Bob and All Who Believe the Police are Here to Protect Us.
This article came around a while back and I did not respond. But Bob's indignation brings to mind the question most of us fail to ask. Who owns the police? Who do they protect?
We assume that our police departments are here to keep law and order and make our communities safe. But whose communities? Whose streets?
A number of years ago, in Spokane, Washington, my parents called the police to report vandalism. They lived near Hilliard, a working class neighborhood. The police never came to inspect the situation. When my dad called later, he was told that the department was stretched thin and could not "run off to check out every little complaint".
The next morning's Spokesman Review told the rest of the story. The police had provided the owner of the paper, he also owned the major TV and radio channels in town, with a stake out for the past several days while he and his family were on vacation. It seemed that neighbors had complained that they'd seen suspicious people roaming their streets, and feared the Kohl's home was being targeted.
Several years earlier, in Seattle's northend, my parents had also called the police when a couple of cars stopped in front of their home and the occupants tumbled out and began a battle royal in the folks front yard. Tire irons, chains and the whole nine yards. By the time the cops arrived, 45 minutes later, the battle was over, they fun-loving boys were gone, and my mother told the officers that she could have walked from the police station faster than it took them to drive. This won her no smiles or warm hugs.
This was a much more "middle class" neighborhood than the one they retired to in Spokane. That same week, in the shopping center near my folks, the local Sea-First bank was robbed. Police responded to that call so quickly that one officer arrived fast enough to be murdered by the escaping thugs.
One of my students, a young woman, was walking from the bus to her apartment in a run down section of Seattle's central district. A man grabbed her, dragged her into an abandoned building and raped her. "I won't kill you because you're blind", he rasped in her ear as he left. Later, this same neighborhood was riddled with bullets from drive by shootings, creating another student for me by blinding a young woman.
And yet, not so far away in Laurelhurst district, the streets were safe. The cops cruised the neighborhood constantly, picking up or running off any suspicious looking intruders.
"Our Police" are hired and trained to protect the citizens. But it's important to remind ourselves just which citizens they work for.
"Well," you protest, "When a riot breaks out, or a bank is robbed, don't you want the police to end the violence and hunt down the crooks?" Of course I do. But my question remains, what are the police doing to maintain the peace and safety in our community?
The wealthy communities are secure. But not the ghettos or the working class neighborhoods.
Why is this so? We accept it as, "The way it is", but do we really have to?
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the police to be mother hen and social worker to the community, although a little of that would probably help their image. But over and over we see the cops roll out to defend the peace, when it's the wealthy folks whose homes, lives and businesses are threatened, but daily there continues to be violence and unrest in the working class and lower class neighborhoods.
Do we shrug and say, "poor people are just bad".
Many cops I've talked with believe this to be true.
And even though the police officers are themselves working class people, they are hired and trained to protect the ruling class first. The average cop does not think of him/herself as working class. Even though they may live close to the brink of economic disaster themselves, they identify with the ruling class.
In open confrontation the police, as well as the National Guard, will crack heads with their Billy clubs and splatter the crowd with rubber bullets, and stand ready to come down with the heavy artillery.
Carl Jarvis
----- Original Message -----From: Bob HacheySent: Friday, August 17, 2012 7:01 AMSubject: Re: Outcry Against Police Union Leader's Bigotry Makes for Unlikely Alliance of Cops, OccupiersWow!
Now here's a union we could well do without. I wonder how many other
publications that cater to law enforcement spew such crap. If police are
regularly reading such crap, it's pretty easy to see how they can treat
anyone different from themselves badly.
Is this how the ruling class intends to turn legitimate police into Nazi
brown shirts?
Bob Hachey
----- Original Message -----
From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
To: "'Blind Democracy Discussion List'" <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:39 PM
Subject: Outcry Against Police Union Leader's Bigotry Makes for Unlikely
Alliance of Cops, Occupiers
> Outcry Against Police Union Leader's Bigotry Makes for Unlikely Alliance
> of
> Cops, Occupiers
> Tuesday, 14 August 2012 12:21 By Dan Massoglia, Truthout | News Analysis
>
> (Photo: euze)For the uninitiated, it is almost too fantastic to believe. A
> police department's union, supremely tone-deaf in a city with a
> discriminatory history, puts out a newsletter that open-heartedly embraces
> racism, sexism and homophobia - the very things of which police
> departments
> constantly deny accusations of being guilty. At the same time, that
> publication takes huge sponsor dollars for "police children's"
> scholarships
> that barely if at all exist, and is helmed by a man who, when confronted
> about his publication's ills, dives into absurdity and uses words and
> phrases like "scurrilous" and "the fickle finger of racism." The union
> paper
> also rails against union wages for fellow workers when it's not busy
> flirting with birtherism. Occupiers and police share in the ire. This is
> the
> Pax Centurion saga.
