Protests in Memphis over white supremacist murder of Tyre Nichols

On January 7th, police in Memphis TN stopped 29-year-old Tyre Nichols on suspicion of DWB (Driving While Black). A struggle ensued as they dragged Mr Nichols out of his car. He managed to free himself from the clutches of the law, only to be cornered a few minutes and a few blocks from the scene.

The minions then beat the living snot out of Mr Nichols, who died three days later in hospital. 

This week, five of the arresting officers were charged with murder, and last night the authorities released graphic videos showing what happened. Memphis and other cities across the Excited States of America braced for another round of BLM protests and "reparations shopping".

On cue, Ben Crump, successor to "Rev." Al Sharpton in leading charges for justice for (fill in name of deceased black person), appeared in front of the cameras to call for calm. Whether he winked as he did so isn't clear, but it appears that last night's protest marches were indeed "mostly peaceful".

Since the five accused cops are just as black as Mr Nichols, the bleeding heart liberals and lickspittle media (Hello! Clinton News Network) had to twist themselves into pretzels to paint the killing as yet another example of anti-black racism. Here are two theories which have been advanced, with straight faces, by "journalists" in the "legacy media".

1. The speed with which charges were laid against the dusky-hued officers by white prosecutors proves the point. If the cops had been white (they argue) there would have been a long delay while white authorities sought excuses to lay lesser charges or no charges at all. They rush to judgment only against blacks.

2.  Although the policemen involved were all visibly black, they were in fact "oreo cookies" -- black on the outside but white on the inside. When they joined the police force they were imbued with the white supremacist culture of the police, and that's what made them turn on a brother. Geddit? Give a black man a uniform and a badge and he turns white!

Expect variations on that theme to be aired 24/7 for the next week or so, particularly if the mostly peaceful protests degenerate into the customary rioting and looting. Lifetime pct .987.

VIDEO: British cops taser their own race relations adviser

Here's a great item from this weekend's police blotter, the coppers in question being the Avon & Somerset police, who "serve and protect" the city of Bristol, in southwestern England. Check out this video of the Peelers subduing a "dangerous" black man.



The man on the wrong end of the Taser is Judah Adunbi, aged 63. The location of the video is the front gate to Mr Adunbi's home. As he was trying to enter his own property, the police, apparently mistaking him for a wanted man, asked Mr Adunbi for his ID, which he refused to give, saying "I've done no wrong. Leave me alone."

That seemed to be a trigger -- pun intended -- for the boy and girl in blue, who let him have it. Mr Adunbi told the Guardian, "I felt that was it. Because of the way I fell back. The way I fell backward on the back of my head. I was just paralyzed. I thought that was it. I thought they were taking my life."

After discharging the Taser, one of the officers can be heard yelling, "Taser, Taser, Taser. You've been Tasered. All right?"
Mr Adunbi's neighbour can be heard protesting, although an officer tells him, "He was trying to fight us." That's what cops always say, that the victim was "resisting arrest" or "threatening us" or "appeared to be holding a weapon". Obviously the neighbour filming the incident missed that part.

Now here's the funny part. The Guardian reports that Mr Adunbi was a race relations adviser -- a member of Bristol's independent advisory group, designed to forge links between police and the community! How shocking! [No more electric jokes, please. Ed.] Walt thinks Mr Adunbi should count himself lucky that he lives in the UK. If this had happened in the USA, he would doubtless have been a deceased race relations adviser.

Protests over death of an "innocent" black youth continue

Walt presents, without much further comment, a video clip from CBC News, showing how serious the "black community" is in its demand for "justice" in the shooting of Michael Brown.

Note from Ed.: You'll have to take my word for it, there really was a video showing black yoofs boogyin' down the street doing the "hands up, don't shoot" dance. What a great sense of rhythm they have! But the video seems to have disappeared from the politically correct CBC News website. It's "unavailable" now. But here's the rest of this morning's news from Ferguson.

While the party continues, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson identified Darren Wilson as the shooter. Chief Jackson said Officer Wilson -- a six-year veteran of the force -- was called, along with other officers, the area after a 911 call reporting a "strong-arm robbery" at a nearby convenience store. Apparently a couple of yoofs of the coloured persuasion grabbed a box of cigars. It is not known whether any cigars were found on the body of Michael Brown.

