— Tacitus
Roman historian
c. 55-117 A.D.
Pigs, in their simple-minded, childish view of reality, always imagine themselves to be "the good guys" fighting an endless war against "the bad guys."
But the truth is something quite different from what their twisted little brainwashed minds imagine. Far too often pigs are the bad guys, and most of them will never dare to face that fact. Even those who don't beat up and torture their victims (out of view of the news cameras) cover up the crime for those who do. And they are all the violent enforcers of unjust laws. They are all the loyal servants of the criminal rulers of this crooked country.
Like all bullies, pigs are inclined to be self-righteous and arrogant. But of course their arrogance is a cover for their fear. Pigs are afraid of a lot of things, but what they fear most (besides justice) is to face the fact that they are not "the good guys," that they are basically just another species of gang members. Far too many of them are truly evil, sadistic thugs. And those that aren't thugs are almost always silent about the crimes of their fellow pigs.
Silence is complicity. If such coverups were done by anyone else, pigs would call it "being an accessory to crime." But when they themselves are the accessories to crime they call it "loyalty." All gangs are basically the same.
Pigs can delude themselves all they want, but the experiences of literally millions of people in America prove that too many cops are criminals, nothing more than criminals in uniform. They are essentially the hired guns of their ultimate masters — the corporate capitalist plutocracy.
This is not unique to America, of course. Pigs are the strutting prison guards of all defeated and suppressed societies. And it's nothing new. Police brutality has a long and ugly history in the United States.
But it's not getting any better. All across the urban U.S. the pigs are becoming increasingly militarized, inhuman and brutal. And for one reason: these arrogant, violent, sadistic goons are carrying out the orders of their masters.
The ruling capitalist plutocracy is not evolving. It is in fact devolving, mutating very steadily backwards into an increasingly fascist aristocracy. And these political dinosaurs will drag all of America back down into a political paleolithic age — if the majority of people let them.
That would be tragic, but even if most Americans wimp out and allow the fascists to take over you can be sure of one thing. Sooner or later, all dinosaurs have an appointment to keep with their Asteroid.
Following are sources of information on a few of the more recent examples of what the criminal cops are up to — murder, torture, beatings, sexual abuse, drug dealing, frame-ups and "hunting" — looking for people to ambush for sport.
America — The Brutal Society
http://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/crime-us.shtml
This page has a long list of links to articles detailing police brutality in New York City, Detroit, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Seattle, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Texas, California, New Jersey and other places. Includes many articles on executions, the systematic torture, rape and murder of prisoners and the growing prison industry in the United States.
Amnesty International condemns US for violations of UN Convention Against Torture
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/tort-m12.shtml
Testimony before United Nations Human Rights Commission:
Amnesty International condemns US for executions and police brutality
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/mar1999/amn-m31.shtml
The stun belt: Torture at the push of a button
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jun1999/stun-j19.shtml
California judge orders man electronically stunned in courtroom
http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/july1998/shoc-j18.shtml
Jury hears tale of torture, brutality by New York City police
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/loui-m06.shtml
Perverted pigs beat Abner Louima in the back seat of their car until it was covered in his blood. Then they dragged him into the 70th precinct police station with his pants pulled down, dragged him into a bathroom and violently sodomized him with a wooden stick. The pig perverts then shoved the stick into the crying man's mouth. Their sadistic torture ruptured the man's rectum and bladder and he required surgery in a hospital to survive.Afterwards, Officer Volpe, the lead police pervert, warned Louima:
"If you ever tell anyone, if you ever utter a word, I'll kill you and your entire family."
Louima had the courage to tell people anyway, and the filthy pigs ended up in court. But this was just one rare case where they got caught.
Thousands protest police violence in New York City, April, 2000
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/nyc-a08.shtml
The killing of Patrick Dorismond:
New York police violence escalates in wake of Diallo verdict
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/nyc-m22.shtml
New York plainclothes cop kills unarmed Bronx man
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/nypd-m03.shtml
The Amadou Diallo case:
The social and political roots of police violence
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/dia2-f28.shtml
Guards, police charged with abuse of prisoners at New York area jails
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/west-f05.shtml
New York: Nassau County jail guards stomp man to death
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/jan1999/ny-j26.shtml
Police killing sparks protests in New Jersey: Unarmed man shot in front of children
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/kill-m10.shtml
"A cop's fatal shooting of an unarmed Irvington, New Jersey man has sparked angry protests in a predominantly black community that has long suffered acts of police violence and brutality."Bilal Dashawn Colbert, 29, was about to drive his fiancée's two daughters to school April 29 when police officer William Mildon approached the car with his gun drawn. When Colbert ignored an order to halt, the cop fired once, striking the motorist in the neck and killing him instantly. The two girls — Shaquita Boyd, 10, and Shanice Henry, 8 — who were in the back of the car, ran screaming from the scene."