> The publication in question is the official paper of the Boston
> Policeman's
> Patrolman's Union and is helmed by James Carnell, a Boston Police
> Department
> (BPD) veteran and Bitch Magazine-decreed "Douchebag," whose career is
> littered with casual invective toward any group that, presumably, does not
> already include Carnell. Terming Saudi Arabian students "pieces of human
> garbage" and floating conspiracy theories about the secret networks that
> "illegal aliens and welfare-cheats" use to bleed taxpayers are, basically,
> just a day in the life.
> Along with a special place in the hearts of 1970s white supremacists, the
> paper counts for itself a history of opposition from minority groups both
> affiliated with the force and not. Said local activist Jamahrl Crawford in
> the Boston Phoenix, "It's the Boston Police Department's dirty little
> secret."
> Willie Bradley, retired BPD deputy superintendent and former president of
> the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers
> (MAMLEO),
> noted that for the entirety of his 22-year career, Pax has "contaminated
> the
> minds of young officers." The poisonous combination of discrimination and
> insufferable arrogance that infects so many police owes its vitriol, as
> much
> as anywhere else, to the Carnells of the world.
> In the past month and a half, broader attention has finally been brought
> to
> the publication thanks to Clean Up BPPA, a group of activists connected
> principally by their involvement with Occupy Boston (OB) that has
> contacted
> sponsors, journalists and police to raise awareness about Pax. Though some
> the winter issues targeted OB activists, organizer Robin Jacks said in an
> interview that this was not their primary motivation. "Getting dissed for
> being a tofu eating hippie is no big deal. But once you see [for example]
> necrophilia jokes about Egyptian women, that crosses the line."
> The Boston Police Department Has an Incredibly Fucked Up Newsletter
> The first major press came from a well-named Gawker piece, "The Boston
> Police Department Union Has An Incredibly Fucked Up Newsletter." In
> addition
> to the aforementioned Egyptian necrophilia joke (which came complete with
> a
> "wash my dishes, woman" punchline), the piece - which only dealt with a
> single issue of Pax - also highlighted Carnell's suggestion that
> Democratic
> "candidate for squaw I mean senator" Elizabeth Warren bake her communist
> supporters a cake and shares his hypothesis that activists stuck around OB
> because of the promiscuity of its young, stupid female members.
> Clean Up BPPA began contacting advertisers, and soon, LoJack Corp. and
> Boston-based Simmons College had dropped out, the first of what would soon
> become many blows to Carnell and Pax. Police Commissioner Ed Davis in a
> tweet called the publication's conduct "juvenile," "wrong," and "not
> rep[resentative] of today's officer."
> Presumably not content with oppressing marginalized groups and assaulting
> good taste, Pax Centurion also dabbles in financial fraud! The Boston
> Phoenix damningly noted that despite the fact that the paper maintains
> that
> all of its net advertising revenues go to equal opportunity scholarships
> and
> other charities:
> "In 2009-2010 ... the BPPA only gave away $44,000 in scholarships ($1000
> to
> 44 recipients) despite selling $336,494 in advertising. That was an
> improvement from the year before, when they raised more than $400,000 in
> ad
> revenue and reported no scholarships expenditures at all. The BPPA did,
> however, spend more than $100,000 on golf outings and retirement parties
> between 2008-2010. In that time they also spent more than $500,000 on
> 'advertising sales' ... to Commonwealth Production."
> Ironically, Commonwealth Production, which worked on 77% commission in
> 2010,
> and last year was dissolved for failing to file tax returns, was led by a
> woman who - wait for it - was convicted in 1993 of impersonating a police
> officer to scam businesses. It's downright Wall Street-ian.
