Police Brutality: A Washington State Patrol Command Officer Is Caught On Video Instructing Fellow Police Officers To Assault Protesters, But Not To “Kill Them.”
In an alarming report the Washington State Patrol (WSP) has issued an apology after a command officer was caught on video telling fellow officers to assault protesters. The officer said:
The Washington State Patrol has apologized after video surfaced of an officer telling his team, “Don’t kill them, but hit them hard,” while preparing to clear protesters from the streets in Seattle’s Capitol Hill on Tuesday evening.
A Washington State Patrol officer was recorded telling his officers to hit protestors hard ahead of a night on patrol in the Seattle area Tuesday.
The officer, who has not been identified, was filmed speaking to others in the patrol group, telling them, “Don’t kill them, but hit them hard.” The video was later shared to social media.
The video, taken shortly before 7:45 p.m. Tuesday by Krystal Marx, executive director of Seattle Pride, and a Burien City Council member and deputy mayor, is alarming. Marx shared the video on Twitter:
In a statement released Wednesday morning, WSP spokesman Chris Loftis said he was “aware of the video and apologizes for the poor choice of words by one of our team leaders preparing his troopers for a possibly confrontational situation.” Loftis said:
WSP is aware of the video and apologizes for the poor choice of words by one our team leaders preparing his troopers for a possibly confrontational situation. We hope the public will accept that apology and we ask for grace and understanding as our troopers are serving in tense situations of danger and difficulty.
They are doing so with courage, commitment and compassion, but not always with perfection. As disappointed as we are that a word choice might obscure that work, we are proud of how our agency and others have worked to protect the rights of free speech and peaceful demonstration throughout this unprecedented period of statewide demonstrations.
A poor choice of words? The officer was instructing his subordinates to “hit them hard” but not hard enough to “kill them.” That’s more than a “poor choice of words” that’s an order to assault peaceful protesters.
Bottom line: A Washington State Patrol command officer is caught on video instructing fellow police officers to assault protesters, but not to “kill them.”
The Nationwide Protests Have Forced The Black Quisling Class To Reveal Themselves As Agents Of The Racial And Economic Status Quo.
“Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was among the worst.”
The aftermath of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis, Minnesota police has created a national political crisis. The revulsion caused by this latest killing caught on camera spawned protests in Minneapolis and all over the country. Black people are the angriest, knowing they are at risk of the same treatment and because most police killings rarely result in convictions.
But the mass actions present a problem for the rulers. Anger boiled beneath the surface after years of the race to the bottom austerity regime, the worsening economic collapse in the wake of the COVID-19 quarantine, and another Democratic presidential primary rigged by that party’s donor class to defeat the prospect of even minimalist reforms.
While black people led the way, they were joined by many white people too. They are also angry about Floyd’s death and are primed to rise up against the injustices that are expanding and becoming more deeply entrenched against them as well. While COVID-19 created a health crisis it also left millions unemployed with nothing but meager benefits and a one-time payment of $1,200.
“White people are also angry about Floyd’s death and are primed to rise up against the injustices.”
When these groups began a nascent campaign of solidarity, the system rose up against them in an effort to delegitimize them all. The story of Floyd’s cruel death began to take a back seat in the corporate media. Suddenly the propagandists who pose as journalists became concerned about the presence of white people in the protests. Who were they? Where were they from? What did they want? Were they “antifa” or anarchists or white supremacists?
They were quickly joined by the political class of black misleaders who did the bidding of their patrons by dismissing the acts of rebellion. St. Paul, Minnesota mayor Melvin Carter fired the first shot when he declared that every arrested protester was not from his state. But in fact the opposite was true, and 85% of arrestees were Minnesotans. Carter sheepishly responded that he had received bad information. The obvious and easily proven inaccuracy makes that assertion highly unlikely.
He and others began using very dangerous talking points. They claimed to grieve for Mr. Floyd and expressed a desire to see justice done while also saying that white protesters were using the demonstrations for nefarious ends. They even evoked the “outside agitator” trope from the bad old days of Jim Crow segregation. They pleaded for peaceful protest or no protest at all and some of them told outright lies.
“They evoked the ‘outside agitator’ trope from the bad old days of Jim Crow.”
Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was among the worst. She accused protesters of disgracing her city, George Floyd’s memory and Martin Luther King’s legacy all in one fell swoop. She told them, “Go home.” According to Madame Mayor every protester was snatching liquor, setting fires and pulling knives on the police. The rebellion was dismissed as criminality and despite any claims of concern for George Floyd, she proclaimed every participant a scoundrel.
