-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [BRC-NEWS] 90s Were Decade of Police Brutality Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 20:01:15 -0400 From: Brian Sheppard <bakunin at anarcho.zzn.com> To: brc-news at lists.tao.ca
June 2000
90s Were Decade of Police Brutality [1,108 Words]
By Brian Oliver Sheppard <bakunin at anarcho.zzn.com>
The 1990s will be remembered by many as the beginning of the New Economy, the start of the Internet Age, and as the decade that saw the Cold War crumble as the former Soviet Union split into separate countries and abolished its previous policies. But for many in the United States, it was also a decade of egregious police misconduct. Although US Attorney General Janet Reno admitted in a press conference in April, 1995, that "there is a problem" with excessive use of force by police, much remains to be done to combat this problem. The conduct of the police in the United States, and of the justice system in general, is attracting increasingly critical attention not only from the domestic population, but from the international community as well.
Data on police brutality is hard to come by. Though the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 charged the US Justice Department with collecting national statistics on complaints of police misconduct, the organization has failed to comply, according to Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch recently published the report "Shielded From Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States," sampling the conduct of 14 major city police departments between 1995 and 1998. The results are not so encouraging, and in fact many spokespeople from the analyzed police departments "resorted to name-calling and defensiveness" in response to the report, according to Human Rights Watch. This follows a pattern of cover-up and rationalization by police departments, the report indicates. "Police or public officials greet each new report of brutality with denials or explain that the act was an aberration," the report claims, "while the administrative and criminal systems that should deter these abuses by holding officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them impunity."
Some accounts of police brutality were so sensational that even the media could not help but notice. An overview of the major accounts of police, and justice system, abuse, wrongful death, and travesty follows. This timeline does not mean demean or ignore any cases not here mentioned. Rather, its purpose is to provide a sampling of the major events that were picked up by the media throughout the decade that caused public skepticism to progress to its current levels (In the interest of continuity, one event from the year 2000 is also noted):
o March, 1991: Rodney King is beaten with 56 baton strokes, is kicked in the head, torso, and groin, and is stunned with a Taser gun by at least 4 white officers after a high speed chase. The incident is captured on video. The Christopher Commission report quotes an officer saying "[H]e pissed us off, so I guess he needs an ambulance now...." over his squad car radio after the beating. The State of California acquits the four white officers.
o November, 1992: Undercover African-American officer Derwin Pannel is shot by three white police officers in New York City. Pannel was making an arrest in plain clothes but was thought to be assaulting someone.
o June, 1993: 30 year-old African-American Archie Elliott is handcuffed and placed in custody in a police cruiser in Prince George County, Maryland. He is shot at 22 times while cuffed. Officers say he was resisting arrest. 14 bullets hit him, killing him.
o August, 1994: Undercover officer Desmond Robinson is shot five times by white off-duty officer Peter Del Debbio in New York City. Robinson is African-American and is in plain clothes at the time. Del Debbio said he thought Robinson was involved in a crime since he was carrying a gun.
o October, 1995: Jonny Gammage, cousin of pro football player Ray Seals, is killed by New Jersey police officer John Vojtas during a "routine" traffic stop. Gammage is ordered out of his car, when a police officer subdues him after suspecting the Jaguar Gammage is driving is stolen (the Jaguar was Gammage's). The officer crushes Gammage's trachea, killing him. Officer Vojtas is promoted to Sergeant and is acquitted of murder.
o June, 1996: African-American Aswan Watson is shot 18 times while sitting unarmed in a stolen car in Brooklyn. Watson is killed. Officers are acquitted of charges in 1997.
o July, 1996: 26 year-old African-American Nathaniel Levi Gaines, Jr., a Navy Gulf War veteran, is shot in the back by a New York City police officer. He is unarmed. This same month, 29 year-old Anthony Baez, a man of Puerto Rican descent, is put in a chokehold and strangled to death by another New York City police officer after Baez allegedly threw a football that hit a patrol car.
o April, 1997: An African-American woman, Caroline Sue Botticher, is shot and killed after police fire 22 rounds into her vehicle in West Charlotte, North Carolina. She had failed to stop at a police checkpoint. She is unarmed.
o June, 1997: geronimo ji Jaga (preferred capitalization), aka Geronimo Pratt, is released from jail after serving 27 years on a murder conviction that is later overturned. New evidence is found that exonerates him. He is an ex-Black Panther leader and was sentenced to life in 1972.
o August, 1997: At least 4 officers are charged with beating and sexually assaulting Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in the Bronx of New York. Officer Justin Volpe is charged with forcing a wooden stick into Louima's rectum.
o December, 1997: New York police officers shoot and kill William J. Whitfield III, an African-American man, in a supermarket. He is unarmed. Police say that they thought he was reaching for a gun. Later it is determined that he was reaching for his keys.
o December, 1998: Tyisha Shenee Miller, a 19 year old African-American woman, is killed by Riverside, California, police in a fusillade of 27 bullets as she sits in a state of near unconsciousness in her stranded vehicle. She had had a seizure and the police were called to assist her.
o February, 1999: Immigrant Amadou Diallo is killed in a hail of 41 bullets fired by police outside his Bronx apartment. Diallo is unarmed and is reaching for his wallet when the firing begins. Later, all four officers are acquitted by the state of charges against them.
o October, 1999: Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge signs death warrant for ex- Black Panther and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. After coming within two months of facing state execution, Abu-Jamal is granted a stay of execution by a federal judge. Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and a journalist, sits on death row to this day.
o March, 2000: Unarmed security guard Patrick Dorismond is shot to death by an undercover New York City police officer. The officer, in plain clothes, approached Dorismond, wanting to buy drugs.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Brian Oliver Sheppard.
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