A Connecticut prisoner reports that Police brutality is the growing plague

A Wisconsin prisoner spreads revolutionary literature

and an essay by Mumia Abu Jamal



by a Connecticut Prisoner

Even though crime statistics show a decrease in violent crime, the
amount of police brutality being inflicted upon people of color is
on the rise. "From 1991 to 1997, the illegal murder rate dropped
from 9.8 to 6.8 per 100,000 people. In some cities the drop in
illegal murders in 1998 was drastic in the last year alone. New
York had a 20% drop in murder in 1998, and Los Angeles had 27%
fewer murders last year. (1) In cities with a population of a
million or more, the murder rate fell from 35.5 per 100,000 people
in 1991 to 20.3 per 100,000 in 1997.(1) The homicide "closure"
rate -- the amount of homicides they arrest or summarily execute
someone for -- has fallen from 54% in 1991 to 39% in 1998.(1) In
the country overall the F.B.I. says there is a 66% closure rate on
homicide."

Abuses such as unjustified shootings, severe beatings, fatal
choking, and other forms of brutal physical treatment by police
have been reported in cities throughout the United States."(2) On
October 1, 1998 Philadelphia police shot 18 year old Donta Dawson
to death while he sat unarmed in a car. In January 1999, 4
Riverside California Police officers -- 3 being white and one
Latino, brutally fired 12 rounds of ammunition into the body of 19
year old Tyisha Miller killing her while she sat in a car having a
seizure.

In December 1998, a white Millford, Connecticut police officer by
the name of Scott B. Smith shot and killed Franklyn Reid -- a
blackman in his late 20's in his back while he sat hand cuffed on
his knees. And more recently just last month in February,
undercover New York police officers fired 41 rounds at Ahmed
Diallo, a 22 year old West African man striking him 19 times.
Diallo who died on the scene happened to be unarmed. Police say
they were looking for a rapist, however Diallo was not the suspect
they sought.

The list goes on and on there is just too many "reported"
incidents to put them all on paper. The growing wave of police
brutality is not something new that sprung up over night. For
nearly a century the police have been systematically murdering
minorities here in the United Snakes of Amerikkka. Some may argue
and say these are just isolated incidents committed by rogue
police officers, but how can these incidents be isolated when
reports show that "the majority of victims of police brutality and
excessive force are young, unarmed, not criminal suspects, and are
from ethnic minorities."

Police officers are none other than hired hitmen of the
bourgeoisie, whose interest they're hired to serve and protect,
not the people in our communities. Police officer are hired to
keep people of color right where they've been placed by the rich
ruling class -- in the ghettos and low income neighborhoods of
Amerikkka. This was the motto behind lynchings in the south after
the abolishment of chattel slavery, "to keep then nigger in his
place." Whenever that line is crossed that divide the suburbs from
the ghetto the police are there to make sure the property and
material possessions of bourgeoisie are protected. This is why so
many blackmen are harassed when driving through upper-class
neighborhoods. This growing wave of police lynchings all over the
country is a means of social control.

Let's not forget the way black people were constantly harassed,
beaten, hosed down and killed by police officers during the civil
rights era. Where was the motto to serve and protect them? We are
dealing with a para-military force of sickminded, brutal savages
who would turn a non-violent demonstration violent. It's no
coincidence that all throughout the country police stations are
turning towards military methods of control and equipment. "The
national defense authorization act enables law enforcement
agencies around the country too receive expensive, but used
military equipment for free -- from rifles and helicopters, to
bullet proof helmets and vest. Despite the drop in the national
crime rate, police stations are gearing up like never before."(3)

"In 1997 approximately 1.2 million items worth an estimated (248.6
million) were transferred from the armed forces to state and
federal officials on a first-come first-served basis. Jasper,
Florida (population 2,000, homicide rate:0) employs only seven
police officers but has just as many helicopters and several more
machine guns. They got the equipment by logging on to the publicly
accessible Pentagon website which list what's available and
dispatches equipment to whatever agency wants it. That's how the
Los Angeles Police Department picket up 600 M16 rifles last
year."(3)

Amerikkka has become a police state under the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie, which is nothing short of fascism. This is why the
police force is becoming militarized. What many of us fail to
realize is that the police are not there to serve and protect the
people. They are there to suppress, repress and maintain social
control over people so that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is
not threatened with takeover. It is a fact that people who live in
low income communities have a high amount of revolutionary
potential. And this is one of the reasons why both state and
federal government has begun to militarize the police force. The
growing prison industrial complex also plays a significant role in
controlling the population and social order of a rebellious youth.

The media which is used as a tool to deceive and scare the masses
through propaganda, into believing that violent crime poses a
threat to the safety and security of society, and that more police
and more prisons are needed to maintain order. This is very
detrimental to people of color here in the united snakes, because
not only do we have to worry about some scared racist white person
trumping up charges against us, we also have to worry about our
own elders turning us over or delivering us into the hands of this
lynch mob called the police force. Our elders turn to these
cowboys for protection from their own children while these very
same cowboys are killing their children almost everyday in the
streets.

Do the police really care about the protection and rights of
people of color? Are they truly sympathetic to the every day
struggles minorities have to face in this country? How can they be
when most police either live in the suburbs or grew up there not
having to face the every day hardships of today's society. And
then they're going to come into the ghetto and protect its people.
I find this to be full of irony, and a front to obscure the real
and true objective "which is part of a global economic and
political trend towards the undemocratic concentration of power
and reliance on repression to maintain social control in a period
of intensifying economic exploitation."(4)

"They want social control of a rebellious youth, they want slave
labor, and they want to keep the white nations politically united
in opposition to nations it oppresses. The crack boom was great
for the police state because it helped all these purposes."(1) A
police force is needed. I'm not an anarchist nor do I uphold
anarchist ideology but we need a police force that truly works for
the proletariat and the lumpenproletariat, so that we can really
protect our communities and people from the real threat -- the
government and racist white cops. The onlly way to establish this
is b uniting with people of all colors and building a National
United Front and demanding that the present police force stay out
of our neighborhoods and provide safety and security for
ourselves.

United we rise above!!

This report was written by a Connecticut prisoner



Wisconsin prisoner spreads revolutionary lit

If we want justice in this world, we will have to fight for it,
because the only thing we'll get in this world, is their law.

Greetings my beloved comrades. I just received your MIM Notes,
thank you very much, I have at least 10 men in line to read them
once I am finished. We are all on their "administrated
confinement" -- about 30 Africans, 10 Hispanics and 3 or 4 whites.
Something is wrong with that picture. But I'm trying to keep these
brothers of all colors, reading more then these "Mary had a little
lamb" ass books that they try to push off on us to read from the
library. So thank you for working with me, in sending me good,
truthful stuff to read and pass on.

-- a prisoner in Wisconsin.


VOICE

This is an essay by Mumia Abu Jamal entitled "A Taste of Philly Justice". with 
Mumia's access to the media limited, this essay is read by the Revolutionary 
Anti-Imperialist League. See for yourself why the United Snakes wants to silence 
revolutionary leader Mumia Abu Jamal.

[Mumia Essays CD, Vol 1, Track 4 6:41]