For good measure she added, “If you want change in America, go and register to vote!” as if that act has magical qualities to make bad things disappear. Voting usually produces nothing more than mediocre sell outs like Keisha Lance Bottoms. It certainly won’t end police violence.
The heights of the most shameful lies were reserved for Marc Morial, former New Orleans mayor and President of the National Urban League, and Susan Rice, former National Security Adviser. In separate interviews they both accused the Russian government of instigating discontent. “If it is white supremacists, if it is Russians, if it is other foreign actors who’ve tried to exploit the pain and exploit legitimate protests, then this is a new level in our country, and they should be arrested and prosecuted as well,” said the overly dramatic Morial. Rice said the protests were, “Right out of the Russian playbook.”
“Rice and Morial accused the Russian government of instigating discontent.”
It is hard to believe that either of them really believes anything they said. They are opportunists and cynics and they are joined at the hip with the Democrats’ donor class. These black quislings obey everyone except their own people. Their con game is to give a pretense of black empowerment while doing the bidding of others. If that means repeating disproven propaganda, then so be it.
The underlings and their patrons are afraid. They know that if young black and white people find common cause they may march for other reasons too. They may lead general strikes, demand an end to war or try to resurrect the Occupy movement. It is better to cast aspersions now instead of risking needed change that would undermine their positions.
That is why they eagerly establish curfews and say nothing about the police violence against protesters. There are no white supremacists in these actions, and they invoke the dreaded words to stoke fear and confusion. The spontaneous rebellions are but a first step in establishing real grass roots organizing that must focus on police violence, political corruption and a system which puts black people most at risk of dying in a pandemic, being arrested for little or nothing, or earning a starvation wage if any wage at all.
The Black Alliance for Peace campaign, “No Compromise, No Retreat” shows the way. The BAP candidate pledge will expose the likes of Keisha Lance Bottoms. Demanding that they demilitarize the police and investigate all police killings will bring about important organizational work. Their days of using their positions to undermine the popular will end only when a strong organizing apparatus forces them out.
“These black quislings obey everyone except their own people.”
All eyes must be focused on them, and less so on Donald Trump. There is no antifa organization, it is instead a political idea of how to fight fascism. His mutterings about it being a terrorist group should be ignored. His ravings about “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” at the White House trigger panic but black mayors and their friends who seek to divert attention from their own corruption pose far bigger problems.
The misleaders assisted in foisting Joe Biden upon Democratic Party voters. While Trump did his usual routine of ginning up his followers with political red meat, Biden appeared in a black church and spoke of police stopping imaginary knife wielding attackers by aiming to shoot for the legs. This deranged and dangerous nonsense is the result of high level treachery among the black political class and is as dangerous as any Trumpian nonsense.
The joint disparagement of grass roots protest by the misleaders and corporate media prove that it has the potential to bring real change. That is why they become more shrill by the day and it is why the people must act in opposition to them all.
Dr. Gerald Horne On The George Floyd Protests, The Black Freedom Struggle, And Trump’s Expansion Of The US Police State At Home And Around The World.
Historian and author Gerald Horne discusses the US uprisings against police brutality and systemic racism sparked by George Floyd’s killing; the devastating impact of the US government’s decades-old war on the black freedom struggle; the ongoing “Russia-baiting” of the protests; and how, amidst the suffering and repression at home, the U.S. government, in bipartisan fashion, continues to attempt to impose its will on countries abroad, from China to Venezuela.
Guest: Dr. Gerald Horne, Moores Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Author of more than three dozen books, including the forthcoming The Dawning of the Apocalypse.
The FBI Has “No Intelligence” Indicating That “Antifa” Was Involved In Violence Over The Weekend Related To Protests Following The Death Of George Floyd, A 46-Year-Old Black Man Who Died After A White Police Officer Knelt On His Neck For Nearly Nine Minutes, The Nation Reported.
The FBI has collected no intelligence indicating that “antifa” was involved in violence over the weekend related to protests over the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died on May 25 after a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, The Nation reported.
President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr both blamed antifa — a loosely organized left-wing group consisting of anti-fascism activists — for violence linked to a series of protests that took place on Sunday.
Trump announced on Twitter that day that “the United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”
Barr released a statement afterward echoing the president’s sentiments, saying, “The violence instigated and carried out by antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly.”