Detroit police kill again
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/sep2000/det-s15.shtml
"On August 30 a police officer shot and killed Errol Shaw Jr., a mentally ill deaf mute, whom police claimed was 'menacing them' with a garden rake. Shaw was 15 feet from the five police who surrounded him when he was shot twice in the chest."Family members and neighbors cried out to police that Shaw could not hear or respond verbally to their commands and told them not to shoot. But their appeals were ignored.
"As the father of six lay on the sidewalk bleeding, police did little to assist him and barred family members from comforting Shaw."
Detroit leads US in police killings
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/det-m17.shtml
"Detroit police officers kill citizens at a higher rate than police in any other big US city, according to FBI statistics made public by the Detroit Free Press Monday, May 15. Detroit had a rate of 0.92 fatal shootings per 100,000 residents, far higher than New York and Los Angeles, two cities recently scandalized by revelations of widespread police killings and brutality."
"The failure of the Detroit Police Department to discipline its officers is intentional and deliberately indifferent to the rights of the citizens."— Clinton Donaldson
retired Police Commander
Workers speak out against police killings at Detroit town meeting
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/sep2000/det-s19.shtml
"Workers were particularly incensed at the arrogance of Chief Napoleon, who sat in stone-faced silence throughout the meeting, refusing to respond to or even acknowledge concerns raised by those addressing the commission."
State of emergency declared after acquittal of Cincinnati cop who shot youth
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/sep2001/cinc-s28.shtml
"Susan Knight from the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition in Over-the-Rhine told a World Socialist Web Site reporter:"'People were angry but not surprised. Some were crying and others frustrated. ... One said this wasn't just a matter of police brutality, but the whole city was racist. Someone else mentioned that with events of September 11 there is all this talk of national unity, but don't pretend there is unity in Cincinnati.'"
Ohio city under martial law, hundreds arrested
2,000 demonstrate against police violence in Cincinnati
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/apr2001/riot-a16.shtml
"Timothy Thomas, who leaves behind a three-month-old child, was shot at close range by police officer Steven Roach, who had chased the youth into an alley and cornered him. Thomas was being sought by the police on fourteen warrents, all of them misdemeanors or traffic violations. Scott Greenwood, a Cincinnati resident and general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said of the warrants: 'Five of them [were] for not wearing a seat belt while driving. That's a charge of last resort when they can't get you for something else.'""Thomas was the fourth black man killed by Cincinnati police since November 2000, and the fifteenth to die at the hands of the police since 1995."
Three Los Angeles police found guilty of framing suspects
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov2000/polic-n22.shtml
"The scandal, the worst in LAPD history, began in September, 1999 when former Rampart 'CRASH' unit officer Rafael Perez began to reveal to investigators that framing suspects, planting guns, carrying out beatings and even murders was business as usual at LAPD anti-gang CRASH units."Note:
Perez was not revealing this out of the goodness of his heart. He was caught stealing $1 million worth of cocaine from an evidence room. In exchange for a light sentence and immunity for his other crimes he agreed to reveal the evil practices of the LAPD.Because of a crooked judge who favors the criminal pigs, only three of them have been convicted — while hundreds more have gone free.
The Los Angeles police scandal and its social roots
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/lapd-m13.shtml
L.A. pigs from the Ramparts Division sell cocaine, they routinely beat handcuffed prisoners and plant guns on unarmed people they've just murdered, and they like to engage in a practice they call "hunting" — looking for people to ambush for sport.And all the pigs routinely cover up or ignore the crimes of their fellow pigs. Unless they themselves get caught, of course.
In addition, corrupt Los Angeles County prosecutors routinely help to cover up criminal activity by pigs. They refuse to bring charges in hundreds of cases when pigs are actually caught, despite having substantial evidence of guilt.
