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Oscar Grant Committee
Against Police Brutality and State Repression
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The Demouria Hogg case
On June 6, 2015 Oakland Police Officer Nicole Rhodes shot Demouria Hogg to death.
Hogg had been unconscious behind the wheel of a BMW that, according to San Francisco
police, had been involved in a robbery and a chase there the night before.
Firefighters had reported seeing a firearm in the passenger's seat, and police
tried for an hour to rouse Hogg with loudspeakers, beanbag rounds, and by breaking the
car's windows. Finally they sent one officer in to grab the gun while Officer Rhodes
provided covering fire through the windshield. Although she said she couldn't see Hogg
clearly, she also said that she saw him reach over to the passenger's seat where the
gun was still sitting. Rhodes fired two shots at Hogg, killing him (another officer
fired a taser at about the same time).
The Community Response Team of the Anti Police-Terror Project interviewed 15 witnesses
to the police action; read or watched media reports; listened to publicly-posted
recordings of police, sheriff's, and fire department radio chatter during the
operation; analyzed bystanders' photos and video of the scene; and discussed the case
with an officer from another jurisdiction.
A slightly edited version of the report is
here.
The Pedie Perez case
Richmond
Police Commission members say DA and Mayor are obstructing investigation
of Pedie's death.
Justice4Pedie Collected Materials
2014-2017 (PDF)
Statement
From Richmond Police Chief Magnus (PDF)
Eugene
Ruyle letter to Richmond City Council (PDF)
RPD
Letter to East Bay Veterans for Peace (PDF)
E. Bay Express: Two Eyewitnesses Contradict Cop in Police Killing,
5/20/15
Propaganda War in Baltimore: Some Commercial Media Waking Up!
People of color and veteran activists know that murders and cover-ups by
police are nothing new. What's new is the recording equipment that enables
us to document them, and the Internet, which enables us to publish this
evidence.
After
the video of
Officer Slager gunning down Walter Scott as he was running away
surfaced, Adam Johnson of Fairness & Accuracy In Media wrote,
"most
of the local press," by simply repeating what police said, "amplified a
storyline that, in retrospect, was entirely made up." Even NBC News
published a
mock
report based on "official sources," observing that these were the
only known sources before the video came out.
The police department in Baltimore has been quick to tweet about
"violence,"
"looting," and
"bottles and bricks being thrown at officers;" a local teacher
tweeted
her experience ("police were forcing busses to stop and unload all
their passengers," students "were trying to leave on various busses but
couldn't," cops "in full riot gear marching toward any small social clique
of students."
This
video shows cops throwing things back at protesters, and WBAL TV in
Baltimore
interviewed gang members.
Stop "Urban Shield" rally, Oakland
9/11/15
OGC Statement For Martin Luther King Day 2015:
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. Was Murdered
By the State
Every year on Martin Luther King day we hear the same thing: “I have a
dream....” It's a beautiful speech, a moving speech, a speech that
reminds us how much we want human solidarity that's bigger and deeper
than our shades of skin. But the Rev. Dr. King's vision and activism
were bigger and deeper than racial harmony, and there's a lot more to
his legacy – and his assassination – than the ruling class and their
bought-and-paid-for media want us to know.
We all know the official story that James Earl Ray shot the Rev. Dr.
King. But a 1999 civil trial verdict in Memphis found that agents of
the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee, and the U.S. Government
conspired to assassinate him, contracting with the New Orleans Mafia to
do the hit (a Military Intelligence shooter team was also there as a
backup, but left without firing a shot). William F. Pepper, a lawyer
who worked with King and brought the lawsuit on behalf of the King
family, worked for over twenty-five years building the case. He
collected sworn testimony from Special Forces soldiers who were there
as well as from the man who hid the actual murder weapon, other
witnesses, and the report of the House Select Committee on
Assassinations.
King did not call for racial equality alone. He opposed the Vietnam
war, calling the U.S. Government “the greatest purveyor of violence on
earth.” He was organizing a national Poor Peoples' Campaign including a
tent city of 500,000 in the shadow of the Washington Memorial. He
called for a general strike in Memphis in solidarity with the
sanitation workers. He even planned to run for President on an
anti-war, anti-capitalist platform. Others were organizing for these
ends as well. The ruling class was alarmed, and ramped up its
surveillance and infiltration: the army put over 1500 plainclothes
agents in “dissenting” organizations of all kinds, with King's
Southern
Christian Leadership Conference a high priority. The 902nd Military
Intelligence Group began planning assassinations of key black leaders
in 1963. Military Intelligence had been spying on King's family for
three generations, and tasked three intelligence groups to infiltrate
the Poor Peoples' Campaign. Big oilmen like Lyndon Johnson, H. L. Hunt,
and Clint Murchison, along with their bankers and lawyers, would lose a
lot of money if the war ended. Hunt and J. Edgar Hoover plotted to
neutralize King's influence, with Hoover saying they must “completely
silence” him. The intelligence agencies had a long-standing
relationship with the Mafia, selling them guns stolen from National
Guard armories for resale in Latin America, splitting the profits to
fund covert operations.
One witness actually had King in his crosshairs at a march In Memphis,
but King abruptly turned, spoiling the shot. The government had offered
a contract to one Mafia family, but never struck a deal. Finally a
Memphis man connected with Carlos Marcello's New Orleans Mafia took the
contract and arranged the hit.
To avoid a trial, the government framed James Earl Ray and bullied him
into taking a plea bargain. But Ray denied having shot King, and other
witnesses corroborate this.
We honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King not only as a great civil
rights leader, but as a martyr for civil rights, workers, and
peace-loving people everywhere, murdered by the covert capitalist state.
[Source: William F. Pepper, An Act of State (London/New York: Verso
Press 2003)]
![Image: People"s Hearing]() |
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You can download the Motion, Declaration and the independent report on
the October 25, 2011 raid on Occupy Oakland by the Oakland Police
Department below:
Motion
for
federal receivership of OPD (PDF)
Declaration
of
federal receivership of OPD (PDF)
Frazier
Group
report (PDF) (independent report on OPD commissioned by the
City Council)
Cato
Institute article on the Policemen's Bill of Rights