UPDATE - UPDATE - UPDATE: The Ferguson Police Department has just released a montage of stills from surveillance video shot at the convenience store on August 9th. And what do we see here? A large black boy behaving badly towards a smaller shopkeeper who appears to be Asian. Do the stereotypes never end? Can't see the box of cigars. And is the large boy not just black but Brown? Even if he is, executing him seems a little severe. After all, scenes like this occur 100s of times every day, right across Armerica.

Paramilitary police rule the Paranoid States of America

Walt is a year older. [Than what? Dirt? Ed.] I'll answer that... I'm so old I can remember when people could write and speak grammatical English. I can remember when popular music had melodies you could hum and lyrics you could sing in decent company. And I can remember when children were taught that policemen -- there were no policewomen or policepersons in those days -- were our friends, human and caring people, the sort who would take a runaway kid back home. [Remember the kindly beat cop in Going My Way? Ed.

But times have changed. Cops have changed. Now, whether as a result of the War on Drugs or the War on Terror -- or the War on Poverty ?? -- North American police see themselves as warriors, "serving and protecting" by keeping "law and order" in our cities by using deadly force against terrorists, criminals and, errr, the rest of us... whenever and wherever they feel like it.

Why do they do that? For the same reason a dog licks his balls. Because they can! Police in the Paranoid States of America [Canada too! Ed.] have been thoroughly militarized. What the lamestream media are now calling the "unrest" in Ferguson MO is just the latest example of how that militarization can play out in city streets.

The cops occupying the St. Louis suburb are -- like most state and local police forces -— outfitted with the armoured vehicles, battering rams and flashbang grenades once reserved for troops. Police and "protesters" have clashed every day and every night since Michael Brown, an apparently unarmed black kid, was shot by an as-yet-unnamed policeman on Saturday. Vandalism and looting broke out the next day. A store was set on fire. Al Sharpton arrived.

As noted here two days ago, police responded in full riot gear. Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly shut down the airspace above Ferguson as a precautionary measure. Against what, for heaven's sake?! You'd think war had been declared. Oh, wait... Surely a more appropriate response to riots -- for that's what they are -- would be officers armed with pistols and billy clubs, not M-16s and grenade launchers.

Writing in Business Insider, Paul Szoldra, asks "Why do these cops need MARPAT camo pants?", referring to the pattern designed for the US Marine Corps, or MARine PATtern. When he was serving in Afghanistan, Szoldra says, they used big trucks and uniforms intended to project an image as occupiers. When, he asks, did this became OK on domestic soil?

As Walt told you last spring in "SWAT teams abuse your right -- 1000s of times a year!", studies by Prof. Peter Kraska, of Eastern Kentucky University, show that between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the percentage of cities of 50,000 or more, like St. Louis, with a paramilitary unit almost doubled to 89 per cent.

Smaller cities, with populations of 25-50,000, saw an even greater jump –- from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. "These trends would mean little if these teams were relatively inactive," he wrote, "This was not the case."

Once the police are equipped and trained in the ways of the military -- the art of war -- they naturally want to put all that training and all those big-boy toys to use. Cops like bullying people! Cops like shooting people! It is their nature... like the dog mentioned above...

Prof. Kraska found that between 1980 and 2000, there was a 1,400% increase (!!) in police "paramilitary deployments". The majority of the deployments were for drug raids in private homes, not the intended goal of a SWAT team, which is emergency situations like hostage takings and shooter scenarios where the extra weaponry might be required.

Two months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report ominously titled "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing". Their statistics for the years 2011-2012 confirm the trend identified by Prof. Kraska.

Of more than 800 SWAT deployments in those two years, 79% were to search the homes of private citizens, largely in drug probes. If it hadn't been the police carrying out these operations, we'd call them "home invasions", for that's what they are -- "legalized" home invasions.

The ACLU criticizes US policing for becoming unnecessarily and dangerously militarized. "Neighbourhoods are not war zones, and our police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies," said the report. Any further comment from Walt would be superfluous.

