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February 29, 2008

Bush Bombs UN with Mass Deception About Police Brutality

Cop Abuse in America

By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.

Before the first few second of January 1, 2008 elapsed, Philadelphia police shot and
killed an unarmed man sitting at a New Year's Eve party, engaged in no criminal
activity.
This fatal shooting marked the second straight year that Philadelphia police shot an
unarmed person under questionable circumstance in the first seconds of New Year's
Day.
Within the first dozen days of 2008, Philadelphia police shot and killed two more men
both on a single day: January 11th.
Two weeks after those two fatal shootings on the same day, use of excessive force
again thrust Philadelphia's finest back into news headlines.
This time news reports centered on allegations of police beatings at a Sweet Sixteen
Party. Twenty people lodged brutality complaints against police including a woman
who charged baton wielding officers broke her ribs and a man allegedly struck in the
head by a police baton requiring staples from the back to the front of his skull to
close the wound.
Those January 2008 Philadelphia police incidents of fatal shootings and beatings of
non-whites were neither unique nor isolated incidents. Philadelphia police have a
historic legacy of brutality.
In July 1998, the respected Human Rights Watch (HRW) organization stated in an
extensive report on police brutality in America that Philadelphia police had earned
"one of the worst reputations of big city police departments in the United States."
A few weeks after this on-going orgy of abusive police conduct in Philadelphia alone,
Bush Administration officials painted a benign picture of police brutality during
testimony in Geneva, Switzerland before the UN's Committee On Elimination of Racial
Discrimination.
Countering UN Committee findings of overwhelming evidence of police brutality
against racial and ethnic minorities across the US, Bush Administration
representatives proclaimed the Administration had increased training of police
officers specifically for combating the prejudice leading to violence against citizens.
The Bush Administration representatives asserted that police brutality was
unacceptable under any circumstancesverbally sidestepping a concern raised by
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Committee investigators that authorities in America while lauding laws rarely enforce
laws barring brutality.
A few days after those Bush Administration misrepresentations in Geneva, authorities
in New York City added more fuel to fires raging over racist double standards in the
US justice system.
New York prosecutors dealt a wrist slap deal to a former Philadelphia TV
anchorwoman for an [alleged] altercation with a New York City police officer last
December.
NYC police charged Alycia Lane with striking an officer during a late night
confrontation arising from one of three persons traveling with Lane mouthing off at
police for driving too slowly.
Lane [allegedly] intervened, even [allegedly] hurling a homophobic slur at the
policewoman she [allegedly] struck --a slur Lane denies making by noting some of
her best friends are gay.
In the wake of that NYC arrest, Lane lost her $700,000-a-year anchor slot following
what Philly TV station execs said was a series of seriously scandalizing incidents
including public exposure of her emailing bikini photos of herself to a married man
that his wife intercepted.
NYC authorities downgraded the felony assault charge lodged against Lane to
misdemeanor obstruction of government administration and harassment charges
--allowing her a six-month legal limbo leading to a total discharge of charges if she
stays out of trouble.
One respected New York City lawyer knows the double standard shining bright in the
Lane case from personal experience.
A New York City cop physically bashed this lawyer last summer during an assault that
left this attorney facing the same charge police slapped on Alycia Lane: obstruction
of government administration.
Attorney Michael Tarif Warren says police assaulted him and his wife one evening last
June after they asked police to stop beating a young man who was already in
handcuffs. Warren's wife, Evelyn, is also a lawyer.
Police beat and then arrested the Warren's.
"The assault on that young man reminded me of watching a lion attack on the
Discovery Channel," Warren said during an interview last June.
NYC authorities comfortable with Lane getting a legal slide seem contemptuously
intent on stringing-up lawyers Michael and Evelyn Warren.
"We are still facing charges and [Lane] is given a slap on the wrist," said Warren, a
civil rights attorney who specializes in police brutality cases.
"What she did was out of arrogance, motivated by not getting her way," Warren said
during a recent interview.
"Our case is more appalling. We were exercising our First Amendment rights as
lawyers who know what the police were doing was illegal and unwarranted."
Do you think this different legal system treatment has something to do with Lane
being white and the Warren's being black?
Michael Warren faces an obstruction of government administration charge for trying
to stop an assault while authorities give Alycia Lane a 'no-criminal-record' pass card
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on the same charge from her assaulting --ah, allegedly assaultingever so slightly --a
NYPD officer.
Legal dictionary definitions for discrimination include: unfair treatment because of
race; and, a failure to treat all persons equally where no reasonable distinction can
be found between those favored and those not favored.
The disappearing case disposition given the pretty broadcast personality by NYC
authorities is a "clear illustration of how whites operating from a position of power
and influence are treated differently from persons of color," said Warren recounting
cases where his clients charged with lesser offenses than Lane ended up with
criminal records.
Michael and Evelyn Warren enjoy widespread, interracial support across NYC in their
fight against the unjust assault by police lead by a sergeant with a background of
"other beatings" Warren said.
Police released the Warrens from custody shortly after their June 21 arrest when
hundreds of their supporters gathered at the police station where they were taken
after arrest.
Last October minister members of the Interfaith Commission on Police Accountability
voiced outrage over the arrests of the Warren's during an anti- police-brutality
protest on the steps of NYC's City Hall.
A statement from this Commission blasted NYC Mayor Bloomberg and Police
Commissioner Kelly inaction on eliminating the police brutality "problem [that
produces] indignities, personal injury and in some cases death."
Inaction by Bloomberg on police brutality is so consistent with authorities nationwide.
During that recent UN Committee testimony US representatives fulminated about
Bush Administration feelings that police brutality driven by racial animus was a
reprehensible criminal act.
This alleged Bush Administration policy stance that racist police brutality is both
reprehensible and considered criminal is 'news' to anti-abuse litigators like Michael
Warren.
One of Warren's current cases involves a brutality incident inside a NYC courthouse
and --no surprise --Warren's victim-clients are receiving no assistance from Bush
Administration authorities supposedly bent on blunting racist brutality by law
enforcers.
This incident involves the courthouse beating of two black men, mentors of two
teens, assaulted after aiding one of the teens who simply questioned the
lackadaisical lawyering of his attorney who then summoned her courthouse guard
husband to handle those questioning her competence.
UN investigators informed the Human Rights Committee that the US needed to
intensify efforts to combat police brutality --a recommendation repeatedly made yet
one repeatedly rejected by Republican and Democratic US Presidents.
Fatal shootings of unarmed black men by police in Philadelphia and NYC comprised
four of the first dozen-plus police death cases presented in a 1951 petition to the
United Nations charging the US government with genocide against African-
Americans.
Federal authorities denied charges of rampant police brutality when successfully
defeating consideration of that 1951 genocide petition and authorities are taking a
similar tact to counter contemporary claims to the UN from the American Civil
Liberties Union and other brutality monitors.
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"Police brutality is an institutional problem," Michael Warren observed.

"It's not a lack of training," Warren said.
"It's the tolerance by the institution that allows this to go on in perpetuity."
Linn Washington Jr. is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune newspaper