Abuse in the California prison system
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/cali-m29.shtml
Guards at Corcoran State Prison force inmates to stage "gladiator fights" and then shoot them dead if they don't perform adequately. Another of their favorite tortures is to lock a prisoner into a cell with a large, psychotic prisoner for an entire night, so that the victim is repeatedly raped and beaten.As an initiation into this official Sate hellhole, or "Correctional Facility," new arrivals at the prison are routinely forced to run a gauntlet of guards who savagely beat, kick and club the new inmates.
"It didn't matter to us. Who we killed, who was killed. It didn't matter and everybody got cleared."— Roscoe "Bonecrusher" Pondexter
Corcoran State Prison guard
California court supports cover-up of prison brutality
http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/sep1998/cal-s26.shtml
Sadistic guards and the officially sanctioned reign of terror in Corcoran State Prison.
Los Angeles police attack protestors outside LAPD headquarters http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/lapd-o25.shtml
October 25, 2000
"Squads of riot-clad Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers attacked a crowd of over 1,000 people who were peacefully demonstrating against police abuse and the death penalty outside LAPD headquarters last Sunday. The scene was reminiscent of the actions taken against protestors at the Democratic National Convention last August.".... more than 200 police officers, including many on horseback, surrounded those who gathered to listen to speakers whose loved ones were killed or injured by police. The demonstration was part of a national day of protests against police brutality.
"Just as they did during the Democratic National Convention, police officers carried out counter-demonstrations of their own. In one incident a police officer rammed his bicycle into a group of protesters, yelling, "Go back to your country if you don't like it!" Two other officers drove their motorcycles into observers from the National Lawyers Guild, including former Santa Monica City Attorney Bob Myers.
"Afterwards, several people displayed welts and bruises for the media. Two were bleeding. Among those hit with rubber bullets was a reporter covering the demonstration for the Spanish language newspaper La Opinion. "I could see them coming and then suddenly, bang, bang, bang, bang, and I was hit," said the reporter, Edwin Tamara, showing a small bruise on his left shoulder."
"All we were doing was walking and chanting when the cops shot us," Gonzalo Islas told reporters, displaying a rubber bullet injury on his right calf.
Los Angeles Police Attack Protestors at Democratic Convention http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/aug2000/la-a17.shtm
"According to an account in the Los Angeles Times, police on Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa, two major downtown thoroughfares closed off by police, attacked people with batons as they left the assembly area. Several concert fans were pushed over or struck by rubber pellets during the attack. Many tried to flee west along Olympic Boulevard but they were chased by police firing rubber pellets and beanbags."A crowd of about 400 was caught between pellet firing police on one side and mounted police on another. After a two-minute standoff the crowd was directed to move down Olympic, but before they were able to move, the police fired more rubber bullets at the crowd.
"Protest leaders and lawyers said Tuesday that as many as 150 people were injured by police, either with batons, horses or rubber bullets. Among those sustaining head injuries were a news photographer, a civil rights attorney involved in a lawsuit against police harassment of protesters, and a well-known homeless advocate from Los Angeles. Police said no officers were injured.
"Many of those attacked later complained that they were unable to disperse because crowds had to leave through a single entrance from the public assembly area. Police moved the crowds away from the Staples Center and into the poor, mostly immigrant neighborhood of Pico-Union and the LAPD Ramparts Division, made notorious by the recent revelations of police brutality and frame-ups.
"Sarah, a 26-year-old white-collar worker from San Francisco who was shoved to the ground by police, told the WSWS:
"I am not an anarchist. In fact I was trying to cooperate with the police by asking others to step back. Just then I was hit by a nightstick from the back and flew to the ground. People panicked and began to run. All along the march the police were being provocative while my sister and I held up our hands in a peace sign. I oppose brutality, and a government that spends more on prisons than on schools."
Police fatally shoot eleven-year old boy in California drug raid
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/sep2000/mode-s20.shtml
Los Angeles police kill homeless woman
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/may1999/lapd-m25.shtml
L.A. pigs and the National Guard killed 40 people
In 1992 many people of the Black community of Los Angeles rioted in total rage at the racist jury verdict that exonerated the sadistic pigs who were videotaped beating Rodney King as he lay on the ground. In regaining their fascist, racist control, the criminal Los Angeles Police Department, backed by the National Guard, killed close to 40 people and arrested thousands.
