New Hampshire
Unity pushes back police brutality
By Gerry
Scoppettuolo
Nashua, N.H.
Police harassment and violence against an oppressed
community often seem too overpowering to fight or change. For
years, the virtually all-white police force in Nashua, N.H.,
has been routinely subjecting the local Latino and African
American communities to racist profiling with total impunity.
All communities of color as well as the lesbian, gay, bi and
trans community have faced false arrest and brutality.
Until recently, that is.
For nine months Nashua's Committee for Social Justice has
been defending the Tirado family against false charges of
resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer in New
Hampshire's most racially diverse city. When a nearly complete
victory was reached in District Court here on May 21, months of
protest in the streets proved that a fightback against police
brutality can be successful.
On Aug. 13 last year the Nashua police-in what the presiding
judge deemed to be a racist act-pulled over Juan Tirado Jr. and
asked him to produce his license, claiming he was another man.
It turned out that the other person had been in jail for the
past two weeks.
Despite showing his license, the police continued to harass
Tirado, his brother Jonathon and a friend, chasing them into
the family home and waking up his parents, who tried to defend
their sons from the attack. The police proceeded to arrest the
entire family. They broke an arm of Carmen Tirado, Juan's
mother.
Carmen Tirado had to wait two hours in a cold police cell
before she was allowed to go to an emergency room for
treatment.
An enraged community began to organize immediately,
picketing Nashua District Court on several occasions and
circulating petitions. No one in the community could remember
anyone ever picketing a court here or organizing against police
violence.
Several community support meetings were held. On May 19,
some 50 Latino, African American, Filipino and gay people
turned out to hear stirring speeches from Ikoni Ngongi,
president of the Manchester NAACP; Bob Traynham, Local 875
USWA; and Frank Neisser from the International Action Center in
Boston.
They all encouraged the community to keep fighting back.
Three days later the judge issued his ruling stating that the
police work was "sloppy" and "full of discrepancies." It was a
subdued way of saying racist and full of lies.
The family was found not guilty on all but one of the nine
charges against them. That one will be appealed, paving the way
for a suit against the police.
The Committee for Social Justice will continue its work in
Nashua to demand a community police review board.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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