Pigs Still Running Amok, Getting Away With Murder

May 23, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Good riddance to rotten pork. Police Chief Greg Suhr, pictured above, was driven from office last week by mass outrage and struggle in San Francisco. After he personally supervised the April 6, 1996 murder of Mark Garcia, Suhr was promoted and continued to rise through the porcine ranks.

The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world…when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness…those days must be GONE. And they CAN be.
From “The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have: A Message, And A Call, From The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA”

The pigs are still getting away with murder. Here are just a few examples from this past week alone:
* 30 minutes and dead. At 9:30 am on May 19, Jessica Williams, a 29-year-old Black woman, had a run-in with San Francisco police. By 10 am, 30 minutes later, she was dead. It happened in the Bayview, where the SFPD claims she was trying to flee police in a stolen car. She had crashed and was still inside her car, unarmed. One witness said there was a “back-and-forth” when police tried to remove her from the car. So they needlessly shot and murdered her. The pigs have dogged people in the Bayview, the city’s last neighborhood with significant numbers of Black people, for decades, and last December killed Mario Woods, shooting him 20 times. This is a department whose pigs have been exposed for exchanging racist and misogynist texts, and where one Sgt. Lawrence Kempinski, since put on “modified duty,” felt he could walk into the Bayview station and openly declare he came there to “kill niggers.” The pig chief, Greg Suhr, was kicked out after this latest murder, but the new chief has said he will continue the so-called reforms instituted by Suhr!

Chase Sherman

* Tased for four minutes and 10 seconds: “OK, I’m dead,” and the pigs keep going. On May 20, six months to the day after he died at the hands of Georgia police, the New York Times posted a video of Chase Sherman’s last moments. This 32-year-old white man was acting erratically, possibly from taking street drugs several days before, so his family called 911. After a short struggle, Sherman was shown handcuffed and pinned face down in the back of his family’s rental car by Coweta County sheriff’s deputies Samuel Smith and Joshua Sepanski. Sherman stopped struggling and can be heard saying: “O.K. I’m dead, I’m dead” and “I quit, I quit.”
The pigs’ response? Tase him 15 times, murdering him, as his mother, father, and fiancée protest in horror. “For four minutes and 10 seconds after he said ‘I quit,’ they still tased him and kept him on the ground,” the family’s lawyer said. “That’s torture, and they killed him.” Moments after Sherman was pronounced dead, police video showed the Georgia pigs high-fiving as they reassured each other they wouldn’t lose their jobs.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Coweta County DA both have the video of Sherman’s murder, but haven’t filed charges. The DA says his “investigation” is continuing: “I really haven’t formed a final opinion about it.” How long do you think it would have taken this DA to “form an opinion” about a Black or Brown youth charged with stealing, video or no video?
* Scuffle turns into a needless killing. On the morning of May 18 in Midtown Manhattan, 46-year-old Garry Conrad Jr. tried to buy a beer at the Food Emporium. Witnesses who spoke to the New York Times described him as disheveled, agitated, and belligerent. The store staff said he was argumentative and abusive, but they were able to get him out of the store without injury. Then the NYPD came on the scene. One cop reportedly grabbed him, and both went to the ground. When Conrad got up, he supposedly “displayed” a knife and approached three NYPD pigs. A few moments later, Conrad lay dead in the street, shot nine times. Even if you take the pigs’ account at face value, and even if you leave aside the possibility that Conrad was only attempting to engage in self-defense against members of a pig force who have been videotaped before killing people in street encounters, once again we have an encounter that could and should have been easily handled and de-escalated instead of ending with needless death.

Pig Risel Martinez waving gun at bystanders for videotaping.

