Tag: Protests

If He Were Black, They Would Have Already Shot Him Multiple Times

Instead, it appears that, on the recommendation of an anonymous Kenosha police captain, teen murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and his legal team has been deliberately deceiving the court as to his whereabouts.

Obviously, this from my perspective as a non-lawyer, but this appears to be a BIG no-no for someone who is out on bail:

Prosecutors apparently couldn’t find admitted Kenosha killer Kyle Rittenhouse, so now they are seeking a warrant for his arrest.

On Wednesday, the Kenosha County District Attorney’s office said Rittenhouse had violated the conditions of his release. Prosecutors said they need a new arrest warrant specifically because Rittenhouse failed to inform the court after changing his address. The defense, however, responded by saying they intentionally concealed Rittenhouse’s true whereabouts because a local police captain instructed them to lie about where he was staying.

………

According to the conditions of his bond, Rittenhouse was supposed to relay such a change within 48 hours of moving. The motion asks Judge Bruce E. Schroeder to issue a new arrest warrant and increase Rittenhouse’s bail by $200,000.

………

The Illinois teenager was charged with first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted homicide, and two additional felonies over the admitted shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. Rittenhouse also severely wounded Gaige Grosskreutz with a rifle carried across state lines. He further faces one misdemeanor charge of possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under the age of 18. Rittenhouse was 17 at the time of the August shooting and is now 18.

………

In sum, the defense says it intentionally wrote the wrong address on the release papers after being advised to do so by local law enforcement. This, the defense claims, was to protect the location of a “safe house” for Rittenhouse.

The motion notes [emphasis in original]: “Pierce was directly informed by a high-ranking member of the Kenosha Police Department not to provide the address of the Rittenhouse Safe House because of the numerous threats made against Kyle and his family.”

………

“While I was completing this form, I was approached by a Kenosha Police Department Captain, who offered his assistance,” Pierce continued [emphasis in original]. “I asked the Kenosha Police Captain what address to put on the form. The Kenosha Police Captain told me that I ‘absolutely should not‘ provide the address of the physical location of the Rittenhouse Safe House on the form, but to instead provide his home address in Antioch, Illinois.”

There are a couple of points here:

  • What lawyer doesn’t pass this by the f%$#ing judge? (I’m already regretting ending my swearing for February)
  • What cop tells a defendant in a murder trial to lie to the court?

Well, I guess the answers to this question are pretty straightforward, and the expression, “Racist dirtbag,” figures prominently in both.

Rittenhouse needs to spend his pre-trial in jail, and his lawyer should be his cell-mate, at least until he gives up whatever police captain told him to lie to the court.

Meanwhile, in DC

Republicans in Congress are using the right-wing insurrection on January 6 as an excuse for bills targeted primarily at peaceful protesters like Black Lives Matter.

Republicans never miss an opportunity to use a crisis to rat-fuck the country, do they?

In September, Florida governor and Trump ally Ron DeSantis proposed a bill dubbed the Combating Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act to create new criminal penalties for offenses commonly committed during protests. He said it was needed to stop the “professional agitators bent on sowing disorder and causing mayhem in our cities” following months of largely peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.

Hours after a far-right mob stormed the Capitol at the behest of the president, Florida Republicans introduced a version of the bill. That night, DeSantis said the violence in Washington shows that lawmakers “have no time to waste to uphold public safety” and must “swiftly pass this bill.”

DeSantis isn’t alone. Within the past year, lawmakers in 24 states have introduced at least 45 bills to create new penalties or increase criminal penalties for offenses related to protesting, discourage cuts to police funding, and provide protections to people who drive their cars into protesters or shoot protesters in an alleged act of self defense. Six of those bills—one in Utah, one in Mississippi, one in West Virginia, one in Tennessee and two in South Dakota—have been signed into law.

But the bills aren’t aimed at reining in the kind of violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, and federal prosecutors already have a litany of charges at their disposal to hold the perpetrators accountable. The bills seek to criminalize conduct typically associated with Black Lives Matter protests, like blocking streets or highways and camping out at state capitols. Provisions of DeSantis’s bill seek to discourage local governments from cutting police budgets, but what happened on Jan. 6 can’t be pinned on a lack of police funding or intelligence—the FBI knew extremists were planning to commit violence in Washington days before, and Capitol Police rejected offers for additional manpower from the National Guard. While some police officers were brutally attacked or took action to protect the lives of others, others shook hands with a member of the mob. One police officer even took a selfie with the insurrectionists.

This is why I oppose changes to the current laws in response to the January 6 insurrection.

The people who will be enforcing these laws, cops, prosecutors, etc.  are objectively pro-fascist and institutionally, if not necessarily personally, racist.

All that more laws get you is more opportunities for abuse.

What Took You So Long?

Months after being invaded by gun toting fascist and white supremacist terrorists, the Michigan legislature has finally decided that maybe allowing any Tom, Dick, and Harry to open carry in the state house is a bad idea:

Michigan banned the open carry of guns inside its Capitol building on Monday, following mob violence last week at the US Capitol and last year’s storming of the Michigan statehouse.

