The War on the Police

By Nicholas Stix

Middle American News
December, 2002

Terrorism is not confined to foreigners who murder Americans abroad, hijack airliners and crash them into American skyscrapers, or send anthrax-laced letters through the U.S. Postal Service. Likewise, terrorism's supporters are not limited to foreign leaders and the U.N. Terrorism lives on the streets of America's cities, and is robustly supported by American activists, elected officials, and by the mainstream, American media. The main form such domestic terrorism takes, is a war on the law-abiding populace by criminals. The supporters of such terror, have focused their efforts on handcuffing white, urban police officers, so that urban terrorists may have license to rape, rob, maim and kill.

The war on America's white urban police began in the 1960s, with the claim by the New Left -- which combined communism and racism, and is now known as "multiculturalism" -- that the police were an "occupying army" in the nation's urban slums, as if such neighborhoods were foreign nations. The war on the police really took off, however, in the late 1990s, with the advent of the racial profiling hoax, whose supporters insist that police officers arbitrarily harass, arrest, and even murder black boys and men, based solely on the color of their skin.

The War on the Police works on four levels: By denying white police the right to use physical force to subdue or detain black males, or to defend themselves against physical assault, even to save their own lives; by demanding that all police interrogations be videotaped, so as to highlight tactics that police are legally permitted to use in questioning suspects that urban blacks dislike, and will use as a pretext for acquitting the guilty; via jury nullification, in which jurors ignore good police work and instead set brutal criminals free; and through the movement to get all convictions of violent black criminals thrown out.
 
 
Handcuffed Police

The most high-profile current case of a handcuffed, white police officer is that of Inglewood, California Officer Jeremy Morse. In a much-played, July 6 video, in which Officer Morse throws 16-year-old suspect Donovan Jackson onto a car's closed trunk, Morse is seen to be bleeding from wounds inflicted by Jackson, and Morse claims that he punched Jackson only because the latter had squeezed the officer's testicles. According to Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez, however, Officer Morse did not have a right to strike Jackson, even in self-defense. And as Morse's criminal defense attorney, John Barnett, told Middle American News, although Jackson insists that he was assaulted by Hispanic, black, and Middle-Eastern police colleagues of Morse, the City of Inglewood has singled out the white officer, Morse, for prosecution.

The movement to handcuff white police officers gained momentum with the 1991 Rodney King case. Following a protracted, high-speed chase, unlike passengers in King's car, who cooperated with police, the severely inebriated King resisted arrest. In attempting to subdue King, LAPD officers beat him with their batons, as they were trained to do. A bystander filmed the struggle on videotape. In showing the tape thousands of times, however, TV news programs always edited out the beginning, when King violently resisted arrest. The officers were tried for assault and other charges, acquitted, and Los Angeles blacks responded with 20th century America's most violent urban riots: 54 dead, over 2,000 wounded, and billions of dollars in property damage.

The Justice Department responded to the riots by subjecting the LAPD officers to the double-jeopardy of a federal "civil rights" trial, in which they were duly convicted. Police all over the country got the message: Black suspects were to be treated with kid gloves. The new dispensation emboldened violent, black criminals and their supporters.

In April, 2001, Cincinnati police Officer Steven Roach shot fleeing black suspect, Timothy Thomas. Thomas was wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants, and a had a history of running from police. Officer Roach, who had an exemplary record, thought he saw the fleeing Thomas reach for a weapon. Fueled by media reports that implied that white policemen were murdering black men (almost all of whom were violent felons who had attacked, and even murdered police), and black community leaders who called for violence, black Cincinnatians responded with several days of riots. As Cincinnati's criminal class saw the police back down, there ensued an explosion of violence lasting weeks. Officer Roach was thrown to the mob, and indicted for manslaughter. He was acquitted at trial.
 
