www.youtube.com/watch

Contact:
- COPWACTH Los Angeles Voice Mail - (562) 252-8501;
website - www.copwatchla.org
- Youth Justice Coalition: www.myspace.com/freela freelanow@yahoo.com (323)235-4243
- October 22nd Coalition: www.myspace.com/octo...

Attorney B. Kwaku Duren (also Chair, New Black Panther Vanguard Movement) can be reached at kwaku@globalpanther.com or (323) 290-6146 [office] or (310) 780-6739 [cell phone]

On August 11th, 2006, William Cardenas, 24 from Hollywood, California was arrested and brutally beaten by the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. The cops would have gotten away with the beating if it wasn't for a neighbor who video-taped the beating on her camera.

William Cardenas was still arrested and is still being charged with 2 counts of Penal Code 69, which is a felony "use of violence or threat of violence to prevent an officer from performing their duty." The District Attorney's Office is also adding a one year "gang" enhancement, alleging that his conduct was intended to benefit his alleged gang membership. However, William doesn't have a history of gang involvement until now, or since the LAPD put it on his record.

In the video of the arrest, you can see two white cops, Patrick Farrell and Alexander Schlege, on top of William. Schlege held William down and held his hands while Farell choked William with his knee and punched him several times with a full fist into the side of his face. Throughout the police assault, you can clearly hear Cardenas struggling to get words out of his mouth that he was choking and couldn't breathe yet the blows from Farrell continue.

Joaquin Cienfuegos, an organizer with Cop Watch Los Angeles stated, "We feel that these are experiences that dehumanize people. They are taking away the human rights or William Cardenas, and therefore we do not see the police as 'officers of the law' or give them any respect -- since this video supports the view that they are vicious animals who treat us as their prey."

For most young working class people of color this is not new. We get stopped, harassed, brutalized, and sometimes even killed by the police in our communities simply due to the color of our skin, where we live, or how we dress and look. We are stopped and humiliated for looking a certain way; they take pictures of us and we are added to the gang database; and baseless "gang enhancements" are charged by the District Attorney's office. Most of the time, police actions do not get caught on camera, and are therefore hidden from the public.

A member from Cop Watch Los Angeles who wishes to remain anonymous states, "We are building a movement, along with other community organizations to stop this brutality and murder - which is nothing more than neo-colonialism - a crime against humanity. We need to defend our communities and ourselves from these racist policies and what we see as an occupying army that is the LAPD who terrorize us and our communities on a daily basis. The police who patrol us do not even live in our communities, so they do not know how to relate to us, and don't know how to deal with our specific problems that can be handled without the use of brutality and murder. The policing that occurs in no way serves or protects us."

Cop Watch Los Angeles empowers the community to patrol the police, to watch them, and take direct action to build liberated zones. We believe that communities can organize themselves. Through self-determination, we can deal with our own safety and defense through popular assemblies and direct-democratic community councils. We can build our own community defense and look after one another, so we won't have police brutality.

Cop Watch Los Angeles is supporting William Cardenas, who is still facing criminal charges. Action against the cops Pattrick Farell and Alexander Schlege will be taken as well. Williams is scheduled for another court hearing on November 9, 2006 in Department 115 at 8:30 a.m. William is being defended, pro bono, by private attorney B. Kwaku Duren.


COPWATCH Los Angeles Office - c/o Chuco's Justice Center 235 West Martin Luther King Blvd., L.A., CA 90037

I'm an LA native, and have lived here all but a few years of my life.

Yeah ... this is what the LAPD does to demonstrations and other gatherings with which TPTB do not agree. I've seen it many times, and just narrowly missed a braining with a billyclub during a John Mayall free beach concert in 1968, where the police *absolutely* provoked violence from nothing, ostentatiously arresting a man who was snoozing off a drunk on a blanket, then swinging at and pushing and hitting the people who stood up to see WTF was going on. When people began screaming and running away, cops with riot shields materialized from behind the pier and just waded through the crowds, pummeling folks.

Fascinating to contrast what actually happened with the news coverage that was on when I finally got home (via bus, 'cause I got separated from my ride during the melee): "Brave Police Put Down Hippie *RIOT*, Keeping Your City Safe from Scum!!!"

Every LA Activist, and every LA Raver, has seen this side of the LAPD, too.

It's odd that LAPD doesn't realize that every time they do this, they're turning nice middle-class kids into people who absolutely mistrust the police, who will never again hear such a story on the media and smugly (and whitely!) think, "Wow, I'm glad we have strong cops to protect us from such evil riff-raff!" They'll always wonder, "Gee ... is that like that time at the demonstration? Or at the Olympic auditorium? Or at that warehouse downtown?"

The joke around here is that the LAPD is the most powerful well-funded gang in town.

Taxpayers fund brutality. Story at 11.

I hope they win, but on the other hand I wonder if that will really change anything. The LAPD kicks out a few scapegoats, tones down it's PR for a little while...then returns as normal. The National Lawyer's Guild gets a hefty paycheck for their troubles. Etc.

a bump in case people missed this