The Michigan ban came as reports detailed FBI warnings about possible violence at state capitols and in Washington in the run-up to the 20 January inauguration of Joe Biden.

………

Security officials are preparing for a large crowd in Washington for the inauguration, and state officials are preparing for protests.

On Monday, ABC News reported a similar FBI bulletin warning of armed protests “at all 50 state capitols” and in Washington, but neither the date of that bulletin nor the evidentiary basis for its advice was given.

………

Security around the Capitol has been stepped up.

Armed men stormed the Michigan capitol in April, protesting social restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19. It later emerged that a group had plotted to kidnap and perhaps kill the governor, the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer.

April ……… May ……… June ……… 9 Months?

It too them 9 Fucking Months to realize that it’s a bad thing for the legislature to be threatened by mooks carrying assault rifles?

Seriously? 

I get that Republicans controlled both state houses, but I would figure that they would have a have enough of a self preservation instinct to act sooner.

About Bloody Time

Following the insurrection at the Capitol, police departments across the country are finally looking into the unsavory extracurricular activities of some of their members

I’ve been saying for a long time that police are objectively racist and pro-fascist, maybe now some of the tens of thousands of police forces, and the civilians who nominally are in charge of these institutions, will actually start policing the police:

Police officers and at least one police chief from departments across the United States are facing termination, suspension or other discipline for their proximity to or alleged involvement in a chaotic gathering in Washington on Wednesday that ended in a riot at the U.S. Capitol and left five people dead.

Departments in California, Washington state, and Texas are among those that have announced investigations into their officers based on tips, social media posts and other evidence, though more officers could be identified as evidence emerges in the coming days.

The probes come after an especially fraught year for U.S. policing that saw massive civil rights protests against police violence. They are likely to raise questions about free speech, the expansion of surveillance and public trust in law enforcement, while legal experts warn the scrutiny could have unintended consequences.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Tweet of the Day

People who broke into the Capitol Wednesday are now learning they are on No-Fly lists pending the full investigation. They are not happy about this. pic.twitter.com/5GfHo1eVU8

— Ray [REDACTED] (@RayRedacted) January 10, 2021

People who stormed the Capitol are surprised that they are on No-Fly lists.

It never mattered when leopards ate OTHER people’s faces.

What ……… The ……… Fuck?


When I Referred to Republicans


as Ravening Hords, It Was


Supposed to be a Metaphor

Trump supporting rioters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the electoral college votes.

There has been at least one death so far, a woman died from gunshot wounds.

It is unclear whether the shots came from the Capitol Police or from the invading MAGAts. 

Members of Congress were spirited away to undisclosed safe locations as the rioters streamed into the building.

In what is a remarkable display of assertiveness, (for him, at least) Chuck “I Wish it Were Amy” Schumer described the rioters as domestic terrorists, while Mitt Rmoney described the events as an insurrection.

Of particular concern to me is the fact that the Capitol an DC police appear to have been unreasonably solicitous to the rioters:

Many Americans and people around the world watched in horror as a mob of Donald Trump supporters rushed the US Capitol in Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon, wreaking fear and chaos with seemingly little resistance from police on Capitol Hill.

The events inside the building quickly unfolded on social media as tweets poured out from concerned members of Congress and images of the insurgents inside the Capitol went viral.

Capitol during Capitol
BLM protests today pic.twitter.com/5NAcaIUsCq

— Ricky Rocksteady (@RocksteadyRicky) January 6, 2021

Only This Was Intentional

………

People were quick to point out the hypocrisy of law enforcement letting the mob, which was overwhelmingly White, take over the Capitol building with little hindrance.

“Always interesting to see how white protestors can encounter so little resistance and breach the capitol with the vice-president there, while black protestors would be lying dead in front of the capitol building right now,” wrote the writer Roxane Gay.

“White privilege is on display like never before in the US Capitol,” tweeted the author and scholar Ibram X Kendi.

Others pointed to the stark contrast between law enforcement’s response to the mob at the Capitol versus their treatment of protesters against police brutality.

“Peaceful protestors got pepper sprayed so Trump could hold a Bible upside for a photo in front of a church,” tweeted Shannon Sharper, a former American football player, referring to an incident that took place over the summerin the midst of protests following the police killing of George Floyd.

<Claude Raines>I am shocked, shocked to find that police are pro-fascist racists.</Claude Rains>

In an attempt to dodge the “Trump Stink” a number of White House staffers have resigned following the violence.

If there is any justice in the world, it will not help them.  I hope that the stink clings to them for the rest of their days.

As to where we are now, a 6pm — 6am curfew was ordered, and the National Guard was sent out on the streets, and it appears to be quiet now, with Congress expected to return shortly to vote.

(This post has been updated)

Oh, Snap

The leader of the white supremacist group Proud Boys has been arrested in Washington, DC.

He publicly copped to vandalizing black churches during their last round of rioting, and when he got busted, he was found to be carrying illegal weapons:

The leader of the Proud Boys, the violent far-right group, was arrested in Washington DC and charged with destruction of property and a firearms offense, according to local police.

