Once the people are physically under attack unprovoked, I can no longer advocate pacifism. There comes a point where the people are justified in fighting back.

Now is a nasty repeat of the past
by Ed Kociela | May 6 2007 - 9:20am |

It's all familiar ground, bloodsoaked and stained.

Protesters are being beaten in the streets. A sitting president lies through his teeth while his vice president fills his pockets. Our children are dying on a far-off battlefield.

But, who's to care?

Not the chicken hawks like the president and his president of vice, who dodged the war 40 years ago. Not the Congress, which has betrayed the people they swore to serve.

This is all so 1968-ish all we need is a political convention in Chicago where they beat the opposition to death, then claimed their votes from the graveyard.

The film footage from last weekend's marches -- particularly in L.A. where the cops in heavy armor severely beat a crowd of Hispanics who were only asking for a fair shake -- was akin to the police abuses that led to Kent State in Ohio, where National Guard soldiers opened fire on a crowd of students in 1970, killing four. Only this time, the cops were swinging batons and firing rubber bullets into crowds that included women and children. Little children.

It was ugly then, it's ugly now. Last November, the people of this country got together behind a Democratic Party that promised an end to the Bush War.

Instead, the gutless wonders made a symbolic vote, retreated and are now negotiating with a president whose signature could have saved God knows how many lives over there in the desert sand. But, he didn't.

Instead, he wants to add to the cadre of 50,000 hired killers from the American mercenary organization called Blackwater.

The mercs answer to nobody and have stripped the United States of more than $300 million since they were awarded a no-bid contract in 2003 as a private security force. Gun-toting mercs from this same company also patrolled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. We could have done a lot more with that $300 million than putting killers on the road in Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially if you see how much has not been accomplished during this mission.

It's all in shambles. The moral compass of this country was thrown out the window the minute this guy was sworn into office and, we expect a gaggle of pandering invertebrates elected to Congress to change the course.

The media is doing no better, pretty much deciding that the only viable candidates are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the left and Rudy Giuliani and John McCain on the right.

It was no different in 1968 when Hubert Humphrey ran against Richard Nixon.

We were all doomed in that election no matter the outcome.

And, here we sit, in that same place today.

Demand more from these suits who sit in power. Being passive is exactly how we got here. Expect more from them. We've acquiesced to mediocrity for too long.

And keep the pressure ratcheted high with telephone calls and e-mails. Don't go down without a fight.

i dunno, its got its plusses. obviously theres too many people and too few freeway lanes there. but if you want some good food and sunshine and culture and lower prices for housing than the bay, its got stuff to offer.

"... Setting up the population to believe that law enforcement is the enemy is a dangerous game," union President Robert Baker wrote in a letter Friday. "It provokes a lethal us-against-them, anti-law enforcement mentality that encourages violence against police officers."

You reap as you sow, motherfucker.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hist...Department

Like NWA said!

but what about good Old New York PD?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_...Department

Some allegations of scandal within NYPD are as follows:

* In 1970, police officer Frank Serpico and other officers, testified before the Knapp Commission about the corruption he witnessed in the department. The Commission's findings led to sweeping changes within the department.[citation needed]

* In August 1988, a riot erupted in Alphabet City's Tompkins Square Park in the East Village of Manhattan when police attempted to enforce a newly-passed curfew for the park. Bystanders, artists, residents, homeless people and political activists were caught up in the police action that took place on the night of August 6th and the early morning of August 7th. The event has become known as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot.[1]

* In 1993, Mayor David Dinkins appointed the Mollen Commission, chaired by Milton Mollen, to investigate corruption in the department. The commission found that "Today's corruption is not the corruption of Knapp Commission days. Corruption then was largely a corruption of accommodation, of criminals and police officers giving and taking bribes, buying and selling protection. Corruption was, in its essence, consensual. Today's corruption is characterized by brutality, theft, abuse of authority and active police criminality."[citation needed]

* On December 22, 1994, 29-year old Anthony Baez was choked to death by Police Officer Francis X. Livoti in the University Heights section of the Bronx. In 1998 Livoti was convicted of violating Baez' civil rights, and two other officers were convicted of lying on the witness stand in the trial of Livoti.[3]

* On August 9, 1997, Police Officer Justin Volpe in Brooklyn brutalized Abner Louima with a broken broom handle in the 70th Precinct bathroom. Officer Volpe eventually pled guilty and received a sentence of 30 years in federal prison. Other officers were also implicated and convicted on charges stemming from the initial cover-up.[citation needed]

* On February 4, 1999, members of the Street Crime Unit shot Amadou Bailo Diallo, an unarmed man who was standing in the lobby of a Bronx apartment building after not following police instructions. The officers fired 41 rounds, striking the man 19 times. [4]. The shooting stemmed from a misunderstanding in which officers believed Diallo was reaching for a weapon (he was reaching for his wallet which the officers had mistaken for a weapon) while a member of the unit tripped and appeared to be shot as he fell down the stairs. As a result, the four officers involved in the shooting were acquitted of wrongdoing on February 25, 2000.[citation needed]