* Pig batters suspect, waves gun at bystanders for videotaping. On May 21, NYC pig Risel Martinez stormed into a building in Harlem looking for a “suspect.” The alleged suspect didn’t resist, but was beaten anyway. “Put his hands up [and said] ‘I don’t want no problems,’” witness Calvin West said. “Cop punched in his face about three or four times, slammed him on his head.” Martinez had the “suspect” in a chokehold and West took out his camera and began filming. The pig then started waving his gun at West and other bystanders. “He held the gun out like he was one of them goddamn gangsters or like a gang member, you know, and saying, ‘Get away, get away,’” said the president of the building’s tenant association. Just everyday NY Pig Department terrorism against the masses exercising their legal rights.

Freddie Gray

* Decision in Freddie Gray Case. As we go to press, we await Judge Barry Williams’ decision in the very high-stakes trial of one of the six pigs charged in the April 2015 murder of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, whose spine was severed while in custody of Baltimore police. We note that on Thursday, May 19, Judge Williams made a point of postponing the announcement of his verdict until Monday, May 23, after the running of the Preakness horse race, so that there would be fewer people in the city. We also note that the people’s massive, courageous uprising is the only reason these killers face any charges at all. All eyes should be on Baltimore.

UPDATES AS OF MONDAY NIGHT MAY 23:

NEWS FLASH, Monday May 23, noon: One of Freddie Gray’s Murderers Walks Free.  This Must Not Be Tolerated. There Must Be Justice.

A Statement from Carl Dix: Court Exonerates Cop Involved in Murder of Freddie Gray!

All these examples puncture two lies now being spread by the system and its mouthpieces. First, that there’s a big spike in crime, so the pigs need to be more aggressive—i.e., brutal. Bullshit! First of all, this is not proven; and even if in some cities there IS more crime, quiet as it’s kept, it is often the police who encourage crime to confuse and demoralize the people. Second, people who are videotaping pigs murdering and abusing people are not the problem—the problem is the pigs murdering and abusing people. The people courageously videotaping these criminals are heroes, exercising their lawful rights!

San Francisco:
Hundreds Protest Against Police Murder, Take Over City Hall

Protesters at San Francisco City Hall, May 6. Photo: Twitter
On May 19, Jessica Williams, a 29-year-old Black woman, was murdered by a San Francisco pig in the Bayview, the only neighborhood in the city with a significant population of Black people. This is the same area where last December, six cops surrounded Mario Woods and shot him 20 times, killing him. And the cops in this same police department have been exposed for sending racist and misogynist texts to each other. One sergeant walked into the Bayview station earlier this year and declared that he had transferred there so he could “kill niggers.”
There has been a wave of protests in San Francisco against the police murders and the racist outrages. And on the same day that Jessica Williams was murdered, SF Mayor Ed Lee was forced to announce that he had asked Police Chief Greg Suhr to resign.
Two weeks earlier, on May 6, hundreds protesting police murders took over San Francisco City Hall. They refused to leave and demanded that Mayor Lee come out and speak to them. Hours after City Hall was scheduled to close, the police eventually cleared out the area, arresting 33 and brutalizing a number of protesters as well as several reporters.
On the same day as the City Hall takeover, five people who were on the 16th day of a hunger strike demanding the firing of Suhr were taken to the hospital. The strike ended the next day. For most of the hunger strike, the activists, Selassie Blackwell, Ike Pinkston, Ilyich Sato, Edwin Lindo, and Maria Cristina Gutierrez, were camped out 24-7 on the sidewalk outside the police station in the Mission District, along with a crowd of supporters. The hunger strikers expressed a determination to stand with the victims of police murder and refusal to live in a world where this continues. Their stand drew support and attention across the city and beyond. On May 3, the hunger strikers, along with 700 others, had marched from the Mission District station to City Hall to demand the ouster of Suhr. The march shut down Mission and Market, both major streets. Among the marchers were medical students from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), dressed in white coats and pushing the hunger strikers in their wheelchairs.
On May 19, the day that Jessica Williams was murdered by a cop and Suhr was kicked out, dozens gathered at City Hall in the evening, including some of the hunger strikers and people active in the fight for justice for Alex Nieto, Mario Woods, and others murdered by the SF police. Later in the night,  several hundred people gathered for a vigil in Bayview at the spot where Jessica Williams had been killed.