The arrest of Enrique Tarrio on Monday comes ahead of pro-Donald Trump protests in Washington planned for Tuesday and Wednesday to coincide with the US Congress’ vote on Wednesday affirming Joe Biden’s election victory.

The demonstrations are organized by the Proud Boys and other rightwing activists, who falsely allege election fraud and want to see the results of the presidential election overturned in Trump’s favor.

The property destruction charges are related to Tarrio’s admitted role in burning a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a historic Black church during a previous pro-Trump protest in Washington on 12 December, which DC police and the FBI said they had been investigating as a potential hate crime. Police said Tarrio, who lives in Miami, Florida, was arrested after his arrival in the District of Columbia on Monday.

DC police said Tarrio had also been charged with possessing two high-capacity ammunition magazines, which were with him when he was arrested. The District of Columbia, which has some of the strictest firearms laws in the nation, bans the possession of firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

………

The National Park Service said it had received three separate applications for pro-Trump protests on Tuesday or Wednesday, with estimated maximum attendance at 15,000 people.

………

The US capital has mobilized the national guard ahead of the planned protests. Mayor Muriel Bowser requested a limited national guard deployment to help bolster the metropolitan police department, and has asked local area residents to stay away from downtown DC.

“There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” said Robert Contee, the acting police chief, on Monday.

Am I a bad person for being VERY amused about all of this?

Sock and Awe

 12 years ago today:

12 years ago today. pic.twitter.com/g2W14AywFm

— Bhaskar Sunkara (@sunraysunray) December 14, 2020

A tip of the hat to Muntadhar al-Zaidi, a journalist’s journalist. 

Unfortunately, I could not find any games that came from this meme that still worked.  They were all done in Flash, which uninstalled itself from my computer a few months ago.

And yes, the “Sock and Awe” title is my own joke.

Have I Mention That Cops Lie?

BREAKING VIDEO: Here Philly PD appear to smash the windows of a passing vehicle that was trying to turn around, then dragged the parents out and beat them on the ground in front of their terrified children. [@MrCheckpoint] pic.twitter.com/e6mmXWqzkr

— ☭ New York Socialist ☭ (@TheNYSocialist) October 28, 2020

Philadelphia’s Finest

A Philadelphia toddler was ripped from his mom’s SUV after police smashed in her windows.

The Fraternal Order of Police claimed in a Facebook post that the “lost” child was found “walking around barefoot” after police shot Walter Wallace Jr. https://t.co/CX9rpD8bSg

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 30, 2020

There are lies, damn lies, and every single word that you might ever hear from the Policemen’s Benovelent Association

During the protests over the police shooting of Walter Wallace, Jr., police broke the windows of a SUV that had strayed into the area, beat its occupants, dragged them out, and then took the baby in the back and used it for a photo-op.

The victim has still not been told where her car is, which means that it, and the baby’s hearing aid that was left in it, are “gone with the wind”.

Somewhere in hell, Frank Rizzo is smiling:

Philadelphia police pulled a woman from an SUV during unrest in West Philadelphia Tuesday morning, beat and bloodied her, separated her from her toddler for hours, and kept her in handcuffs in the hospital, her attorneys said Friday.

She has not been charged with a crime, and police won’t say what prompted the show of force.

Philadelphia civil rights attorneys Kevin Mincey and Riley H. Ross III are representing the woman and the toddler, who they said were both injured as police pulled them from an SUV shown in a now-viral video from the 5200 block of Chestnut Street at about 2 a.m. Tuesday. The video depicts at least 15 police officers swarming a vehicle, bashing in the windows, pulling out the driver and another passenger, beating them, then appearing to remove a child from the backseat.

………

Mincey said Young was struggling to get her child to fall asleep, and, hoping a car ride would help, she took the toddler with her to West Philadelphia to pick up her 16-year-old nephew from a friend’s house as unrest roiled the neighborhood. Mincey said Young encountered police barricades and attempted to make a three-point turn when police surrounded the vehicle.

Then, he said, police pulled Young and the 16-year-old from the car and threw them to the ground; police beat both with batons, handcuffed them, and detained them, he said. Mincey said Young relayed that police at the scene refused to tell her where her child would be taken, saying only “he’s gonna go to a better place, we’re gonna report it to DHS,” presumably referring to the Department of Human Services, the city’s child-welfare agency.

………

Police then took her back to headquarters and processed her. Mincey said she was kept in a holding cell, wasn’t informed of charges against her, and was issued a wristband that read: “assault on police.” She was released without being charged. Mincey said she’s unsure what time she was released, but she said “the sun was up.”

Young and her son were separated for hours. Mincey said Young was in the police van with another woman who had a cell phone. Young called her mother, Mincey said, and the boy’s grandmother went to the scene to retrieve the child. There, according to Mincey, police directed her to go to 15th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, four miles away in Center City. The grandmother, Mincey said, found the child sitting in his car seat in a police cruiser with two officers. The child had a lump on his head and glass from the SUV’s broken windows was still in his car seat, Mincey said.

Video shows Philadelphia Police breaking into an SUV in West Philly early Tuesday morning, and then beating the driver while a child was inside.