 
Videotaping Interrogations

On September 24, the lawyers and supporters of the five men who were convicted for the 1989 Central Park Jogger attack demanded that all police interrogations henceforth be videotaped. In a lengthy report the next day, amid repeated claims that innocent people routinely confess to crimes they did not commit, ABC-TV News reporter Geraldine Sealey argued for videotaping all police interrogations as an item of criminal justice reform. Oddly, Sealey never once mentioned the demand by the lawyers of the Jogger's attackers. The timing of the demand and Sealey's article reeked of collusion.

In 1989, the five attackers, then teenagers, confessed in their parents' presence, incriminating themselves and each other. (The attackers also confessed to many additional assaults from the same night, for which they were never tried.) The convicted attackers' lawyers insist that the confessions were coerced, while their media shills insinuate that there is no such thing as an uncoerced confession.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police may legally use cunning and deception in interrogating suspects. Police may lie to suspects, telling them that they possess evidence incriminating the suspects, or that witnesses or accomplices have made statements incriminating them. The demand that all interrogations be videotaped, is based on the knowledge that many jurors -- especially urban blacks -- will find such practices repugnant, and use them as a pretext for acquitting guilty defendants.

A videotaping requirement would also bog down manpower and money in the procuring, taping, cataloguing and storing of videotapes, and cause detectives to censor themselves during interrogations, thus compromising their effectiveness. As one prosecutor said, videotaping would make it impossible to get convictions via confessions -- which is the point.

Further, amid specious claims of "coerced confessions," the requirement that all future interrogations be videotaped would be used, ex post facto, to re-open the cases of the justly convicted, in order to get new trials with suppressed confessions, which would lead to many of America's most vicious criminals being released to rape and murder again.
 
 
Jury Nullification

Increasing numbers of black jurors refuse to convict black suspects, even absent a confession, and no matter how much incriminating evidence weighs against them. The most notorious such cases are those of Lemrick Nelson Jr. and O.J. Simpson.

In 1991, amid calls by a black mob to "Kill the Jew!" a black male stabbed orthodox Jewish scholar Yankel Rosenbaum in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Before Rosenbaum died, he pointed out Lemrick Nelson Jr. as his assailant, demanding of him, "Why did you do this to me?" The murder weapon was found in Nelson's pocket, drenched in Rosenbaum's blood. Nevertheless, in 1992, a racist, black and Hispanic Brooklyn jury acquitted Nelson -- and then went out to celebrate with the defendant and his attorney.

In the O.J. Simpson case, Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ron Goldman, were butchered with a knife in 1994. Blood evidence linking O.J. Simpson to the crime was found on his socks and SUV, and Simpson had no alibi for the time of the murder (actually, he gave three different, ever-changing alibis). No matter. In 1995, a predominantly black Los Angeles jury acquitted Simpson on all counts.
 
 
Overturning Convictions

The attempt to have the convictions of five of the men who attacked the Central Park Jogger overturned, is an outgrowth of a movement that goes back at least to the 1970s.

During the 1970s, former boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and John Artis were tried and convicted, retried, and convicted yet again for three 1966 racial revenge murders in a Paterson, New Jersey bar. Overwhelming evidence against Carter and Artis, however, did not dissuade a movement uniting Hollywood socialists and black supremacists, who fought to have the men freed. And in 1985, federal district Judge Lee Sarokin obliged them. In an act of egregious judicial misconduct, Sarokin vacated the convictions against the two men. In his decision, Sarokin ignored the evidence, made factual claims that were clearly contradicted by the trial transcripts, and violated legal procedure by insisting that the prosecutor had engaged in misconduct in claiming that the men had engaged in racial revenge murders, even though at least one witness said that the killings were out of racial revenge, and Artis admitted that Carter had spoken of "shaking" (racial retaliation murder). Sarokin was so intent on freeing Carter and Artis, evidence and juries be damned, that he was willing to grasp at any legal or illegal straw to get his wish.

While the movement to handcuff police was meant to harm white law enforcement officers, in conjunction with the demand that black slums be patrolled by black officers, it has resulted in the murder and wounding of black officers. Thus, the war against white police officers is, ultimately, a war on all police officers. And since when you handcuff the police, people die, this war ultimately targets law-abiding citizens of all colors.