But according to The Nation, which cited an internal FBI situation report, the bureau’s Washington, DC, field office “has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence” in the violence that took place on Sunday.
The FBI report listed a series of violent acts including instances of bricks being thrown at police officers and a backpack that contained explosives. But based on “CHS [Confidential Human Source] canvassing, open source/social media partner engagement, and liaison,” the bureau had no evidence that those acts were directly linked to antifa, The Nation said.
But the FBI’s report did warn that people associated with a far-right social-media group had “called for far-right provocateurs to attack federal agents” and “use automatic weapons against protesters.”
Politico also reported on Monday that a Department of Homeland Security intelligence note warned law-enforcement officials that a white supremacist channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram encouraged its followers to incite violence to start a race war during the protests.
Citing the FBI, it said that two days after Floyd’s death, the channel “incited followers to engage in violence and start the ‘boogaloo’ — a term used by some violent extremists to refer to the start of a second Civil War — by shooting in a crowd.”
One of the messages in the channel called for potential shooters to “frame the crowd around you” for the violence, the note said, according to Politico.
On May 29, the note said, “suspected anarchist extremists and militia extremists allegedly planned to storm and burn the Minnesota State Capitol.”
NBC News also reported on Monday that Twitter had identified a group posing as an “antifa” organization calling for violence in the protests as actually being linked to the white supremacist group Identity Evropa.
Twitter suspended the account, @ANTIFA_US, after it posted a tweet that incited violence. A company spokesperson also told NBC News that the account violated Twitter’s rules against platform manipulation and spam.
These developments come as protests against racism and police brutality continue across the country. Peaceful demonstrations have taken place in more than 75 cities, though some have spiraled into chaos and deadly violence as law-enforcement officials use heavy-handed crowd-control tactics.
Some protests involved smaller groups looting businesses and, in a few cases, setting fire to buildings and cars.
A number of Republican lawmakers have echoed Trump and Barr in blaming antifa for the more violent demonstrations and called for the US to deploy the military to forcefully subdue them.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida suggested earlier in the day that protesters demonstrating against police brutality are part of antifa and should be hunted down like terrorists.
“Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” Gaetz tweeted. Twitter later flagged the post for violating its rules against glorifying violence but left it up because it determined it was in the “public interest” for the tweet to still be accessible, though users cannot like, retweet, or reply to it.
“We need to have zero tolerance for this destruction,” Cotton wrote, calling protesters “antifa terrorists.”
“And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry — whatever it takes to restore order,” he added. “No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters.”
“No quarter” is a military term that means a commander will not accept the lawful surrender of an enemy combatant and suggests the captive will instead be killed. The practice is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
The Fear Of Black Students And White Savior Ideology In Educators And Policymakers Is Keeping Police In Under-Resourced Schools Despite Their Role In The School-To-Prison Pipeline And The Well-Known Harm To Students.
In the wake of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, police violence has again been brought to the forefront of our country’s discussions as a systemic issue that must be addressed. Over the last 13 years I’ve taught in high schools at Chicago Public Schools, I have lost students to police violence. Every time a Black person is murdered by the police, I, like many others, am outraged. As an educator, I picture my own students, their families, or even my own colleagues being in their place.
Instead of just being upset, why are we as educators not taking an obvious step and escorting police out of our schools?
There is a large body of research that shows that having police in schools negatively impacts student learning and makes kids feel unsafe. It took the murder of Philando Castille in 2016 and George Floyd, but the Minneapolis Public School Board voted last night to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. We have examples in Chicago and across the country of police abusing our students in schools. This includes police tasing a student, body-slamming a 12-year-old, flipping a student’s desk and dragging them across the floor, slapping and kicking a student, and arresting students as young as six years old.
Yet we often brush these off as the actions of ‘one bad cop’ and fail to see the systemic connections to policing, racism, and prison. Outside of schools, politicians make the ‘one bad cop’ argument all the time and then invest millions more into failed policing and criminalization.
We ignore the fact that even though schools across the country need more resources for educating students, policing in school budgets gets hundreds of millions of dollars per year from supposedly cash-strapped states. In Chicago alone, it costs $33 million per year to have the police in our schools. We ignore demands by parents, teachers, and students for more counselors and social workers instead of cops. We ignore the trauma that the police in our schools cause our students. We ignore the fact that nationally nearly 300,000 students were arrested by police in recent school years.