> More unbelievable still is Carnell's response to his critics. To the
> MAMLEO
> accusations of racism, he contends that the racial divide is actually in
> "the fertile imaginations of the real racists." To an offer of forgiveness
> from the mother of a 16-year-old beaten by police, on camera, he
> responded,
> "on behalf of the police officers involved in the incident ... no
> forgiveness or apologies are needed or accepted." In the present case,
> ever
> since penning an initial letter from the police union (the same letter in
> which aforementioned nonexistent scholarships are touted), Carnell has
> been
> defiant and borderline absurd in rejecting the attacks against his paper.
> Chris Faraone of the Boston Phoenix, who has been instrumental in breaking
> the story (and thoughtfully archiving Pax's recently deleted content),
> have
> received much of the unintentional comedy, and the most recent Carnell
> missive doubles down on the delusion.
> "Reporter Chris Faraone, along with his consorts in the 'Occupy Boston'
> movement, have attempted to destroy a conservative publication by
> attacking
> our contributors and advertisers," Carnell blathers, calling his
> detractors
> "on-line thugs and assorted losers without lives." He adds that
> advertisers
> must choose between big-spending police officer families and, "a few
> cyber-bullies out there who purchase an occasional can of cat food, tofu
> or
> brown rice with their EBT card."
> Accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia? "Baseless, false and
> scurrilous." These words are really just "terms used by the radical left
> as
> a cudgel to cow anyone with a different opinion into submission," Carnell
> explains, shortly before comparing himself to people burned at the stake
> during the Salem witch trials and awarding the Phoenix "a trophy for high
> hypocrisy." As of press time, ten sponsors, including Stop & Shop, Harpoon
> Beer and People's United Bank, have pulled their ads from Pax Centurion.
> The efforts opposing the publication found a home at a Sunday, August 5
> MAMLEO-hosted town hall meeting on Pax and discrimination that was
> streamed
> live and broadcast on Boston radio. For two hours at Bruce Wall's Global
> Ministries Christian Church, speakers including Bradley, Allison Nevitt
> from
> BPPA, and other community advocates described in blistering detail the
> racist, sexist policies of the BPD, the city of Boston and Pax Centurion.
> Incredibly, OB was present in the audience at the invitation of MAMLEO,
> maybe the most notable instance of an Occupy/police alliance in the
> history
> of the movement.
> "It was great for MAMLEO and occupiers to have some time and space to
> talk,"
> said Jacks of the meeting and Mayor Menino - whose noncommittal
> denunciations have satisfied neither MAMLEO nor BPPA - joined Carnell as a
> common enemy for the two. Said Bradley of the mayor's scathing, recent
> opposition to Chick-fil-A's presence in his town, "Before you call the
> kettle black, take a look at your own organization. Take a look at the
> fact
> that in your organization you have not had a man of color in your cabinet
> for the whole 19 years that you've been mayor of the city of Boston ...
> Look
> at the fact that you have never had a person of color run the police
> department in your city, [and] you refuse to hire a person of color to run
> your police department."
> He added of Pax's editor, "this guy is a member of a Boston police agency
> and he's a police officer 24 hours a day, but he's allowed to spew such
> hatred with impunity. We are not going away on this issue." Jacks also
> left
> the meeting resolute. "Personally, I have a lot of hope for the city of
> Boston," she said, and plans to continue fighting.
> With advertisers dropping like flies and Boston rallying against it, it
> seems only a matter of time until Pax gets the axe. While schadenfreude
> may
> not always be healthy, any feelings of sympathy for Carnell's
> self-immolative, self-inflicted PR nightmare should be tempered with the
> remembrance of just the man he is. Along with his many ills, Carnell once
> told the mother of a teenager slain by police, "your son was a maggot and
> a
> scumbag."
> No justice, no pax.
> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
>
> DAN MASSOGLIA
> Dan Massoglia (@jujueyeball) is a law student, activist and journalist in
> Chicago.
> ________________________________________
> Show Comments
> Hide Comments
> <a href="http://truthout.disqus.com/?url=ref">View the discussion
> thread.</a>
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Outcry Against Police Union Leader's Bigotry Makes for Unlikely Alliance
> of
> Cops, Occupiers
> Tuesday, 14 August 2012 12:21 By Dan Massoglia, Truthout | News Analysis
> . Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
> . font sizeError! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
> reference not valid.Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink
> reference not valid.