Mincey said police have not told the family where their vehicle is, and he said the child’s hearing aid and Young’s purse and wallet are still inside it.

………

Ross also slammed the National Fraternal Order of Police for on Thursday posting images of an officer holding the child and falsely writing in a caption: “This child was lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness. The only thing this Philadelphia police officer cared about in that moment was protecting this child.”

The child was the same one pulled from the SUV, according to images shot at the scene by an Inquirer photographer and a freelance photographer in the area. The Inquirer is not publishing images of the toddler out of concern for the privacy of the family and the child.

The FOP deleted the posts about 30 minutes after the Inquirer asked for comment. On Friday, an FOP spokesperson said after posting the photo, the organization “subsequently learned of conflicting accounts of the circumstances under which the child came to be assisted by the officer and immediately took the photo and caption down.”

………

The video of the incident was shot less than 12 hours after two Philadelphia police officers shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man who family and neighbors said was experiencing a mental health crisis. Video of his killing showed him holding a knife and walking toward police when they opened fire, each firing seven shots.

Seriously, the cops are completely out of control.

So Not a Surprise

It turns out that the bloke who fired shots into a police station during the George Floyd protests was a white supremacist trying to gin up conflict for a race war.

He was a part of the “Boogaloo” crowd.

I’m not sure if I would call this a false flag operation, but if it isn’t it’s false flag, it certainly is false flag’s next door neighbor.

In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday.

A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s death while in police custody.

Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramping up violence during the protests in Minneapolis on May 27 and 28. According to charges, Hunter, wearing a skull mask and tactical gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Minneapolis police headquarters while people were inside. He also looted and helped set the building ablaze, according to the complaint, which was filed Monday under seal.

It does seem that a disproportionate number of these interstate terrorist types come from Texas, huh?

Unrest flared throughout Minneapolis following Floyd’s death, which was captured on a bystander’s cellphone video, causing Gov. Tim Walz to activate the Minnesota National Guard. As police clashed with protesters, Hunter and other members of the Boogaloo Bois discussed in private Facebook messages their plans to travel to Minneapolis and rally at the Cub Foods near the Third Precinct building, according to federal court documents. One of the people Hunter coordinated with posted publicly to social media: “Lock and load boys. Boog flags are in the air, and the national network is going off,” the complaint states.

Two hours after the police precinct was set on fire, Hunter texted with another Boogaloo member in California, a man named Steven Carrillo.

“Go for police buildings,” Hunter told Carrillo, according to charging documents.

And Carrillo has a bit of a story as well:

Five days later, Carrillo shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz when authorities tried to arrest him, according to charges filed in California. Authorities say he then stole a car and wrote “Boog” on the hood “in what appeared to be his own blood.”

A couple of days later, during police protests in Austin, Texas, police pulled over a truck after seeing three men in tactical gear and carrying guns drive away in it. Hunter, in the front passenger seat, wore six loaded banana magazines for an AK-47-style assault rifle on his tactical vest, according federal authorities. The two other men had AR-15 magazines affixed to their vests. The officers found an AK-47-style rifle and two AR-15 rifles on the rear seat of the vehicle, a pistol next to the driver’s seat and another pistol in the center console.

Hunter denied he owned any of the weapons found in the vehicle. He did, according to the complaint, volunteer that he was the leader of the Boogaloo Bois in South Texas and that he was present in Minneapolis when the Third Precinct was set on fire. Police seized the guns and let Hunter and the others go.

Once again, we see the cops sghowing favoritism to white supremacist terrorists, even though these same terrorists are the ones who are disproportionately likely to kill cops.

Thin blue line, my ass.

Hunter is the third member of the Boogaloo Bois, a loose-knit group intent on igniting a second American civil war, to be charged in Minneapolis as a result of the unrest that followed Floyd’s death.

Michael Robert Solomon and Benjamin Ryan Teeter were indicted in September with conspiracy to provide material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Police are the Same Everywhere

And by that, I mean, as Yanis Varoufakis notes, that they are objectively pro-Fascist.

He is talking about Greece, but the same thing happens in the US, France, Germany, the UK, former Soviet Republics, etc.

Perhaps the only police force that MIGHT not tilt toward Nazis is the Saint Petersburg constabulary, but that is an accident of history, specifically the 872 day Siege of Leningrad.

I rather imagine that even in the former Leningrad, the police are still reactionary:

October 7 was a good day for democrats. The Greek Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of the leaders of Golden Dawn, the only openly Nazi party to have won seats in any parliament since the 1940s, on charges of murder, grievous bodily harm, and directing a criminal organization. A crowd of 20,000 Athenians celebrated outside the court.

Our celebration lasted precisely 40 seconds, before the police dispersed us with teargas. Gasping for air, my wife and I tried to join hundreds of others struggling to escape via a narrow street leading to the safety of nearby Mount Lycabettus. A dozen riot police were there, firing gas canisters into the fleeing crowd. I pleaded with their commanding officer to stop. “There is no purpose in gassing people trying to go home,” I told him calmly. He swore at me. When I produced my parliamentary ID card, his response startled me: “Yet another reason to fuck you.”