Our students are being charged with crimes that would normally be handled through existing internal disciplinary policies if not for the police presence in schools. These “school crimes” include things like throwing a paper airplane, throwing a baby carrot, wearing sagging pants, and kicking a trash can.
Not only are Black and Brown students more likely to be negatively impacted by police in schools, but our Black and Brown students with physical and mental special needs are even more likely to be harmed by the police in our schools. Despite all of this “investment,” police are not keeping our kids any safer. White Fear, Mismatched Resources And Anecdotes So Why Do We Have Police In Our Schools?
In all of my conversations with friends and colleagues, it comes down to fear. The fear of kids in the school building. People will say things like ‘some schools’ need police. ‘Some schools’ is code for Black schools in low-income areas. The fear of the big Black kid that “looks dangerous.” This trope of dangerous, scary Black people has been around for generations as a legacy of white supremacy and makes some teachers afraid of the kids that they are supposed to teach.
I have taught in high schools for all of my years in CPS. Two of the schools I taught in were in areas that definitely needed more support from the city, both within the school and in the surrounding community. Both of those schools did not have enough resources to support the students academically, socially, and emotionally due to budget cuts and purposeful city disinvestment.
In all of those school buildings, there were very hardworking and dedicated educators and school staff that cared deeply about the students. But there just weren’t enough adults in the building. Not enough teachers, not enough counselors, not enough social workers, not enough nurses, no true restorative justice programs, not enough mentor programs, not enough enrichment, not enough of anything.
The other main argument that police are “needed” in schools is to prevent a school shooter. School shootings unfortunately are a reality that kids, parents, and staff in schools must contend with. But again, emotion and fear cloud actual data. The police don’t help prevent school shootings either.
Part of growing up is, unfortunately, about making poor choices at times. Sometimes conflicts arise in schools between students. In schools lacking resources and located in communities that have been intentionally deprived of resources, the police are used to stop these conflicts. Instead of students receiving the conflict resolution support that they desperately need, their hands are zip tied or handcuffed and they are arrested. Our kids need more social emotional support, NOT police.
In white culture especially, people are indoctrinated to believe that the police are there to keep you safe. That is why the thought of getting police out of schools is so hard for many educators. Some educators will tell a story about officer so-and-so who works in their school and speak about how nice of a person that officer is and how loved that officer is. It is true there can be nice police officers, but I am not talking about your one nice anecdotal example, I am talking systemically. The police in Black and Brown schools harm Black and Brown kids, according to research not anecdotes. In just a four year period, the police officers assigned to be in Chicago Public Schools accumulated more than $2 million in misconduct settlements.
We need to think differently about what our students need. Black and Brown kids in more challenging situations do not need police and discipline to make them “act right.” Students need smaller class sizes, counselors, social workers, mental health services, conflict resolution support, homeless coordinators, talking circles, restorative justice, enrichment opportunities, and mentors to help them.
It feels disingenuous to me when people but educators specifically get upset when a Black person is murdered by the police but are then okay with police being in our schools. Many are screaming out for a change to policing in America. Billions of dollars have been invested in policing, not educating our students. We need to think differently. Let’s take a major step and invest that money in our students. We need to do right by our students. We need to internalize the research that police in schools harm kids instead of internalizing racism. We need to get police the hell out of our schools.
If you are interested in helping to get the police out of our schools, a group of CPS students called Students Strike Back created this form that will send an email to Janice Jackson head of CPS. There is also a Chicago Police Department School Resource Officer Survey created by CPS that is open until Monday June 8th. You can also email the CPS Board of Education, sign up to speak at the CPS Board of Ed. meetings and email the mayor’s office. Here is a link to over forty more articles that you could reference when you contact others about this.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin And Others Say The Money Creates Ethical Conflicts When Police Are Prosecuted For Misconduct.
A coalition of four current and former district attorneys called on the State Bar of California on Monday to ban law enforcement unions from funding district attorney campaigns, saying the contributions represent a conflict of interest that must be urgently addressed in the wake of recent police killings of Black men and women.
In a letter to the state bar association, the reform-minded district attorneys said their colleagues cannot ethically prosecute police officers if they are receiving funds and endorsements from unions that finance those officers’ legal expenses.
“District Attorneys will undoubtedly review use of force incidents involving police officers,” San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin said in a statement. “When they do, the financial and political support of these unions should not be allowed to influence that decision making.”