> (Photo: euze)For the uninitiated, it is almost too fantastic to believe. A
> police department's union, supremely tone-deaf in a city with a
> discriminatory history, puts out a newsletter that open-heartedly embraces
> racism, sexism and homophobia - the very things of which police
> departments
> constantly deny accusations of being guilty. At the same time, that
> publication takes huge sponsor dollars for "police children's"
> scholarships
> that barely if at all exist, and is helmed by a man who, when confronted
> about his publication's ills, dives into absurdity and uses words and
> phrases like "scurrilous" and "the fickle finger of racism." The union
> paper
> also rails against union wages for fellow workers when it's not busy
> flirting with birtherism. Occupiers and police share in the ire. This is
> the
> Pax Centurion saga.
> The publication in question is the official paper of the Boston
> Policeman's
> Patrolman's Union and is helmed by James Carnell, a Boston Police
> Department
> (BPD) veteran and Bitch Magazine-decreed "Douchebag," whose career is
> littered with casual invective toward any group that, presumably, does not
> already include Carnell. Terming Saudi Arabian students "pieces of human
> garbage" and floating conspiracy theories about the secret networks that
> "illegal aliens and welfare-cheats" use to bleed taxpayers are, basically,
> just a day in the life.
> Along with a special place in the hearts of 1970s white supremacists, the
> paper counts for itself a history of opposition from minority groups both
> affiliated with the force and not. Said local activist Jamahrl Crawford in
> the Boston Phoenix, "It's the Boston Police Department's dirty little
> secret."
> Willie Bradley, retired BPD deputy superintendent and former president of
> the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers
> (MAMLEO),
> noted that for the entirety of his 22-year career, Pax has "contaminated
> the
> minds of young officers." The poisonous combination of discrimination and
> insufferable arrogance that infects so many police owes its vitriol, as
> much
> as anywhere else, to the Carnells of the world.
> In the past month and a half, broader attention has finally been brought
> to
> the publication thanks to Clean Up BPPA, a group of activists connected
> principally by their involvement with Occupy Boston (OB) that has
> contacted
> sponsors, journalists and police to raise awareness about Pax. Though some
> the winter issues targeted OB activists, organizer Robin Jacks said in an
> interview that this was not their primary motivation. "Getting dissed for
> being a tofu eating hippie is no big deal. But once you see [for example]
> necrophilia jokes about Egyptian women, that crosses the line."
> The Boston Police Department Has an Incredibly Fucked Up Newsletter
> The first major press came from a well-named Gawker piece, "The Boston
> Police Department Union Has An Incredibly Fucked Up Newsletter." In
> addition
> to the aforementioned Egyptian necrophilia joke (which came complete with
> a
> "wash my dishes, woman" punchline), the piece - which only dealt with a
> single issue of Pax - also highlighted Carnell's suggestion that
> Democratic
> "candidate for squaw I mean senator" Elizabeth Warren bake her communist
> supporters a cake and shares his hypothesis that activists stuck around OB
> because of the promiscuity of its young, stupid female members.
> Clean Up BPPA began contacting advertisers, and soon, LoJack Corp. and
> Boston-based Simmons College had dropped out, the first of what would soon
> become many blows to Carnell and Pax. Police Commissioner Ed Davis in a
> tweet called the publication's conduct "juvenile," "wrong," and "not
> rep[resentative] of today's officer."
> Presumably not content with oppressing marginalized groups and assaulting
> good taste, Pax Centurion also dabbles in financial fraud! The Boston
> Phoenix damningly noted that despite the fact that the paper maintains
> that
> all of its net advertising revenues go to equal opportunity scholarships
> and
> other charities:
> "In 2009-2010 ... the BPPA only gave away $44,000 in scholarships ($1000
> to
> 44 recipients) despite selling $336,494 in advertising. That was an
> improvement from the year before, when they raised more than $400,000 in
> ad
> revenue and reported no scholarships expenditures at all. The BPPA did,
> however, spend more than $100,000 on golf outings and retirement parties
> between 2008-2010. In that time they also spent more than $500,000 on
> 'advertising sales' ... to Commonwealth Production."