The conviction of Greece’s Nazi leaders is a decisive victory against the revival of far-right extremism in Europe. But while they were being sent to prison, their ideas, manners, and hatred of parliamentary democracy were in police uniform, terrorizing the streets.

A week later, a police internal affairs officer interviewed me as part of an investigation triggered by my testimony. I could not recognize the riot policeman’s face, because I was unable to breathe or see properly at the time of the incident. But I did recognize one thing: the look of calm loathing in his eyes – a look that reminded me of Kapnias, once a trained Gestapo interrogator.

………

When I met him in 1991, I had assumed that figures like Kapnias were relics that would disappear one funeral at a time. I was wrong. A sense of permanent defeat, hopelessness, and widespread humiliation create an environment in which Nazism’s dormant DNA reawakens. Once Greek society was immersed in wholesale indignity, following our state’s bankruptcy in 2010, a new generation of Nazis, with Kapnias’s look in their eyes, took their seats in Parliament. Now, most of them are in prison for heinous crimes. But that look remains in the eyes of too many, not all of them in uniform.

At this I’m inclined to believe that law enforcement is INHERENTLY pro-Fascist, and pro-Nazi.  It just comes with the job.

Sounds More and More Like a Hit

We now have more witness reports of the shooting of Michael Reinoehl by a federal task force, and it reinforces the perception that they just rolled up and started shooting.

The reports now are that there were no lights or sirens, and no attempt by officers to get Reinoehl to surrender.

Considering the proclivities of law enforcement, the support for white supremacists is obvious, and the case of Fred Hampton comes to mind:

Michael Reinoehl was on the run.

A few days after a shooting left a far-right Trump supporter dead on the streets of Portland, Ore., Mr. Reinoehl, an antifa activist who had been named in the news media as a focus of the investigation, feared that vigilantes were after him, not to mention the police. Even some of his close friends did not know where he was.

But the authorities knew.

On Sept. 3, about 120 miles north of Portland, Mr. Reinoehl was getting into his Volkswagen station wagon when a pair of unmarked sport utility vehicles roared through the quiet streets, screeching to a halt just in front of his bumper. Members of a U.S. Marshals task force jumped out and unleashed a hail of bullets that shattered windows, whizzed past bystanders and left Mr. Reinoehl dead in the street.

Attorney General William P. Barr trumpeted the operation as a “significant accomplishment” that removed a “violent agitator.” The officers had opened fire, he said, when Mr. Reinoehl “attempted to escape arrest” and “produced a firearm” during the encounter. But a reconstruction of what happened that night, based on the accounts of people who witnessed the confrontation and the preliminary findings of investigators, produces a much different picture — one that raises questions about whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him.

In interviews with 22 people who were near the scene, all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire. In their official statements, not yet made public, the officers offered differing accounts of whether they saw Mr. Reinoehl with a weapon. One told investigators he thought he saw Mr. Reinoehl raise a gun inside the vehicle before the firing began, but two others said they did not.

………

Five eyewitnesses said in interviews that the gunfire began the instant the vehicles arrived. None of them saw Mr. Reinoehl holding a weapon. A single shell casing of the same caliber as the handgun he was carrying was found inside his car.

Garrett Louis, who watched the shooting begin while trying to get his 8-year-old son out of the line of fire, said the officers arrived with such speed and violence that he initially assumed they were drug dealers gunning down a foe — until he saw their law enforcement vests.

It increasingly looks like a preordained execution.

 

Today in Schadenfreude

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, better known as the St. Louis Ken and Karen, have been indicted on weapons and evidence tampering charges.

As you recall, they brandished firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters.

The evidence tampering may been that one of them had tampered with Ms. McCloskey’s gun following the incident to claim that it was not a lethal weapon:

A St. Louis grand jury has indicted Mark and Patricia McCloskey on two counts each: exhibiting a weapon and tampering with evidence.

………

The indictment means prosecutors convinced a grand jury they have enough evidence against the McCloskeys to proceed to trial.

Gov. Mike Parson has said he would pardon the McCloskeys should they be convicted.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner originally issued charges against them for unlawful use of a weapon – a felony.

The grand jury added the charge of tampering with evidence. Only prosecutors are allowed to present evidence to grand juries, and they are secret proceedings.

………

Patricia McCloskey told police the handgun she used during the June 28 confrontation was inoperable because she had used it as a prop during a trial against a gun manufacturer.

Yeah, sure.

………

A key component of Missouri law states that a gun must be “readily capable of lethal use” in order for someone to be charged with the crime. Hinckley signed the court document, known as the complaint, saying the weapon was capable of lethal use.

………

City attorneys for St. Louis refused to charge nine protesters who were ticketed for trespassing after members of the Portland Place trustees said they did not want to press charges against them.

That’s because the McCloskeys are loathed by their neighbors.  There has been a long history of disputes in the neighborhood.

That’s why Portland Place trustees wanted nothing to do with the case.

I’m pretty sure that some of their neighbors are doing a happy dance over this, as am I.

Rule 1 of Cops, Police Brutality and Police Protests: They Lie

Rule 2 is, “See rule 1.”