* On August 30, 1999, 31-year old Hasidic Jew Gidone Busch was fatally shot 12 to 14 times after he lunged at police with a hammer on a Boro Park, Brooklyn street. In 2003, a federal jury ruled the shooting justified.[5]

* On March 16, 2000, undercover narcotics detectives shot Patrick Dorismond to death during a scuffle on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The detectives had approached Dorismond, an unarmed security guard, and asked to purchase drugs. He attacked the undercover officer, angry that he was seen as drug dealer and he was killed with one shot by the officer in self-defense.[citation needed]

* On May 22, 2003, 43-year old Ousmane Zongo an immigrant from Burkina Faso was shot four times by Police Officer Bryan Conroy in a Chelsea warehouse. In 2005 Conroy was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and sentenced to 5 years probation. In 2006 the city awarded the family of Zongo $3 million in a wrongful death suit.[6]

* On January 24, 2004, Housing Bureau officer Richard Neri, Jr. accidentally shot to death Timothy Stansbury, a 19-year-old black man who was trespassing on the roof landing of a Bedford-Stuyvesant housing project. Mr. Stansbury was unarmed but he apparently startled Officer Neri when he opened the roof door and came upon Neri. Neri discharged his service firearm mortally wounding Mr. Stansbury. Although Commissioner Kelly, in a rush to judgement in order to appease the black community, stated that the shooting appeared "unjustified", a Brooklyn jury found that no criminal act occurred and that the event was, in fact, a tragic accident. Officer Neri was cleared of all charges.[7]

* On December 17, 2005, an article in The New York Times revealed that it had obtained videotapes showing the New York Police Department conducting surveillance by planting undercover officers to secretly infiltrate and monitor anti-war protests, bike rallies, and even a vigil for a dead cyclist. The footage the Times obtained showed officers holding protest signs, carrying flowers with mourners, riding their bicycles – and videotaping people at events. [8]

* On November 25, 2006, police officers shot and killed a man and wounded two of his companions, one critically, outside of the Kalua Cabaret in Queens. None of the men were armed. The man was attending his bachelor party the night before his wedding. Sean Bell, drunk and driving a vehicle, allegedly rammed his vehicle into an undercover officer and hit an unmarked NYPD minivan, prompting undercover NYPD officers to fire fifty rounds into Bell's car. Bullets startled Port Authority police officers who were on a shuttle train to nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport.[citation needed] An undercover officer claims he heard one of the unarmed man's companions threaten to get his gun to settle a fight with another person. [9]

> I remember a big New Years event on the eve of '96-'97 which took place ant the Grand Olympic Stadium in downtown LA. Someone was passing out *legal* samples of something which closely resembled GHB under the brand name FX or something. Some dumb kids drank a few too many of those and passed out. Though paramedics got the situation under control ans assured the LAPD that there was no reason for further concern, they marched in there just before midnight in riot gear and sent 15.000 partiers onto the streets of LA. They shot at people with rubber covered bullets for no reason at all. Witnesses saw one cop shoot which must have been a sixteen year old girl in the back, for no reason whatsoever. Many abuses were reported. People who were videotaping had their cameras either confiscating or smashed. It was the most irresponsible and dangerous "official" conduct which I've ever witnessed in person, so send 15.000 potentially inebriated partiers onto the streets of LA just before midnight. It seemed like an intentional assault upon ordinary citizens. Ironically, the event was Called 7th Heaven. I'll never forget it, that's for sure.

Yep. NYE 96/97. I think that was the first "Together As One" ... or maybe Circa. But it was NYE '97, and I was supposed to go to it. Drove up, saw the "unpleasantness" from the freeway, and peeled out, instead, to go to a house party in Pasadena. Friends who were there said that one cop would tell everyone to head out *one* way, then other cops would tell everyone to turn around and go back the *first* way, and when people started acting panicked or puzzled, they kicked them and hit them and shot at them.

Anybody who has *ever* been a raver in LA has seen this side of the LAPD. They routinely beat the crap out of people for no reason, then lie and say "somebody threw a bottle" or (after closing the exits or giving impossible and conflicting directions) the "crowd failed to disperse when ordered."

And the saps out there, watching their TVs, *believe* this shit. And the journalists dutifully and lazily repeat whatever the LAPD-sanctioned press release says. And the citizens of LA thank God for their diligent police force, keeping the city safe from lowlifes (like their own kids.)

Meanwhile, the gang shootings continue, over in the part of town where the LAPD doesn't like to go. It's *so* much easier to just roust confused basically lawabiding citizens.