Ferguson MO: La loota continua!

Walt doesn't usually run more than one picture per post, but the race riot -- for that's what it is -- in Ferguson MO deserves more. These three, from the online edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tell you all you need to know about race relations in America, or at least in this typical mid-west American city.

The first two were taken at the QuikTrip in the 9400 block of Florissant Road. We see members of the black underclass -- for that's what it is -- helping themselves to whatever they can carry away. Why? To protest racism and police brutality of course.

Notice that the young buck pictured here is wearing the traditional baggy pants costume of his people.

When all the mess is cleaned up, and the stores are boarded up, leaders of this "community" will doubtless be heard complaining that there's nowhere to buy food or clothing or anything else because the racist white business establishment is disciminating against their 'hood.

And here's the response of the establishment. The Post-Dispatch says the police, now turned into soldiers, are firing teargas. Walt is no expert, but the weapon being aimed by the cop (soldier?) in the centre looks more like an assault rifle. Yes, just another example of racist police shooting at poor innocent black folks.

Click here to see the entire gallery from the Post-Dispatch. La loota continua!

St. Louis African-Americans protest racist police brutality

Summertime...and the lootin' is easy... This AP photo was taken in Ferguson, Missouri, a predominantly black suburb of St. Louis. The thief pictured is protesting in the traditional African-American manner and against the racism of American society and the brutality of the local police.

A white police officer shot non-white Michael Brown, 18, on Saturday afternoon, after encountering Mr. Brown and another man on a street in Ferguson. According to County Police Chief Jon Belmar, one of the non-white men shoved the cop into his cruiser and a struggle began. At least one shot was fired inside the cruiser, presumably from the cop's gun, since the black kids were unarmed. Several more shots were fired, as a result of which Mr. Brown died from exsanguination.

Mayor James Knowles said he understood that people of the African-American community would "want to vent their frustrations. We understand they want to speak out." Quite right. It only took a couple of hours for John Gaskin, speaking for the NAACP, to shout "We're outraged because yet again a young African-American man has been killed by law enforcement."

Following the ensuing candlelight vigil, people of the darker persuasion looted shops, vandalised cars and stores, and set a gas station on fire as police tried to block off access to several areas of St. Louis. Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to arrive today to urge his people to even greater feats of peaceful demonstration. Stay tuned.

Notes from Ed.: (1) Walt has been waiting for decades to use the word "exsanguination" in a sentence. (2) If you can't remember what NAACP stands for, please rest assured the first word is not the N-word. Anyway, as demonstrations such as this show, the NAACP doesn't stand for very much.

Shitting in fields leads to gang rape, hanging of Indian girls

This week's posts about the "honour killing" of a 25-year-old Pakistani woman -- by her father and 20 other family members -- may have left the impression that abuse of women is endemic in Muslim (and Sikh) communities. And so it is. But you find the same barbarism in all over south Asia.

In mainly Hindu India, rape is an everyday occurrence, and is rarely reported, even more rarely punished. Not infrequent gang rapes do make the news, but the perps often get off scot-free, for reasons of culture and religion, notably the caste system with which Hinduism has burdened billions of Indians for thousands of years.

A particularly egregious case occurred this week in the village of Katra, in the impoverished northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Two teenage cousins -- members of the lowest harijan (untouchable) caste -- went to a field to relieve themselves, since there was no toilet in their home. ("Open defecation", as Indians call it, is still the norm for almost half of India's billion people.) They were caught with their pants down, literally, by a gang of men who gang-raped them, killed them, and then hanged them from a mango tree. Here's a picture.

The "strange fruit" was still hanging from the tree when the picture was taken because angry villagers refused to allow the bodies to be cut down, as a protest over the inaction of the police, who they said had done nothing to search for the girls when they were reported missing Tuesday evening. Quite understandable in light of what happened next.

The villagers allowed authorities to take down the corpses after the first arrests were made on Wednesday. Police arrested two men from the village and... wait for it... two police officers! Three more suspects are still being sought, or so the police say.