The role of law enforcement unions as deep-pocketed bulwarks against reform has come under increasing scrutiny in the last week after Bob Kroll, head of the Minneapolis police union, said the four officers involved in George Floyd’s killing last week were “terminated without due process” and people are ignoring Floyd’s “violent criminal history.”
Police unions elsewhere in the country have also faced criticism. New York City’s second-largest police union’s Twitter account was temporarily disabled this week after it disclosed an arrest report—including personal information—of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter.
Boudin joined three other current and former Northern California DAs—Diana Becton of Contra Costa County, Tori Verber Salazar of San Joaquin County, and the former San Francisco DA George Gascón—in calling for the bar to change to its ethics rules.
Donna Hershkowitz, the interim executive director of the state bar, which licenses and regulates over 250,000 lawyers, said in a statement Monday that the bar had received the letter and is “reviewing the request carefully.”
But a ban on direct campaign contributions will have relatively little effect on the influence of police unions, said Robert Stern, a former attorney who has worked extensively on California campaign finance reform. He noted that the majority of their money is funneled through political action committees, or PACs, that are not subject to contribution limits.
The Los Angeles police union (LAPPL), through two PACs, spent $1 million toward defeating Gascón, who is opposing incumbent Jackie Lacey in a November runoff election for district attorney. Law enforcement groups also spent over $650,000 to oppose Boudin’s contentious run for San Francisco’s top prosecutor role.
On Monday, the LAPPL focused its anger on Boudin and Gascón, accusing them in a statement of “exploiting the tragic and horrific death of George Floyd.” The union said there is no similar proposal to eliminate contributions from other special interest groups, including defense and civil attorneys.
“It’s nothing more than opportunism, they very well know that the overwhelming majority that is spent in these types of races is from independent expenditures,” Tom Saggau, an LAPPL spokesperson, told The Appeal.
Stern said the bar is unlikely to regulate union spending or political support and a move to do so could run afoul of the First Amendment if taken to court.
“It’s more of moral suasion than it would be law, I just don’t see how the unions would be stopped from doing it,” said Stern, who served as the first general counsel of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.
Salazar suggested the rule would help prosecutors restore trust with the public. “The first step to earning that trust back is ensuring the independence of county prosecutors is beyond reproach,” she said Monday in a statement.
After More Than A Week Of Intense Mass Protests, The US Capital Is Awash With Thousands Of National Guard Troops And A Bevy Of Military Equipment.
Spotted around the city have been spy planes and drones, tilt-rotor aircraft and even a nuclear detection helicopter. However, the mass deployment follows one of the most peaceful protest days yet.
After five days of mass protests in Washington, DC, against police brutality and the in-custody death of black Minnesota man George Floyd last week, US President Donald Trump has made an almost unprecedented show of force by deploying thousands of troops in the nation’s capital, even as more peaceful protests have come in the wake of rioting and looting.
There are NO protestors in DC this morning. These heavily armed “federal forces” assembled in formation between 515-530am when there also were no prostestors in DC. They are currently “protecting” empty streets
On Saturday and Sunday, numerous clashes between protesters and police broke out, resulting in liberal use of pepper spray and flash bang grenades and the rushing of military police to bolster DC Metropolitan Police ranks. Rioting and looting followed at night, resulting in a curfew and activation of the city’s National Guard.
Trump has reportedly named the effort “Operation Themis,” after the Greek god of law and order whose blindfolded statue is also known colloquially as “lady justice.” One cannot help but be reminded of author Anatole France quipping that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
According to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, the soldiers carried pepper spray, batons and riot gear while occupying areas around the city, but not live ammunition. However, an unnamed defense official told Stars and Stripes Wednesday that a small number of troops did carry pistols and long rifles.
Two blocks north of the White House on Wednesday morning were also stationed several dozen members of Bureau of Prisons Crisis Management Teams, better known as prison riot control cops. However, the officers refused to identify their affiliation to any passers-by or to the press.
Good morning from Washington where the perimeter around the White House has been expanded - guarded by what we believe are federal prison riot control officers
In one incident, hundreds of protesters were driven uptown by police, where residents who opened their doors to the demonstrators were raided by the police, including one home that got a tear gas canister thrown into it and another that sheltered close to 100 protesters until the curfew was lifted. In another, several National Guard helicopters hovered just 50 feet above protesters, attempting to use the “blade wash” from the rotors to demoralize them – a tactic used by US troops against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the DC National Guard has now said it is investigating the use of.
Krystal Marx
