Black community organizes against police brutality
By
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Springfield, Mass.
Published Feb 23, 2005 10:33 AM
Once again
Springfield cops have been let off after brutally beating a Black man. But, as
this outrage resonates in the community and more police terror is brought to
light, a multi-faceted campaign led by oppressed communities and their allies is
fighting back.
The Springfield Police Commission voted 3 to 2 on Jan. 31
to let off four white cops accused of beating and choking Douglas Greer, a
principal at a local charter school, on Nov. 4.
According to Greer,
principal of Robert M. Hughes Academy Charter School, he was viciously beaten by
the cops when he drove his car into a South End gas station after feeling ill. A
worker at the gas station called police after he failed to rouse Greer, who had
lapsed into the early stages of a diabetic seizure. When the cops arrived,
according to multiple eyewitnesses, they smashed Greer's window, dragged him
through it and beat him unconscious on the pavement. Greer said he repeatedly
attempted to tell the cops about his medical condition, but the four cops
accused him of being "on drugs."
Greer needed 18 stitches to close
lacerations in his head. The police report on the beating claims Greer became
violent and they had to use force and pepper spray. The cops also claim that
while police were subduing Greer, he smashed his own head on the
pavement.
At least two of the cops have long track records of racist,
terrorist activity in the Black and other oppressed communities. Jeffrey Asher
was suspended from the police force for a year in 1997 after a video tape show
ing him kicking an African Amer ican man was broadcast on local television.
James Shewchuck, another cop invol ved in the Greer beating, has been accused of
organizing a "welcome back" party for the cop who shot and killed Ben School
field, an unarmed Black youth, during a traffic stop in 1994. Although
Schoolfield's family, after years of litigation, won some minimal monetary
compensation due to a civil suit, all the cops involved were let
off.
Greer is exploring legal and other avenues for justice with
Springfield's Nation of Islam, among others.
Two days after the
commission's decision on the Greer beating, a videotape obtained by local media
showed three members of a Black Springfield family being beaten and arrested in
the Spring field police headquarters lobby in Septem ber 2004. While filing a
complaint at the lobby window, the family, which has a long history of being
harassed by the Spring field cops, was descended upon by at least 10 cops, who
came from two side doors. The video shows police swinging batons and placing one
of the family members in a choke hold.
Resistance
"Pastors
have always been in the forefront when it comes to seeking justice," said the
Rev. J. Williard Cofield, president of the Pastors' Council of Greater Spring
field, at a news conference on Feb. 9 announ cing the council's complaint filed
with the Massachusetts Com mission Against Discrimination. The council, which
has 30 mostly Black pastors, filed the complaint concerning the Greer and family
members' beating as a response to increasing complaints of police terror issued
by its parishioners. (masslive.com)
"We have heard the cries of our
community, and it is our business to speak up so the truth can come forward,"
said Cofield.
A probable-cause finding by the commission would force a
public hearing. If the commission's investigation renders a lack of probable
cause, the complaint will be moot.
The U.S. Justice Department has
requested that the FBI investigate the complaint. This is like asking the fox to
guard the chicken coop. Independent community organizations like the Spring
field Technical Community College- based Urban Awareness Group are planning more
independent actions like a Nov. 20 demonstration the group sponsored after the
Greer beating.
The STCC students, with other community residents and
organizations, hope to engage in anti-police brutality actions this spring and
to conduct a people's commission to investigate and protest police brutality,
terror and occupations of oppressed communities in the city.
Dick
Gregory--activist, social commentator and humorist--spoke at STCC in early
February and denounced the Spring field police department's racist
actions.
In the progressive communities in Western Massachusetts there's a
dawning awareness that the anti-war movement must connect the U.S. war in Iraq
with the war on working-class and oppressed communities in the U.S.
A
central component of these struggles must be anti-racism, especially in the
struggle against the cops, the courts and the prison-industrial complex, which
affects the oppressed communities most directly.
Nick Camerota
contributed to this report.
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