Case in point?  When the Rochester mayor and chief of police claimed that a woman from Alaska was an, “Outside Agitator,” he a woman from Alaska who was a student at the University of Richester

After the upheaval of the protest on Sept. 5 in downtown Rochester, police announced nine demonstrators were detained and charged.

During a press conference the following day, both Mayor Lovely Warren and former Chief La’Ron Singletary said people from as far away as Massachusetts and Alaska were arrested.

Singletary said there was evidence and intelligence pointing to “outside agitators” in our community. During a listening session with City Council Wednesday, it was revealed that the Alaska resident charged with unlawful assembly after the protest is actually a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Rochester.

Sonia McGaffigan addressed City Council and chastised Warren, Singletary and the media for perpetuating this narrative on outside agitators during the rallies and protests after the death of Daniel Prude became public in early September.

McGaffigan said during her three-minute response to City Council that it was her first-ever protest and she described the scene after police knocked her off her bicycle while she was attempting to ride back to campus.

And if that weren’t enough, we now have details about how aggressively the Rochester police attempted to cover up their crime:

It was early June, days after the death of George Floyd, and cities around the country were erupting in protests against police brutality.

In Rochester, the streets were relatively calm, but behind closed doors, police and city officials were growing anxious. A Black man, Daniel Prude, had died of suffocation in March after police officers had placed his head in a hood and pinned him to the ground. The public had never been told about the death, but that would change if police body camera footage of the encounter got out.

“We certainly do not want people to misinterpret the officers’ actions and conflate this incident with any recent killings of unarmed Black men by law enforcement nationally,” a deputy Rochester police chief wrote in an email to his boss. “That would simply be a false narrative, and could create animosity and potentially violent blowback in this community as a result.”

His advice was clear: Don’t release the body camera footage to the Prude family’s lawyer. The police chief replied minutes later: “I totally agree.”

The June 4 exchange was contained in a mass of city documents released on Monday that show how the police chief, La’Ron Singletary, and other prominent Rochester officials did everything in their power to keep the troubling videos of the incident out of public view, and to prevent damaging fallout from Mr. Prude’s death.

………

In a police report on the confrontation, marking a box for “victim type,” an officer on the scene listed Mr. Prude — who the police believed had broken a store window that night — simply as an “individual.” But another officer circled the word in red and scribbled a note.

“Make him a suspect,” it read.

If the people who enforce your laws routinely lie to protect themselves from the law, you do not have law enforcement, you have a criminal gang.

F%$# 2020


He looks exactly as I expected

Dave Graeber, heterodox and iconoclastic anthropologist who authored Bullshit Jobs, and Debt: The First 5,000 Years, has died at age 59:

David Graeber, anthropologist and anarchist author of bestselling books on bureaucracy and economics including Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and Debt: The First 5,000 Years, has died aged 59.

On Thursday Graeber’s wife, the artist and writer Nika Dubrovsky, announced on Twitter that Graeber had died in hospital in Venice the previous day. The cause of death is not yet known.

Renowned for his biting and incisive writing about bureaucracy, politics and capitalism, Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time of his death. His final book, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, written with David Wengrove, will be published in autumn 2021.

………

Born in New York in 1961 to two politically active parents – his father fought in the Spanish civil war with the International Brigades, while his mother was a member of the international Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union – Graeber first attracted academic attention for his teenage hobby of translating Mayan hieroglyphs. After studying anthropology at the State University of New York at Purchase and the University of Chicago, he won a prestigious Fulbright fellowship and spent two years doing anthropological fieldwork in Madagascar. In 2005, Yale decided against renewing his contract a year before he would have secured tenure. Graeber suspected it was because of his politics; when more than 4,500 colleagues and students signed petitions supporting him, Yale instead offered him a year’s paid sabbatical, which he accepted and moved to the UK to work at Goldsmiths before joining LSE. “I guess I had two strikes against me,” he told the Guardian in 2015. “One, I seemed to be enjoying my work too much. Plus I’m from the wrong class: I come from a working-class background.”

………

An anarchist since his teens, Graeber was a supporter of the Kurdish freedom movement and the “remarkable democratic experiment” he could see in Rojava, an autonomous region in Syria. He became heavily involved in activism and politics in the late 90s. He was a pivotal figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 – though he denied that he had come up with the slogan “We are the 99%”, for which he was frequently credited.

“I did first suggest that we call ourselves the 99%. Then two Spanish indignados and a Greek anarchist added the ‘we’ and later a food-not-bombs veteran put the ‘are’ between them. And they say you can’t create something worthwhile by committee! I’d include their names but considering the way police intelligence has been coming after early OWS organisers, maybe it would be better not to,” he wrote.

Damn.

Why couldn’t it have been some dime a dozen conventional economists?

Hold off the Praise

There are a lot of people praising Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler to the skies for cutting Donald Trump a new one at a press conference.

I also know that he is right when he says, “It’s you who have created the hate and the division. And now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create. What America needs is for you to be stopped so that Americans can come together,” among other things in a remarkably similar vein.

He’s right, and I appreciate what he said.

That being said, most of the people do not understand Portland, Oregon’s form of government, because they have never lived there.

I did.  My family Moved there in 1977, and I went to high school there, and my dad lived there almost continuously for the next 42 years.

Portland, and Portland politics, were fodder at the kitchen table.  (My dad thought that former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt was a bit of a skunk, which was proved by later developments)

One of the peculiarities of Portland is that it has a city commission form of government, an increasingly rare form of government, a form of government that originated in Galveston, TX in 1900, but it is increasingly rare, having generally been replaced by the council-manager form of government since the end of the first world war.

The peculiarity of the city commission form of government is that each city councilman is the head of some part of the municipal bureaucracy.

One might be the head of sanitation, one of housing, one of transportation, one of water, one of Fire/EMS, and one of them is ……… wait for it ……… police commissioner.

Mayor Wheeler is the police commissioner, and has been since he was sworn in as Mayor at the beginning of 2017, he has been in charge of the cops, and he has done nothing about the racist and right-wing cesspool that is the Portland Police Bureau, nor anything about their flagrantly abusive and unconstitutional behavior toward the protesters, and their support for white supremacist terrorists.

A former ally on the Portland City Commission called him for his unwillingness to confront the police over their misconduct, saying that the police misconduct had made Trump’s federal intervention inevitable.

Meanwhile, he has presided over a police crackdown on the homeless. (also here and here)

The protests in Portland have been exacerbated and intensified by the brutality and the bias of the police, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s police, which he was, and is, in charge of.

He a part of the problem, not a part of the solution.

This Was Inevitable

The right-wing organized a driving Trump rally in Portland, and after repeatedly driving through crowds of protesters, something that has not been covered by the main stream media, one of the right-wingers was shot to death.  

At this point, there is no information as to where the shot came from.

It could have been the protesters, the counter-protesters, or the cops.

Portland Police Bureau (PPB) say the unidentified victim died around 8:45 pm from a gunshot wound to the chest. Videos shared by reporters on the scene show a man lying on his back near SW 3rd and Alder, surrounded by officers and medics attempting to treat him.

A video posted on Facebook shows the minutes leading up to the shooting from across the street. The clip captures several people on a sidewalk in front of a parking garage shouting at each other before the sound of two gunshots go off, accompanied with a puff of smoke.

The shooting coincided with a pro-Trump car caravan winding its way through downtown Portland. It’s not immediately clear if the shooting was directly connected to this protest.

The caravan, dubbed a “Trump cruise rally,” met around 4 pm at the Clackamas Town Center parking lot. In the Facebook page for the pro-Trump event, organizers encouraged attendees to bring firearms with them, as long as they followed concealed carry laws.

After gathering at the shopping mall, several hundred vehicles—many waving large American and Trump 2020 flags—then drove to downtown Portland, where they were met by groups of counter-protesters. Portland police dressed in riot gear stood by as caravan members drove through groups of people in the street. Other drivers jumped out of their cars to confront counter-protesters on the street, some getting into fistfights.

One rally member turns to avoid counter-protesters but another drives right through them hitting several people. pic.twitter.com/i3aLRQg9tJ

— Cory Elia (@TheRealCoryElia) August 30, 2020

This is assault with a deadly weapon, and the cops are ignoring it.

The New York Times coverage, by comparison diminishes the right-wing violence to, “Trump supporters shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks.”

Kenosha

Blaming the victims, this is pretty shocking

pic.twitter.com/XmUmclMlrO

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) August 26, 2020

Blaming the Victims

A 17 y/o white supremacist, Kyle Rittenhouse, drove from Illinois to Wisconsin w/ an AR-15 to TERRORIZE BLM PROTESTORS

He shot several people ended up killing 2. Then is able to casually walk around police as if he didn’t just murder!

WHAT THE FUCK?!pic.twitter.com/eSdQm5eJ4Z

— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) August 26, 2020


The police don’t care, it’s only black people

Just after the shooting, another member of that militia (who was seen in pre-shooting pictures with the killer) described how the police told him they planned to push the protesters out of the park and towards the militia.

Which is exactly what they did. pic.twitter.com/jFsZQK8Dl1

— Lee J. Carter (@carterforva) August 26, 2020

Police were collaborating with right wing militias

There is a life cycle for bad cops.  They go to the academy at a large city, and eventually wash out, either at academy or after becoming an officer, because of incompetence, stupidity, and bigotry.

They go to a smaller municipality and get a job there, because someone else has already paid for their training, and they are cheap, and wash out to smaller, and smaller towns, because the smaller (and more resource limited) a police department is, the more it has to take on a police officer who got the boot from the big show.

At the end of the line, it appears is Kenosha, where following a domestic violence call, a police officer (or officers) shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back, paralyzing him.

It was caught on video, and there have been protests.

The police have responded with violence and provocation.

Last night, a 17-year-old white supremacist,Kyle Rittenhouse, and his AR-15, were driven to Kenosha from Illinois by his mom, he opened fire on the protesters.

The police blamed the victims, describing premeditated murder as, “The use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict.”

The officers literally ignored him as he walked past the cops, gun in hand, and was later arrested by Illinois law enforcement and charged with 1st degree murder.

The police were caught on video planning with with white supremacist militias, including the shooter.

It appears that the white supremacists are a part of Kenosha’s police auxiliary, and play a major role in the department’s legendary corruption:

“Corruption, lies, multiple evidence plantings, and deceit existed throughout the entire Kenosha criminal justice system,” concluded one report, commissioned by the Wisconsin state Supreme Court in 2017 after officers allegedly lied and planted evidence in a murder case.

Of course, this may not matter to the “Silent Majority” that Donald Trump is so enthusiastic about, but this is already hitting them, because the Milwaukee Bucks are  boycotting Game 5 of their playoff series vs. The Orlando Magic in protest. (They should be calling it a strike)

The boycott has since expanded to include NBA playoff games between Houston & Oklahoma City, and the Los Angeles & Portland, as well as games in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the WNBA.

All those folks who freaked out over Colin Kaepernick, including the orange inverted traffic cone, can bite my shiny metal ass over this one.

In refusing to respond in a serious manner to a very real problem, they have made more extreme actions, and more extreme protests, inevitable.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

Kevin Alfaro was at a Black Lives Matter protest in Nutley, New Jersey, when his ordeal began.

The anti-racism demonstration, prompted by the police killing of George Floyd, was met by a group of mostly white counter-protesters, some chanting “all lives matter”, and Alfaro felt the police were treating the rightwing crowd favorably.

In a climate where anti-racism protesters have been met with violence from police, Alfaro took a photo of one officer, and posted it to Twitter. “If anyone knows who this bitch is, throw his info under this tweet,” Alfaro wrote.

………

Alfaro had been charged with cyber-harassment, a fourth-degree felony, and a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to 18 months.

It fit a pattern. Since protests against racism and police brutality began protesters across the country have been hit with punitive, felony charges for acts of civil disobedience, in what civil rights experts say is a “suppression tactic” aimed at quashing the anti-racism movement.

In New York City, a man was charged after allegedly shouting through a loudspeaker in a police officer’s ear. In Miami, an activist was hit with a strong-arm robbery charge after being accused of stealing pro-Donald Trump flags. Perhaps the most egregious case is in Utah, where a group faces up to life in prison after allegedly throwing paint on a building.

………

In Salt Lake City, Utah, police say Madalena McNeil bought red paint at a Home Depot before she and three other activists threw it on a district attorney’s office, and broke windows, during a 9 July protest.

The group was charged with felony criminal mischief and riot charges, and prosecutors added a “charging enhancement” claiming the protesters operated as a gang. That means the group could face life in prison.

The prosecutors and the cops are using their positions and abusing the law to prevent scrutiny of their actions.

It is whistle-blower retaliation, and in many places it is a crime, though no one will ever be charged, since those making the decision are those who would be targeted.

What the F%$#?

What the hell is going on in Chicago?

Hundreds of people swept through the Magnificent Mile and other parts of downtown Chicago early Monday, smashing windows, looting stores and confronting police after officers shot a suspect in Englewood hours earlier.

The mayhem marked the second time since late May that the city’s upscale shopping district has been targeted by looters amid unrest, reigniting the debate over policing as city leaders continued to point fingers and downtown again was shut down overnight heading to Tuesday.

As businesses owners boarded up shops and braced for the possibility of additional looting, some cautioned against simplifying the situation or blaming any single issue.

“It’s not just people looting,” said Patsy Mullins, whose Gold Coast store, Accessorize, was completely emptied. “Let’s dig to the root of the problem, let’s not look at the surface. … We need to get to the bottom of this. Otherwise, well, this problem will never be solved and it will continue again and again.”

City officials said the seeds for the crime spree were sown on social media Sunday afternoon, after officers shot and wounded a 20-year-old man who allegedly had fled and fired shots at them.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Monday decried “a false rumor on social media” that police officers killed a 15-year-old boy. That led residents to clash with police officers in Englewood and prompted calls to head toward downtown.

Needless to say, racist dirt-bags and senior Chicago police officials (but I repeat myself) have been quick to accuse the Mayor and the new DA of coddling “troublemakers”.

“This was not an organized protest,” Chicago police Superintendent David Brown said. “Rather, this was an incident of pure criminality. This was an act of violence against our police officers and against our city.”

Black Lives Matter Chicago, which protested outside a Near South Side police precinct Monday night, blasted Lightfoot for accepting the police version of events and not doing more to institute reforms. The organization suggested the man was right to flee authorities, given the department’s history of racism and abusive tactics.

“In a predictable and unfortunate move, she did not take this time to criticize her officers for shooting yet another Black man,” the organization’s statement read. “Lightfoot instead spent her time attacking ‘looters.’ The mayor clearly has not learned anything since May, and she would be wise to understand that the people will keep rising up until the CPD is abolished and our Black communities are fully invested in.”

On the bright side, Chicago protesters have learned an important lesson:  Hold your protests in THEIR neighborhood, not YOUR neighborhood.

Cops are not going to drop a bomb on the Magnificent Mile and let the neighborhood burn down.