As I was leaving Newark NJ for South Korea in 1967, to start my Peace Corps service, the Newark riots broke out, including infamous police murders of blacks without provocation. Many Kossacks will remember other such incidents around the country, as well as the last of the Klan lynchings in 1981. The Civil Rights Movement was supposed to have ended police brutality and impunity, and the election of President Barack Obama was widely hailed as ushering in a new post-racial American society.
In your dreams.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has just filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the town of Homer, LA. A grand jury has declined to indict a policeman, Timon Cox, who shot an elderly Black man, Bernard Monroe, on his front porch, seven times, with no provocation, in Feb. 2009. There is a long-standing pattern of police intimidation and other abuses of power, not only in Homer, not only in Louisiana, but all over the US. It turns over a rock and reveals large multitudes of insects everywhere scuttling for cover.
Racism has been in retreat ever since the Civil War, but it had a long, long path back to go from slavery to the Klan, share-cropping, and Jim Crow, to Massive Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, to today. The racists resisted treating Blacks and other despised minorities as people with all of the force they could muster at every point. They call it Yankee tyranny when we point out that the Constitution applies to these "lesser breeds", and hold to the "Original Intent of the Founders" to exclude Blacks, Native Americans, the poor, women, and others from voting and from the protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Hence "Impeach Earl Warren", "Eisenhower works for the Commies" (John Birch Society), and "Obama is a Socialist/Fascist/Maoist/Stalinist/the Antichrist" (zomgbbq, He's Black!!!). There are, in fact, no words adequate to express the racist fear and loathing directed at our duly-elected President, and at those who voted for him. I have collected a few pictures that come a little closer to showing the virulence of their feelings.
The rump racist remnant is smaller than ever, but has become even more vicious as we near the endgame (where racists will no longer have a majority in any state), and has poisoned all of the Republican Party in state and national politics. (Compare Edmund Burke, the Father of Conservatism, on the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings: Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.) This is emboldening some of those who had been keeping their heads down for several decades. In plain words, I am accusing Republican leaders of past and present, including John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, and the rest, of inciting to murder, and here it is.
Morris Dees
Feb. 16, 2010
Dear Friend,
As you may have read in yesterday's New York Times, we've just filed an important new lawsuit against the town of Homer, Louisiana, where an elderly black man was shot dead by a white police officer while standing harmlessly on his own front porch.
Our suit seeks justice for Bernard Monroe's widow and his five children. But there's also a larger issue at stake — the pattern of racial profiling and police harassment of African Americans that led directly to Monroe's death.
Last year, the white police chief in the town told [the Chicago Tribune]: "If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names. I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested."
Monroe, 73, a retiree known as "Mr. Ben," was enjoying a gathering of family and friends on a mild winter day last February when two white police officers pulled up in front of the modest wood-frame house he had called home for the past 25 years.
For no good reason, the officers chased his adult son into the house. They had no warrant, and nobody there was wanted for any crime. When Mr. Monroe walked up the front porch steps during the commotion to check on his elderly wife, an officer who was still inside the house opened fire through the screen door, hitting him multiple times in the chest, back and arms.
This terrible tragedy should never have happened. And it wouldn't have happened if the police had acted responsibly. But, apparently, this type of police intimidation was well known to African Americans in the town.
Earlier on the day Monroe was killed, the police officer who fired the deadly shots had also searched and questioned other African Americans who were doing nothing more than sitting in their yard, minding their own business.
I'm outraged that this type of racial profiling is still occurring almost half a century after Jim Crow segregation was struck down in the South. The people of Homer deserve a police department that protects, rather than harasses them.
We're determined to get justice for the Monroe family and to stop unlawful discrimination.
The dangers of bigotry are clear. Please speak out against racial profiling and every form of discrimination. Thank you for supporting our work and for everything you do to promote justice in your own community.
Sincerely,
Morris Dees
Founder, Southern Poverty Law Center
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Montgomery, AL 36104
Here is a bit of perspective on events related to my family's and our neighbors' experiences in Newark long ago. (We had a National Guard tank parked at the end of our block in a mixed-race neighborhood during the period of violence.)
Rutgers: Newark Riots-1967
For residents of Newark’s predominantly black Central Ward, the police were a persistent, if not entirely welcome presence. Patrolmen, who were mostly of Irish and Italian descent routinely stopped and questioned black youths with or without provocation. During the decade preceding the riot, several high profile cases of police brutality against young black men were reported, some resulting in death.
In July 1965, Lester Long, aged 22, was shot and killed by police after a "routine" traffic stop. A few weeks later, Bernard Rich, a 26-year old African-American male, died in police custody under mysterious circumstances while locked in his jail cell. On Christmas eve that year, Walter Mathis, aged 17, was fatally wounded by an "accidental" weapons discharge while being searched for illegal contraband. Despite calls for the appointment of a civilian police review board and hiring of more African American policemen, such proposals went unheeded. Police-related shootings and beatings for the most part were not prosecuted; Few cases of police abuse in Newark ever made it to a jury.