Over 200 Republican Convention protestors remain in Philadelphia jails http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/aug2000/phil-a12.shtml
"In a statement issued August 11 [2000] by nine men being held at the Detention Center, the prisoners said:"The Philadelphia police did not brutalize us in front of the cameras and have as a consequence been praised for their professionalism. Out of view the brutality began at once. People in handcuffs were pepper sprayed. Others were hog-tied with plastic cuffs that cut off their circulation. Men were dragged and kicked in the genitals until they bled. These are only examples of some of the acts of cruelty and torture we have personally experienced."
DEFEND THE RNC 420
http://www.r2kphilly.org/
Over 400 people were arrested while protesting at the 2000 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Philadelphia, PA. This website provides information on their legal situation and the issues they are protesting.
US court upholds nine-year solitary confinement of Philadelphia man
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/penn-j03.shtml
"A three-judge panel of the US 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has unanimously ruled that Pennsylvania authorities may continue the nine-year solitary confinement of Russell Shoats, a former member of a militant black activists' organization."He is kept in his cell 23 hours a day, five days a week, and 24 hours a day for the other two days. He eats meals alone. He has been denied visits with family for eight years.
"He has no organized activities, no radio, no TV, no telephone calls 'except emergency or legal calls,' no books other than legal materials 'and a personal religious volume.' At the appeal hearing, prison officials acknowledged that they generally are concerned about the psychological damage to an inmate after 90 days of such confinement and would generally recommend transfer to the general population after 90 days as a consequence.
"In the decision to continue Shoats' solitary confinement, Judge Nygaard said, 'Shoats participated in the attack as a member of a black revolutionary group that sought to eradicate all authority.'"Note:
So here we see the crooked judge accidentally revealing the real reason this man has been tortured with over nine years of solitary confinement and no prospect for it to end in the forseeable future. He is a political prisoner and his solitary confinement is nothing but revenge. It has nothing to do with "justice." Shoats is Black, he was a member of a revolutionary group called the "Black Unity Movement," and thus he was a threat to White Authority. He and five others of the group were accused of shooting a pig. So they intend to torture him for as long as possible.They've already driven him insane. And they will continue torturing him until he finally dies alone in his cell.
"While the vast majority of the protestors were non-violent, there was a small band of people dressed all in black, with masks covering their faces, who caused destruction and tried to incite the crowd to violence...."
Police attack protesters at Seattle WTO meeting
http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/dec1999/wto-d01.shtml
Mobilization For Global Justice
http://www.a16.org/index.html
April Days of Action
http://www.a16.org/feature.cfm?ID=19
In the April 2000 protests in Washington against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the pigs illegally raided the headquarters of the organizers, carried out preventive arrests of 700 demonstrators who were protesting the cruel and murderous prison-industrial complex, and jailed and beat other demonstrators. Especially out of view of news cameras.
"Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool."
— John J. Miller
And Hope to Die
In Summation
Black people in America have always known that a great many pigs are racist, criminal thugs — and those who aren't cover for those who are. That makes them all nothing more than uniformed criminals, just dirty, lowlife criminals, protecting each other and protected by a truly evil system. And with every passing year more and more White people are also discovering this media-censored, ugly fact of life the hard way. Especially those White people with a genuine moral and political conscience.
In all the major demonstrations all over the country, from the 1960s to the 1999 Battle of Seattle to the demonstrations in Philadelphia, L.A. and D.C. in 2000, we have a situation where the pigs are in fact a criminal class of people who are viciously attacking a non-criminal class of people — for purely political reasons.
The protesters are people of superior moral motivation to the degraded pigs. The protestors are opposing the massive economic strangulation of oppressed peoples around the world by the out-of-control transnational corporations. They are protesting the steady erosion of democracy in America and increasing police brutality and militarization. In doing so, the courageous protestors were exercising their legal rights of freedom of speech and public assembly. And yet they were ruthlessly attacked by the thuggish pigs — who were acting on behalf of their corporate-mafia-government masters.
Clearly "the rule of law" is not what is governing America.
The pigs themselves are among the most vicious and homicidal of all lawbreakers. All over the nation, the armed and uniformed thugs who are officially charged with enforcing the laws are in fact breaking the laws.
And these uniformed lawbreakers are routinely protected by crooked judges in the thoroughly corrupt court system of the United States.
