RIP Mark Duggan

Mark Duggan, the British man whose murder by police set off several days of rioting and looting throughout the UK in early August, was buried in North London today.

"There is an inquiry underway into what happened to cuae his death, but there have been no results so far."

Duggan, a 29 year-old father of four, was shot twice by police officers who had stopped him while he was riding in a minicab. The police said that he fired first, but the handgun that was allegedly in his possession had not been discharged at the time of the murder. These same lying cops claim that they had been watching him, and knew that he was on his way to avenge the murder of his cousin.
The police who killed Duggan were part of the Specialist Firearms Command (CO19), accompanying officers from Operation Trident, a London Metropolitan police unit that focuses on the black community.

Police brutality lawsuit in Jerry Amaro case can go forward

The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has found that Oakland Police lied, mirepresented evidence, and stonewalled the investigation into the March 23, 2000 police killing of Jerry Amaro. The ruling will allow a police brutality lawsuit filed by Amaro's family in 2009 to go forward.

Amaro was arrested for allegedly trying to buy crack cocaine from the undercover officers, who were posing as dealers. He later told jail officials, inmates and relatives that officers had beaten him before booking him, an account that two witnesses on the scene later supported, the appeals court said.

One witness, who was also arrested that night, said officers had repeatedly kicked Amaro in the ribs, punched him in the face and kneed him in the back, the court noted. The witness said Amaro had been bleeding from the nose and mouth when he was put in a police car.

The jail officer recalled that Amaro had bruises to his face and had complained about his ribs, and Amaro's cellmate said he could barely get out of bed. Amaro was released five days later, showed his mother his bruises and told her he had been denied treatment, the court said.

On April 18, 2000, a doctor told him he had suffered five rib fractures and a collapsed lung and needed emergency treatment. He died three days later, having opted to stay with a friend rather than receive treatment.
-SF Gate

Monday's community press conference in the Bayview

Since following the twists and turns of the ever-changing official version of the story being spewed out by the police and their lapdogs in the corporate media is crazy-making, here's a video of Monday's community press conference in the Bayview. You'll notice that even though people are really passionate about the subject and frustrated with the lack of truth coming out from the police department, listening to them actually makes you feel like the world makes sense.

What the Bayview witnesses saw

SF Police Chief booed out of Bayview

SF Police Chief Greg Suhr turned tail and ran while being booed out of a community gathering organized in the Bayview neighborhood to address concerns over the police murder of 19 year-old Kenneth Harding (who was stopped by police as he exited a MUNI train without proof of fare on Saturday afternoon). Unlike Harding, Suhr was not shot in the back as he fled.
An hour and a half into the meeting at the Bayview Opera House, Suhr, who has only been on the job for three months, was "evacuated" by at least 20 officers and his command staff. There was an estimated 300 people in attendance.

“That’s right, walk away,” screamed one man, as the crowd surged around the officers. “You walking out ‘cause you know you not ready to deal with the reality,” a woman shouted into the microphone.

The anger in the predominantly black crowd revealed divisions within the community, with many younger community activists protesting the “establishment” approach of the older religious leaders. They claimed the leaders worked too much with police.
-Bay Citizen

It was the elders whom had organized the community gathering, largely to let the police explain themselves/obfuscate/slander the victim.
Harding ran away from the officers who had detained him, and according to several eyewitnesses, he was doing so at full speed without looking back at the officers. He was clearly running for his life. Media reports have called him a parolee, and have accused him of being linked to a recent violent crime in the Seattle area.
Multiple cell phone videos captured the immediate aftermath of the police shooting on Saturday, and Harding can be seen laying on the ground in a pool of his own blood, hopelessly fighting for his life as multiple officers stand over him with their guns pointed at him. An angry crowd forms, and the officers turn their attention to crowd control rather than providing assistance to the dying victim.

One particular video was used by police as "evidence" that a witness picked up an alleged gun that Harding allegedly fired at the officers during the chase. However, the witness in question clearly points to a flat rectangular object on the ground and can clearly be heard asking, "Is that your phone?" The man picks up the phone and disappears off screen.
Earlier in the video, another shiny object had come into view for less than a second, and police allege that the shiny object is Harding's gun. However, the alleged gun is several yards beyond where Harding lay dying, in the direction that he had been running (i.e. he would have had to have thrown, not dropped, the gun forward before he was shot, which, admittedly, is not exactly implausible). The shiny object is also several feet away from the cell phone that is picked up by the witness in the video. The witness does not look in the direction of, point to, or in any other way signal that he has noticed a gun lying on the sidewalk several feet away. Also, the person shooting the video does not notice the alleged gun, even though he/she appears to walk right next to it.
That didn't stop the police from lying and saying, through their media accomplices, that a video had been posted on youtube which showed a witness picking up Harding's gun. This was their excuse for not being able to find the gun for 6 hours, despite combing the entire area, including nearby rooftops, for the alleged weapon.

On Tuesday, 3 days after the shooting (and just before a protest that resulted in 43 arrests), the SFPD announced that they had found gunshot residue on Harding's right hand. The funny thing is, they still haven't announced that they have found any slugs or shell casings at the scene, and they haven't found Harding's fingerprints on the alleged gun. All they have is a video of a man picking up a cell phone off the ground, a dead man's police record, and alleged evidence of "gunshot residue" on the victim's hand (which is the easiest evidence to fake, since the police had three days to put that residue there after the fact - not to mention the fact that the presence of residue on someone's hand does not prove when or where a gun may have been fired by that hand).

In the end, whether or not Harding was an innocent saint, a pimp, a parolee, or even a man who shot at police while running away from them at full speed, he was clearly not a threat to the two police officers who shot at him, resulting in his death. It could easily be argued that shooting at a running suspect on a busy street in broad daylight was the most dangerous thing that happened that afternoon, and that type of police work should not be tolerated in any community.
Further, not possessing a $2 transit pass should not cost any human being their life, no matter what they may or may not have done in the past.