A number of Black residents of Newark were shot and killed during the Newark Riot by police officers, including snipers, without provocation. One sniper shot a ten-year-old boy named Edward Moss in the face as he rode a bus, killing him.
Homer LA 2010
Read all about it, and some of the other similar cases still going on. The Chicago Tribune did the best job.
Race may be factor in police shooting of unarmed elderly man
"We are closely monitoring the events in Homer," said Donald Washington, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. "I understand that a number of allegations are being made that, if true, would be serious enough for us to follow up on very quickly."
Yet the Feb. 20 Homer incident was not an isolated case. Across the nation, in four cases in recent months, white police officers have been accused of unprovoked shootings of African Americans in what civil rights leaders say are illustrations of the potentially deadly consequences of racial profiling by police."
In the mostly white Houston suburb of Bellaire, a 23-year-old black man sitting in his own SUV in the driveway of his parents' home was shot and wounded on New Year's Eve by police who mistakenly believed he had stolen the vehicle. The case is under investigation.
In Oakland, a transit police officer has been charged with murder for allegedly shooting an unarmed black man in the back while he was restrained and lying face down on a train platform on New Year's Day.
In New Orleans, nine police officers are under investigation in the New Year's Day death of a 22-year-old black man who was struck by 14 bullets after an undercover team stopped his car. The police say the man raised a gun and fired at them, but the man's family disputes that.
[In Homer LA] the officer [who shot Monroe], a new hire named Tim Cox...had been on Homer's police force for only a few weeks...
You do know, don't you, that you can never get the whole story from one source? That's why scientific papers have extensive references, and newspapers don't give any. And why Google is your friend.
- 73-year-old man gets shot dead at his family barbecue by meddling policeIndianapolis Examiner
- An Officer Shoots, a 73-Year-Old Dies, and Schisms Return New York Times. "Bernard Monroe, a 73-year-old black man left mute from throat cancer, was shot to death in his front yard by a white police officer who claimed, contrary to other witnesses, that Mr. Monroe had a pistol...Officer Cox told investigators that the elder Mr. Monroe had picked up a pistol he kept on the porch and was aiming it at Officer Henry. All of the civilian witnesses say Mr. Monroe was carrying only a sports drink bottle. But this is not in dispute: Mr. Cox shot Mr. Monroe seven times in the chest, side and back. Several witnesses said they saw a police officer later place the pistol next to Mr. Monroe’s body, but the police officers said that was because it had been moved when they were checking his wounds."
- Officer cleared in controversial shooting ArkLaTexHomepage.com
- Grand Jury Refuses to Indict White Cop Who Killed Black Man Associated Press, published by Fox News. "Police said Monroe was armed. Witnesses dispute that. The officers have since resigned."
- UPDATE: Former Homer officers cleared in Homer man's death Shreveport Times. "Homer police said 73-year-old Bernard Monroe was armed. Witnesses countered that claim, saying he instead had a drink bottle tucked in his arm. A handgun was recovered at the scene. Some of the witnesses allege it was planted or moved from the porch to near where Bernard Monroe fell."
- Officer Found Not Guilty In Death of Unarmed Black Man HipHop Wired "12 witnesses gave testimony in a court room that Bernard Monroe, a cancer patient left voiceless from the disease, was unarmed when Officer Tom Cox gunned him down in February of 2009."
- No charge for La. police officer in shooting death AP, published in Washington Post. "'The grand jury heard testimony from 20 witnesses over two days', said Kurt Wall, director of the criminal division of the state attorney general's office. The attorney general handled the case after the local prosecutor recused himself. 'We believe it was a full, complete, accurate and thorough presentation conducted at a neutral site. We respect the grand jury's decision,' Wall said. An FBI spokeswoman said the bureau is continuing to investigate the case."
- Louisiana shooting puzzles witnesses LA Times. "The witnesses said the second officer picked up a handgun that Monroe, an avid hunter, always kept in plain sight on the porch for protection. Using a latex glove, the officer grasped the gun by its handle, the witnesses said, and ordered everyone to back away. The next thing they said they saw was the gun next to Monroe's body. 'I saw him pick up the gun off the porch,' Marcus Frazier said. 'I said, "What are you doing?" The cop told me, "Shut the hell up, you don't know what you're talking about."'
- "I Want Them to be Afraid Every Time They See the Police" EyeAm4Anarchy. "If I see three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and check their names," said [Homer Police Chief Russell] Mills, who is white. "I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that they might get arrested."
- ACLU Of Louisiana Urges Homer Chief Of Police To Retract Racist Statement ACLU Web site. "ACLU of Louisiana Executive Director Marjorie R. Esman said in the letter to Chief Mills: 'It is your job, as the chief law enforcement official of the City of Homer, to protect all residents of that community, which includes protecting them from wrongful police conduct. Surely you realize that there is no valid presumption that a group of young African American men are criminals simply because of their skin color.'"
- The Shooting Death of Bernard Monroe: What You Need to Know About.com. "According to witnesses, Cox refused to call an ambulance to treat Monroe--instead asking for backup with an "Officer in distress" code."
Get the picture?