Oh well. Maybe now that the LAPD has taken to beating *reporters* instead of just brown people and adolescents with no credibility, the info climate in LA will change.

I remember the night the LAPD closed down an absolutely peaceful party at Dream Theater in Hollywood, around midnight. Nothing worse was going on than maybe 500 kids standing in line in a parking lot, and 300 more inside, in a legal permitted venue, dancing. They were a little short-handed checking people in, but the crowd outside was peaceful and convivial, doing nothing wrong. You could hear the bass in the parking lot, but it was a long way from godawful. The neighbors would have had to walk over and stand *in* the parking lot to be "offended" ... (that's another trick -- they say they got "noise complaints", but you can never find out who made them, or even if they were ever actually made.)

To "pacify" an already utterly peaceful crowd, the LAPD showed up with two choppers, maybe twenty bike cops, and twelve squad cars. Most of the cops were in riot gear. The mostly naive middle-class and upper-middle-class college-kid crowd (largely Asian and Persian kids from UCLA and sweet little geeks from Harvey Mudd and Cal Tech) were completely baffled. As everyone filed out, silently, I remember two cops waiting at the entrance to the parking lot, armed with nightsticks. The younger one was twitching like somebody coming off a three-day speed run, smacking his hand with the nightstick, screaming, "GO ON! DO YOU **BELIEVE** THIS SHIT??? DO YOU KNOW HOW **STUPID** YOU LOOK, FAGS?!?! *ONE* OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS THROW A BOTTLE! C'MON!!! ONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS THROW A BOTTLE!!!! MAKE MY MOTHERFUCKING DAY!!!"

People just looked at him like he was insane. No one took him up on his offer; in fact, he began receiving looks of pity. He seemed twenty times more the Drug-Fueled Crazy than *any* person at the party. But a less-patrician crowd might well have responded to his insults and taken him up on the offer. (It's funny ... although hip-hop crowds get rousted too, the police are *far* less likely to be verbally abusive, to try to stir shit up this way, at hip-hop events.)

It's been this way in LA for as long as I can remember. They pulled the same things at the anti-war demonstration in Century City in (I think) 1966 or 1967. I got knocked over and hit there; many friends were arrested. And we were chased with batons and beaten when the cops decided to break up a legal and permitted John Mayall concert on Venice Beach in 1968. The cops arrested a guy for public drunkenness, and when people stood up to see what was going on, they declared the concert a "riot" and went batshit on the crowd.

But lately, it seems, they're getting worse.

They didn't used to wail on the press.

In this city, the worst elements of the LAPD are turning it into little more than the best-financed most-politically-protected street gang in town. If there's ever a Katrina-style disaster in this town, I doubt that the LAPD will conduct themselves as friends to the average citizen. I *know* there are good cops in LA ... but they're about as much help right now as the Good Germans.

> FYI: In Holland and Belgium there's a law (last time I checked) which intends to prevent putting inebriated people onto the streets. Whenever a non-permitted party is busted where more than 50 people attend, it is considered safer in the interest of the general tax-paying public to allow the party to continue. quite logical, isn't it? Well strangely this logic doesn't apply to US law enforcement. You might get arrested though for having an open alcohol container in your car, even if you don't test positive for alcohol consumption. Talk about double standards ey?

Oh, yeah ... *ANYONE* who believes that parties are broken up for reasons of "public safety" is extremely naive.

Parties are broken up because ........... they hate our freedom. ;->

(Essentially, that's true.)

Anecdotally, one of the reasons the San Bernardino Sheriff is so rough on dance parties on public land is because he "once had to clean up after a fatal accident after one of these parties." <sob, sob> Turns out the accident to which he refers *occurred* because he and his minions shut down a desert rager at 1AM, turning hundreds of slightly-to-moderately inebriated kids out onto the unmarked desert roads in the middle of the dark night ... and some kids didn't see the edge of a cliff in time.

Hey Dimi, we were at the Same New Years Party!

one point is that this is LAPD
has been and will continue to be
by the way sent

i dont turn a blind eye...i was in their face...got charged with resisting

but bottom line is we need to change this fu d up policenazi thing.....one way is call em...photo them and sue them....
it has to come from the top on down to montior these guys....its in the training

<<The local American Civil Liberties Union branch has stood by its endorsement of a second five-year term for Bratton, however. >>

Way to put the pressure on, dipshits!

These are the same simpering authoritarians who think homeless people have a "right" to live on a piece of cardboard and will sue the city to protect it.

"This kind of noxious police brutality happens every day in L.A. The only difference this time is that it was video’ed multiple times, including by tv stations, so Bratton couldn’t deny it happened. That they will launch a phony investigation where no cop is disciplined, much less goes to prison, is a given."

Such is the same song and dance for ANY metroPD.