The evidence is very clear: the United States Corporate Mafia Government has declared war on the people of America. Therefore it is time for all the decent people of America to declare war on the United States Corporate Mafia Government — and overthrow it for good. The best, most effective way to do this is through massive, non-violent, civil disobedience and tax resistance. The U.S. government is truly evil, and evil should never be cooperated with in any way whatsoever.
"Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."— Louis Brandeis
Supreme Court Justice from 1916-1939
Related pages
America's Techno-Fascist Future
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Political Prisoner in America
U.S. Government Domestic Oppression
Related sites
The Struggle: From Seattle to...
http://www.iacenter.org/struggle.htm
Index page for a collection of reports about police brutality against protesters in Seattle, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia Los Angeles and related issues.
Refuse & Resist! — Stop Police Brutality!
http://www.refuseandresist.org/ndp/index.html
"It's a nationwide epidemic — It has to stop!"
COPWATCH.com
"Policing the Police"
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Embassy/9534/
"FIGHTING ABUSIVE LAW ENFORCEMENT AND GOVERNMENTAL OPPRESSION WHEREVER ENCOUNTERED — POLICE, PROSECUTORS, JUDGES, BUREAUCRATS, AND POLITICIANS."This site is dedicated with respect and gratitude to the honest, courteous, and brave men and women of law enforcement, wheresoever they may be found.
"It is also dedicated to the untold thousands of innocent, law-abiding American citizens who have been mistreated, harassed, brutalized or killed by law enforcement officials who are corrupt, incompetent, stupid, petty, self-aggrandizing, abusive, vindictive, brutal, undisciplined, vicious, or any combination thereof.
"Such government-sanctioned thugs harm not only the citizens whom they victimize, but also, (less directly), their fellow law enforcement officers, whose reputation and image is tarnished, if not completely ruined, by the misdeeds of their repugnant colleagues. In abusing their authority, bad cops dramatically excacerbate an 'us vs. them' mentality, which endangers police and citizens alike.
"This resource will focus primarily, (though by no means exclusively), on police officers, since they are the most visible, oft-encountered, and lethal representatives of law enforcement.
"In an effort to draw a line in the sand between honorable, admirable police officers and their corrupt, incompetent bretheren, we will publicize, analyze, and criticize the misdeeds of the latter, and contrast their actions with the heroic deeds of the former. We will demonstrate that good police officers share more characteristics in common with good citizens than they do to bad cops. Conversely, we will show that bad cops, (colloquially known in some circles as "pigs") have far more in common with felons, high-school dropouts, and sociopaths than they do with either good cops or good citizens. Good cops should thus feel a greater sense of duty and loyalty towards good citizens than towards bad cops.
"By undermining the uneasy truce between these two distinct types of cops, we accomplish two objectives. First, we help to counter the well-founded public perception that all cops are unprincipled, malevolent, and gratuitously violent. Second, we begin to weaken the foundations of the so-called called "blue wall of silence", which academics describe as a code of silence akin to the Mafia code of "omerta". Under this unwritten code, police officers are pressured, (often with threats of violence), to turn a blind eye to the misconduct of their criminalistic co-workers.
"Please help expose and punish bad cops!"
A Culture of Harmlessness
by L. Neil Smith
http://www.webleyweb.com/tle/le951102.html
"In the end, the Simpson trial and verdict is not a matter of Right versus Left, or even of black versus white, but of us versus them, "us" being the American productive class, and "them" being what was once called the "new class" of police-state bureaucrats fastened on our necks like leeches. That being so, the Simpson verdict represents a positive result, restoration of a custom as old as the American Revolution itself:"We the People telling the cops to go to hell."
Bibliography
Lockdown America:
Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis
by Christian Parenti
Derailing Democracy:
The America the Media Don't Want You to See
by David McGowan
War At Home:
Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It
by Brian Glick
Censored 2000:
The Year's Top 25 Censored Stories
by Peter Phillips & Project Censored
Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy
by Robert W. McChesney
Against Empire
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
Globalize This!
The Battle Against the World Trade Organization and Corporate Rule
edited by Kevin Danaher and Roger Burbach; multiple authors
The Beast Reawakens
by Martin A. Lee
Blackshirts and Reds:
Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
by Michael Parenti
The Sword and the Dollar:
Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
The Culture of Terrorism
by Noam Chomsky
Inventing Reality:
The Politics of News Media
by Michael Parenti, Ph.D.
The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media:
Decoding Spin and Lies in Mainstream News
by Norman Solomon
Further bibliographies: