Documented gang members fuel riot in Anaheim

Residents of Anaheim, California, are justifiably outraged after police officers in their city shooting an unarmed man in the back of the head. Here's how the Associated Press reports what took place last night at the community-led protest against police violence:

Authorities say as many as 1,000 demonstrators surged through downtown in the Southern California city Tuesday night, smashing windows on 20 businesses and setting trash fires. Police and patrol cars were pelted with rocks and bottles. Hundreds of police used batons, pepper balls and beanbag rounds.

It's interesting, isn't it, that while police "were pelted with rocks and bottles" by protesters, there's no mention of those protesters in turn being "hit with batons and shot with pepper ball and beanbag rounds." The police, according to the reporting, simply "used" those weapons. Who they used them against is implied, certainly, but spelling out that they used them against living, breathing people puts the state-sanctioned violence against the community they claim to protect appear on par with the violence reportedly undertaken by members of the community against the state-sanctioned perpetrators.

Meanwhile, here's the official explanation of why Anaheim police felt the need to execute an unarmed man in broad daylight:

According to the police union, officers saw "the documented gang member" who was holding a "concealed object in his front waistband with both hands." Diaz then took off running, only to pull the object from his waistband and turn toward the officers.

"Feeling that Diaz was drawing a weapon, the officer opened fire on Diaz to stop the threat," said Kerry Condon, the association's president.

Officers reported that Diaz tossed away items as he ran, but no gun has been recovered.

In summary, it's basically okay to murder a man by shooting him in the back of the head so long as he's a "documented gang member." But don't get any ideas: not all gangs are created equal.

LAPD takes on the Chalk Bloc

What started out as a night of art, fun and food trucks ended with Los Angeles police creating a riot scene, assaulting unarmed protesters and firing rubber bullets seemingly at random into a crowd of bystanders, all -- ostensibly -- because people were "vandalizing the sidewalk and privately owned buildings [by] writing in chalk," according to a spokeswoman for the LAPD.

That, friends, is what the LAPD says justified the department deploying helicopters with searchlights and more than 140 officers in riot gear. That is what justified officers shoving protesters and random pedestrians and firing potentially lethal "non-lethal" rounds into a crowd of civilians: people drawing in public spaces.

The message to the proles: Don't bring chalk to a gun fight.

Like a lot of people caught up in the commotion Thursday night, I didn't intend to get involved in a standoff with police. With the hours I work, I figured I had already missed all the subversive chalking, so I went straight from my office to an Occupy LA bail fundraiser instead -- except when I go there, I found it was just me and the woman taking donations at the door. After milling about and staring at my phone for 15 minutes, I headed back outside and saw a helicopter shining a spotlight a few blocks away. I put two and two together.

With the police helicopter as my guide, I walked over to the scene of the crime. What I saw was a typical-looking LA crowd milling about an intersection, some people drawing things on the street, others passing joints and doing their part to maintain the constant sweet wafting smell of marijuana that seems to be omnipresent in California. Surrounding this crowd were lines of police menacingly wielding batons and rifles.

Within minutes of my arrival, the police started moving their line, pushing people out of the intersection with reckless macho abandon, roughly pushing people (like me) in the back even as they tried in the midst of all the confusion to comply with the order to leave. Several officers also started firing their weapons into the crowd, which is not a terribly great way to deescalate a situation, particularly when the "non-lethal" rounds one is firing sound exactly like the lethal rounds members of the LAPD are notorious for firing at the people they purport to protect. One man named Charlie (pictured) said he was shot just walking down the sidewalk and that he had no connection to Occupy LA or the dangerously subversive chalking that preceded the tiny cock-waving show of police force. Another man was jumped by police right in front of me, tackled and tasered as they moved the police line. Again, without any apparent cause.

Corporate media coverage will, predictably, focus on injuries allegedly suffered by police from bottles thrown at them by people in the crowd. The people the police attacked will be ignored or, like other victims, blamed for inviting the attack. But there's a plus side: every time a cop brutalizes an innocent bystander, more people are made aware of the sort of state-sanctioned brutality that is a regular feature of life for the lesser privileged in American society. Last night, a lot of people who left their homes expecting a good time full of art and white wine ended up finding themselves in the middle of a police state dodging rubber bullets. That's an experience that can't be replicated by reading a radical political pamphlet.

Police brutality's so hot right now

The Boston Police Department has a union. This union has a newsletter. This newsletter is uproariously terrible, full of diatribes against liberals and multiculturalism that would feel right at home in an AM radio show in 1993. Interestingly enough, it also includes advertisements from those corporations seeking to curry favor with their enforcers, which also functions as a useful list of corporations whose office windows a liberal multiculturalist might -- wink-wink -- want to a throw a brick through.