Meanwhile -- yes, there's more! -- police in the nearby town of Etawah have arrested three men for brutally attacking the mother of a rape victim after she refused to withdraw her complaint. The attack followed the May 11th rape of the victim's teenage daughter. A local man was arrested after the mother filed a complaint with authorities, but since the victims were of the lowest caste, the culprit's community felt that they were wrong to have complained.

So five men -- including the father, a brother and a cousin of the accused rapist -- followed the victim's mother away from her house and beat her relentlessly, demanding she drop the accusation. Police arrested three men on Thursday and are looking for two others... so they say. The mother is in critical condition in a local hospital, with numerous broken bones and internal injuries. The whereabouts of the raped girl is unknown, but at least she wasn't left hanging from a tree.

Footnote (31/5/14): If you doubt Walt's figure that nearly half of India's people practise "open defecation", and if you doubt that this poses dangers to women and girls, read "Why India's sanitation crisis kills women" on the BBC News India page. How fortunate for India that it freed itself from the evils of British rule two-thirds of a century ago and no longer has to tolerate such evils as proper toilets and sewers.

Where's Walto?

Apologies for the silence of the last couple of days. Walt has been following two major stories, neither of which has come to a conclusion, satisfactory or otherwise:

- The conflict in the Ukraine: Is NATO/the USA/the West actually going to do something concrete to stop Russian expansionism? Walt doubts it, and really doesn't want to be proven wrong. On the other hand... maybe there is no other hand.

- The search for MH370: Last week's optimism gives way to cynicism, if not despair. The American military is conspicuous by its silence and apparent disinterest. Has anyone asked for a tour of Diego Garcia yet?

Agent 34 brought my mind back to these and other matters of the here and now by forwarding this picture from the National Safety Council, which he says should have accompanied "SWAT teams abuse your rights -- 1000s of times a year!" Indeed.

And that's all for this time. Goodnight, Cordelia Weatherbee, whoever you are.

VIDEO: SWAT teams abuse your rights -- 1000s of times a year!

Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University's School of Justice Studies [sic] estimates that SWAT teams were deployed about 3000 times in 1980, but are now used about 50,000 times every year. The number of SWAT deployments soars even as violent crime falls

In the late 90s, the professor says, 89% of police departments in larger cities (population >50,000) had SWAT teams; 80% of cities with 25-50,000 people had them -- up from 20% in the mid-80s

The bully cops often rely on "no-knock" warrants, which let them force their way into a house -- maybe yours -- without announcing themselves. Obama's liberal-dominated Supreme Court says this is OK if they have a "reasonably suspicion" that announcing their presence would be dangerous or allow the suspect to destroy evidence, e.g. by flushing drugs down the toilet. Suspicion, reasonable or otherwise, is something American and Canadian cops have lots of. Some psychologists think "paranoia" is a better term.

Sometimes the cops make a mistake. Civil libertarian Radley Balko includes over 50 egregious abuses in Rise of the Warrior Cop: the Militarization of America's Police ForcesItem: In 2006, Kathryn Johnston, of Atlanta, aged 92, mistook the cops for robbers and fired a shot from an old pistol. The police shot her five times. RIP. After killing her, they planted marijuana in her home. It later emerged that they had falsified the information used to obtain their no-knock warrant

Item: In 2011, Eurie Stamps, stepfather of a suspected drug dealer but himself suspected of nothing, was killed while lying face down on the floor. Seems a SWAT cop tripped, causing his gun to discharge.

Item: In 2010, New Haven CT sent a SWAT team to a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers.

Item: In the same year, heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando FL, hunting (they said) for guns and drugs. They wound up arresting 34 people for, errr, "barbering without a licence".

Here's a short clip of Mr. Balko talking about his book.



Why do cops do these things? The same reason dogs lick their balls! Because they can! Cops are bullies by nature, and enjoy using unreasonable force. According to Prof. Kraska, most SWAT deployments are not in response to violent, life-threatening crimes (as was the point of creating the teams), but to serve drug-related warrants in private homes. Breaking down the door is easier than knocking.

Why do cops do these things? Because SWAT raids are profitable! Under laws allowing the forfeiture of "assets bought with the proceeds of crime", the cops get to keep the drugs, cars and cash they seize... especially the cash. They can even take your house. According to the Economist*, many police departments now depend on forfeiture for a fat chunk of their budgets.

