the police state. Its budgets must be cut, capped or eliminated completely.”
Yes, taxes fund the police state and the war machine. If a person wants to really eliminate or at least roll back the police state and the war machine the only real way to do it is by eliminating or at least rolling back the taxes that fund these destructive programs.
The vast majority of cops are looking out for the publics best interest. Gangsters, thugs and communists are looking to create disorder for their own gain
And what do thug cops carry around? Sheesh, you really are off your rocker
🙂
innocent? The “boy” was carrying around a screw driver to break into things, dealing drugs and trying to kill a good citizen. The ignorant attitude by pauly allows these communists to run amok
What about all the cops who are themselves criminals, but never get caught because other cops protect them? Seems to be more the norm than the exception anymore…
Zimmerman, incidentally, deserves a very long prison term for murdering an innocent teenager.
No. Our society is degrading. Communists glorify criminals and demonize those that maintain order for the good citizens
Are you completely off your rocker or what?
The cops are not the problem. It’s these communists that want to set up councils of thugs. These are the same people that attack good citizens like george zimmerman and defend thugs like trevor martin
You mean the cops, right?
Are there a lot of cops who are communists, or are they more often fascists?
Typical thugocracy from these communists
What if they wore pink tutus and giant numbers on their backs?
Perhaps they should demand police forces give up their firearms as most want the average citizen to do.
@13 I agree. Maybe if the cop-ocracy got a big hit to their fat wallets, they’d re-think their attitude.
Especially if they watched the systematic turn-over of more and more of their former functions to the honest (private) sector every year.
People who call themselves liberals or progressives have been calling for “citizens review boards” for years. Why don’t they call for police budgets to be scaled back?
In the long term, this is the only solution to the police state. Its budgets must be cut, capped or eliminated completely.
I’ve been watching the case pf Antonio Buehler in Austin, Texas. He was arrested early New Year’s morning for recording police roughly yanking a girl out of her car. Turns out Antonio is a Westpoint and Stanford grad, along with being a veteran of Iraq. He’s organized a group in Austin called the Peaceful Streets Project, who has actually distributed video cameras to citizens who patrol the streets. So far, he’s received pretty decent media attention.
See https://www.facebook.com/groups/350955711587953/.
EVERY political party should be demanding to see the “rules of engagement” for use of SWAT teams and drug busts. Changes need to be made so that LEOs can’t burst in on some suspected marijuana grower at 2am when they could easily arrest him when he goes out to the store for a six pack.
It’s a first step.
Better than nothing.
Nothing is currently the practical alternative.
@4 Personally I don’t think **grassroots** anarchy will have the effect you suggest.
Citizen review boards are a a bureaucratic answer to a very stubborn problem.
The problem stems from the fact that police essentially can neither be fired nor effectively disciplined.
Even if an administrator fires a thug cop, the police union sues the department to force it to take the butcher back.
If the desire is accountability, probably a better way to get there would be to simply remove employee records from their the exemption from FOIA requests. Making employee employment records into public documents will empower individual citizens to go snooping into the actions of those employees. Once those records are online, public pressure will begin forcing governments to begin addressing the most abusive employees in a more definite way.
As things stand now, you can have access to incidents of malfeasance by doctors, but if you want to see how many times a uniformed thug has been accused of participating in a thugscrum, that’s treated as a “confidential personnel matter”.
Cops don’t face prosecution for most infractions. When was the last time you saw a cruiser flying through town doing 50 in a 25, and another cruiser pulling the idiot over and writing him a ticket? Generally speaking, at *most*, police officers who commit the same crime as a Mundane *might* face an administrative complaint; and even then, those often get expunged from the officer’s file upon “request” by the police union or by “department policy”.
A Mundane doing the same thing would face a public trial, a public conviction record, the loss of his license, and fines (and maybe even jail time) for reckless — and lofty insurance costs to get back on the road.
Criminal policing has become an institution. There is no longer a way to reform it.
In Virginia a few years ago, 100-mph road thugs from Passaic County, New Jersey were hauled down by a single Augusta County, Virginia sherriff’s deputy, Mike Roane. The Augusta County officer was given no support, no other local officers came to his aid, and after snarling at Roane, the NJ thugs pretty much just continued on their way, terrorizing other motorists — after being asked to slow down by Roane. A fuller account of the stop is here. Needless to say, one can count a number of threats-of-violence by the Passaic thugs in the longer article.
Imagine if a half-dozen or dozen armed, angry, threatening, non-cops had surrounded Roane (much less resisted arrest by refusing to pull over) — within 5 minutes, four SWAT teams and a hundred cops from jurisdicitions all around the area would have flooded the scene, all of them would have been beaten to a pulp, and they’d all be going to jail with their vehicles, guns, cash, and other property confiscated.
If I have any complaint against Roane, it is that he didn’t give the Passaic jerks the treatment they richly deserved.
I’d imagine it isn’t easy to live anywhere Passaic cops are.
No “citizen review” panel can or will address the systematic abuse of authority that is built into the government policing model.
It’s like putting a band-aid on an amputation.
The BIG question… WHO gets to be on the Citizen Review Board?
“Marc Montoni // Aug 7, 2012 at 10:54 pm
Except… the only way to stop it is to abolish government law enforcement in its entirety.
Government doesn’t work.”
This is a good point, but as an interim measure, citizen review boards of the police seems like a good start in the right direction to me.
While perfection may never be achieved, checks and balances can help to minimize abuse of power.
@3, see that’s anarchy and anarchy works in a funny way.
-Government is abolished
-Anarchy takes place of the government
-Groups of people dislike anarchy/don’t feel safe or represented and form a coalition to institute order.
-Government is restored.
Anarchy is simply the beginning stage of a new government.
Side note: I agree police abuses need to be investigated intensely
Except… the only way to stop it is to abolish government law enforcement in its entirety.
Government doesn’t work.
Exactly!
I agree with the Green Party here. The police regularly violate people’s rights, and they get away with it most of the time. This should stop.