Here, for instance, is Converse praising the police state with an ad featuring, curiously, the sort of insufferable hipster whose skull the uniformed dipshits producing the newsletter would probably kick the shit out of if they saw him at an Occupy protest:

If you hate yourself and want to extend that hate to the world around you, check out the rest of the issue (the final stab to the gut: it's a PDF).

Quoted for truth

"You might have 100 people in your gang - we have 32,000 people in our gang. It's called the Metropolitan Police."

-- Chief Inspector Ian Kibblewhite, Enfield Police, England (BBC)

(via Lenin's Tomb)

‘If only I’d authorized torture instead of jaywalking’

In the world of politics, accepting responsibility for something means little more than actually saying the words: “I accept full responsibility.” Perhaps the Senate Ethics Committee will hold a few hearings, ask some stern questions and issue a report expressing “disappointment” in a politician’s judgment, but unless one’s caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy, chances are a scandal that might sink your or I will result in little more than an awkward press conference for the cronies on top calling the shots. So it is also with the lesser hacks and scribes in the U.S. justice system, where prosecutors are legally permitted to frame citizens and folks like John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- who undisputedly provided contrived legal justifications for the three strikes of torture, indefinite detention, and preemptive war -- get off with a disapproving look from reliable whitewasher David Margolis and teaching gig. A third strike in the service of expanding state power, you see, is different than a third strike for stealing a “24 pack of beer, candy bars, and a package of ground beef”, which is liable to get a mere civilian 25 years in prison. The state needs its army of sub-par legal scholars and second-rate thinkers to justify its acts to its allies and citizens, and will move to protect its assets accordingly, ensuring the next John Yoos can justify killing suspected terrorists' innocent children without fear of prosecution.

Beyond traditional economic classes, the U.S. like most states has a clearly discernible division between the haves and the have nots: the "have" being power, with those in charge of bailing out banks and bombing nations abiding by an entirely different set of rules than those they govern, which is to be expected in a system that invests in a group of mere humans susceptible to the temptations of power a monopoly on the legal use of force and the right to detain and eliminate enemies without even so much as a show trial. And although the treats its own with a spirit of mercy and forgiveness, not wanting to alienate others within its bureaucracies, those that defy it are treated with vengeance and an unflinching commitment to the harshest letter of the law. Indeed, next time you cross the street remember: unless that blinking white dude is telling you to walk, you risk worse punishment than if you’d written in your capacity as an employee of the U.S. government of the president’s inherent authority to torture and kill anyone in the world.

Here are some other things that will get poor schmucks who don’t have shiny badges, fancy uniforms or Ivy League law degrees more punishment than sanctioning war crimes:

*In Washington, DC, “attempting to engage passers-by in conversation for the purpose of prostitution” in the views of a police officer can get someone -- not a politician, mind you -- a $300 fine and up to six months in prison.

*A first time conviction for engaging in a conspiracy to deal crack cocaine can get someone 27 years in prison. Conspiring to sell cocaine on the streets of U.S. cities to finance a Central American insurgency, on the other hand, will get someone a medal and a pretty sweet pension,

*In Georgia, carrying more than an ounce of marijuana can get you 10 years in prison. Teenagers receiving oral sex without first receiving a signed permission slip from Jesus and at least one of the apostles likewise risk spending a decade behind bars.

*And of course, living in a poor area while being black is still punishable by arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial murder in most jurisdictions.

I fought the law, but . . .

Under the impression that the American justice system treats all who come before it equally? You haven't been paying attention:

JERICHO, Ark. – It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps.

The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

According to the Associated Press, Mr. Payne was unarmed when one of the seven cops -- 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 -- in the courtroom shot him in the back, grazing the finger of another officer. Since this is America, after all, surely there will be some repercussions for this loose cannon unworthy of calling himself one of Jericho's finest . . . right?

Prosecutor Lindsey Fairley said Thursday that he didn't plan to file any felony charges against the officer or Payne. Fairley, reached at his home, said Payne could face a misdemeanor charge stemming from the scuffle, but that would be up to the city's judge. He said he didn't remember the name of the officer who fired the shot.

To recap: The prosecutor has no plans to file charges against the police officer that shot an unarmed man in the back, claiming he doesn't even remember the cop's name, so inconsequential were his actions. The guy complaining about unfair tickets, though? He faces a possible "misdemeanor charge stemming from the scuffle."

America has long had a multi-tiered justice system, with agents of the state and the wealthy and politically connected generally afforded leniency (think of the establishment outcry whenever there's even talk of holding political elites accountable for their actions), while those not fortunate enough to have the right friends, attorneys or occupation fill America's prisons -- which along with missiles seem to be the only thing this country makes anymore. In the past, though, declaring that the state was stabbing -- or shooting -- its citizens in the back with its policies was always intended more as a metaphor than a literal reference.