New epidemic of racist police brutality
By
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Boston
Published Mar 11, 2006 8:01 AM
Police brutality has
reached epidemic proportions in communities of color across the nation. Police
terror from Benton Harbor, Mich., to Boston to Cincinnati to Houston to Los
Angeles to Milwaukee to New York City is institutionalized within this
capitalist society especially in relation to oppressed communities and youth,
including lesbian, gay, bi and trans youth.
A March 2
article—“Hub youths say police harassment is
constant”—in the African American weekly The Boston Banner describes
the wholesale occupation and terror of oppressed communities in Boston. Numerous
Black, Latin@ and Cape Verdean youth, who spoke on condition of anonymity for
fear of reprisal, described semi-apartheid conditions. These included police
wantonly stopping and frisking, racist verbal and physical threats, coercion and
beatings, random questioning and worse before, during and after school and work
hours.
“I basically get stopped every day,” said one youth of
color to the Banner. “They ask you questions: ‘What’s your
name? What’s your address? What school do you go to?’ They search
you. They know us all. But they do it all the time. And they always ask us the
same questions.”
Other youths reported to WW that in the evening
and late-night hours nothing less than police-state occupations take place where
local, state, and federal agents invade oppressed communities under the guise of
fighting “the war on drugs, gangs and violence,” when their real
role is to terrorize and subjugate mostly working and poor people of color.
If arrested, these youths and others’ names are placed into a
Massachusetts state database called “criminal offender record
information” or CORI, where an arrest, even if later dropped, is
accessible by employers, schools, government agencies, newspapers and more.
Attemp ting to expunge a so-called “record” can take years and
thousands of dollars in legal fees, reports the Banner.
Bishop Filipe
Teixeira is a well-known anti-police-brutality activist in the Greater Boston
area and member of the Boston Rosa Parks Human Rights Day Coalition (BRPHRDC).
He supports those like 18-year-old Devone Jacques, a Haitian man brutally beaten
on Feb. 24 by the Boston Municipal Police in front of his home in Dor chester, a
borough of Boston.
Teixeira, along with over a dozen witnesses including
Jacques’ mother, witnessed 10 to 12 police officers kicking Jacques on the
ground as he was cuffed at his wrists and ankles. The police then picked him up
and threw him into a police van from which Jacques slid out and banged his head
on the street. Upon throwing him back in the van, police Maced him. Jacques was
slowly transported to the hospital, placed in jail for three days and released
on bail after being charged with assault and battery on a police officer.
Despite police harassment against supporters like Teixeira, who has been
issued minor municipal citations such as parking tickets after speaking out, a
network is developing to support Jacques and all youth in the city terrorized by
the police and other state agents.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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