Why do cops do these things? Because they like playing with military machinery and weapons -- things that go boom in the night.

Item: Keene NH, site of three (3) homicides between 1999 and 2012, spent nearly $286,000 on a BearCat armoured personnel carrier. Chief Wiggum said it would be used to patrol Keene's "Pumpkin Festival" and other dangerous situations.

Item: In Maricopa County AZ, a SWAT team broke into the living room of Jesus Llovera [possibly a vizmin? Ed.], who was suspected of organizing cockfights. The cops rolled a tank -- a tank! -- into Mr. Llovera's yard, killing more than 100 of his birds, as well as hig dog.

Dear gentle reader, if you live in a police state -- e.g. the Excited States of America or Her Majesty's Dominion of Canada -- this could happen to you! One of Walt's agents still carries a scar from a dawn raid on his country home nearly a quarter-century ago. If the cops don't like you, or just feel like having a little fun 'n' exercise, they'll pounce. Who's going to stop them?!

* Footnote: The examples used in this post were taken from "Cops or soldiers?", an excellent article in the March 22nd issue of The Economist. Run -- do not walk -- to your newsstand or library and get hold of it. Quick, before the cops confiscate it! Here is the conclusion of the magazine's editorial on the issue, "Armed and dangerous".

The militarisation of American law enforcement is alarming. The police are not soldiers. Armies are trained to kill the enemy; the police are supposed to uphold the law and protect citizens. They should use the minimum force necessary to accomplish those goals.

[The use of SWAT teams should be restricted] to situations where there are solid grounds to believe that the suspect involved is armed and dangerous. They should not be used to serve search warrants on non-violent offenders, or to make sure that strip joints are code-compliant, or in any circumstance where a knock on the door from a regular cop would suffice. The "war on drugs" is supposed to be me a metaphor, not a real war.

Further reading: "'Why did you shoot me? I was reading a book': The new warrior cop is out of control", by the same Radley Balko.

AN ALtogether horrible rights violation by New Mexico cops

Walt has just been shown the story of what Albuquerque NM attorney Shannon L. Kennedy calls "the most egregious case of law enforcement abuse" she ever saw in eighteen years of practice. She has filed a lawsuit against the police department of Deming NM, plus a district attorney and a number of doctors, on behalf of one David Eckert, a man with a reputation for concealing illegal substances in his, errr, nether orifice.

It was his reputation, according to the report ("NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN") on Albuquerque TV station KOB-TV, that landed Mr. Eckert in a "traffic stop nightmare" -- a considerable understatement as will be seen from the video and newspaper reports of what happened.

The lawsuit alleges that Deming police pulled Mr. Eckert over at a Walmart parking lot for failing to yield at a stop sign. When he stepped out of his vehicle, the cops thought he was "clenching his buttocks". Not thinking that perhaps Eckert had a bad case of the runs, they suspected him of hiding drugs in his anal cavity, so they got a warrant for an internal search.

Acting on the warrant, the police took Mr. Eckert -- buttocks still clenched, presumably -- to a nearby ER, where doctors refused to look into the matter (geddit?), calling it "unethical". Undeterred [Stop it. Ed.] the cops transported him to Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City.

The doctors there agreed to do the necessary. First, they x-rayed Mr. Eckert. No narcotics were found. Then they performed two rectal examinations, and still found nothing. But did they stop there? Noooo. The docs gave him an enema, and forced him to evacuate in front of them and the boys in blue. Still no result.

Not satisfied, the good doctors gave Mr. Eckert a second enema, then a third, followed by a second x-ray. Still, they found nothing. But the story doesn't end there! Determined to get to the bottom of things [I said stop it!. Ed.], the doctors sedated Mr. Eckert and performed a colonscopy, sticking a camera up his rectum, into his colon and large intestine. No drugs were found, and Mr. Eckert was released, some 12 hours after his arrest.

Said Attorney Kennedy, "You could never anticipate this happening in the USA." I hate to cast aspersions on those whose mission is "to serve and protect", but I find it very easy to anticipate. The police in the USA (and every other police state on earth) do what they like. They may not have the right, but they have the power.