> Ironically, Commonwealth Production, which worked on 77% commission in
> 2010,
> and last year was dissolved for failing to file tax returns, was led by a
> woman who - wait for it - was convicted in 1993 of impersonating a police
> officer to scam businesses. It's downright Wall Street-ian.
> More unbelievable still is Carnell's response to his critics. To the
> MAMLEO
> accusations of racism, he contends that the racial divide is actually in
> "the fertile imaginations of the real racists." To an offer of forgiveness
> from the mother of a 16-year-old beaten by police, on camera, he
> responded,
> "on behalf of the police officers involved in the incident ... Error!
> Hyperlink reference not valid.." In the present case, ever since penning
> an
> initial letter from the police union (the same letter in which
> aforementioned nonexistent scholarships are touted), Carnell has been
> defiant and borderline absurd in rejecting the attacks against his paper.
> Chris Faraone of the Boston Phoenix, who has been instrumental in breaking
> the story (and thoughtfully archiving Pax's recently deleted content),
> have
> received much of the unintentional comedy, and the most recent Carnell
> missive doubles down on the delusion.
> "Reporter Chris Faraone, along with his consorts in the 'Occupy Boston'
> movement, have attempted to destroy a conservative publication by
> attacking
> our contributors and advertisers," Carnell blathers, calling his
> detractors
> "on-line thugs and assorted losers without lives." He adds that
> advertisers
> must choose between big-spending police officer families and, "a few
> cyber-bullies out there who purchase an occasional can of cat food, tofu
> or
> brown rice with their EBT card."
> Accusations of racism, sexism and homophobia? "Baseless, false and
> scurrilous." These words are really just "terms used by the radical left
> as
> a cudgel to cow anyone with a different opinion into submission," Carnell
> explains, shortly before comparing himself to people burned at the stake
> during the Salem witch trials and awarding the Phoenix "a trophy for high
> hypocrisy." As of press time, ten sponsors, including Stop & Shop, Harpoon
> Beer and People's United Bank, have pulled their ads from Pax Centurion.
> The efforts opposing the publication found a home at a Sunday, August 5
> MAMLEO-hosted town hall meeting on Pax and discrimination that was
> streamed
> live and broadcast on Boston radio. For two hours at Bruce Wall's Global
> Ministries Christian Church, speakers including Bradley, Allison Nevitt
> from
> BPPA, and other community advocates described in blistering detail the
> racist, sexist policies of the BPD, the city of Boston and Pax Centurion.
> Incredibly, OB was present in the audience at the invitation of MAMLEO,
> maybe the most notable instance of an Occupy/police alliance in the
> history
> of the movement.
> "It was great for MAMLEO and occupiers to have some time and space to
> talk,"
> said Jacks of the meeting and Mayor Menino - whose noncommittal
> denunciations have satisfied neither MAMLEO nor BPPA - joined Carnell as a
> common enemy for the two. Said Bradley of the mayor's scathing, recent
> opposition to Chick-fil-A's presence in his town, "Before you call the
> kettle black, take a look at your own organization. Take a look at the
> fact
> that in your organization you have not had a man of color in your cabinet
> for the whole 19 years that you've been mayor of the city of Boston ...
> Look
> at the fact that you have never had a person of color run the police
> department in your city, [and] you refuse to hire a person of color to run
> your police department."
> He added of Pax's editor, "this guy is a member of a Boston police agency
> and he's a police officer 24 hours a day, but he's allowed to spew such
> hatred with impunity. We are not going away on this issue." Jacks also
> left
> the meeting resolute. "Personally, I have a lot of hope for the city of
> Boston," she said, and plans to continue fighting.
> With advertisers dropping like flies and Boston rallying against it, it
> seems only a matter of time until Pax gets the axe. While schadenfreude
> may
> not always be healthy, any feelings of sympathy for Carnell's
> self-immolative, self-inflicted PR nightmare should be tempered with the
> remembrance of just the man he is. Along with his many ills, Carnell once
> told the mother of a teenager slain by police, "your son was a maggot and
> a
> scumbag."http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/140923-shit-boston-cops-say/
> No justice, no pax.
> Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
> Dan Massoglia
> Dan Massoglia (@jujueyeball) is a law student, activist and journalist in
> Chicago.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> http://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
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