KARMIC JUSTICE — 4 KILLED COPS
by Joseph Anderson
March 27 2009
Most people of color know that the cops, and police departments as an institution, *historically* represent the street enforcement arm of white American racism. Indeed, the police were born out of the white slave patrols.
People of color and conscious white people have seen how the cops have brutalized, especially, many members of the Black and Brown community — just the latest, in a long series of notorious cases in the Bay Area and all over the country, being the police murder of Oscar Grant — and sometimes (which doesn’t get as much notice) even members of the Asian community — and now (even just recently in San Francisco) peaceful protesters and members of the Arab community (specifically women and children). And just relatively recently, in Oakland, 11 cops were fired for falsifying a whole series of search warrants, and the head of OPD Internal Affairs was put on leave, pending the investigation of his having effectively beaten, in his custody, a Black suspect to death years ago. How soon we forget the Oakland Riders case, and the damage control performed there to politically limit the corruption investigation and exposure to those corrupt street cops, but not the department in whose culture and corruption they were spawned. I’ve heard that Oakland alone pays out (at least averaged over time) about 2 million dollars a year in police brutality cases.
U.S. flags were flown at half-mast for these dead cops — tried, sentenced and executed in the streets just like they do with people of color — but no flags were flown at half-mast over city hall by the Black mayor of Oakland for Oscar Grant. Ron Dellums took a week to say anything about Grant, and then only spoked in carefully indirect and tepid terms. But Dellums, of course, immediately, personally and vociferously condemned the killings of the cops right away. So, much for some of those docilized middle-&-above-class negroes (male and female above the intersection of race and class) who condemn the cop deaths (on TV, radio, even one Black female on KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio) by saying that “all life is equal”. Since when, right from its founding and upon who’s lives it was established (Red, Black, Yellow and Brown), has all life ever “been equal” in the history of AmeriKKKa?
At least a couple of the TV local news stations have shown a servile Rev. Philip Ellinberg, some neegro (probably what we Blacks call “a jackleg / bootleg preacher”, since I tried to look him up online, and in the phone book, and with telephone directory assistance, and found nothing) who’s supposed to sing for Massa at the dead cops funeral, but he didn’t sing at Oscar Grant’s funeral and I haven’t seen him anywhere at the Oscar Grant Movement meetings almost every Saturday in Oakland at Olivet Missionary Baptist Church.
Where were the flags at half-mast, and the state and mass media coverage funeral, for Oscar Grant and other unarmed, innocent victims of killer cops vigilantism and street executions? All the Bay Area cities have to do is to look at the names on the boards of the Stolen Lives project and portable mural. Do you think that any of the Bay Area cities would even just fly their flags at half-mast just one day, collectively for ALL of those victims of the police?
And we forget (or don’t know) that one of the cops who was only wounded, but should have been killed, was Sgt. Pat Gonzales, who shot a young Gary King Jr. (Black) in the back and killed him. Cops up in (or north of) Napa/Sonoma valley even went and gratuitously killed the Black adopted son of an affluent white married couple who made the mistake of calling the cops to help calm down their emotionally distraught son.
You know the old saying, “When The White Man is hurt evvveryone must cry.” But LOTS of people AREN’T CRYING over 4 killed cops — including even a lot of politically conscious white people — and AREN’T MOURNING in this state mass propaganda funeral. While the cops and the media even come up with suspiciously last-minute stories to try to tell us just “how bad” Lovelle Mixon was (how about research into those dead cops background to see how abusive and dirty they were?), many of us realize that _IT’S KARMIC JUSTICE_ whoever killed the 4 cops all in an afternoon’s work. And it’s KARMIC JUSTICE that, just as many Blacks in America have been murdered by cops during a “routine” traffic stop, these cops were killed during a “routine” traffic stop. Ha-Ha.
The cops called Lovelle Mixon, “A cold-hearted individual who doesn’t have any regard for human life.” Well, the cops should know: they behave exactly the same way.
Cops 2; Oakland residents 4.
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Joseph Anderson
Berkeley, California
March 27, 2009
(Written as the Oakland cops funerals are occuring.)
The killing of 4 Oakland police officers and Lovelle Mixon, the 26 year old who shot it out with the OPD and killed 4 officers before being killed has kept me up at night.N o, its not because I fear for my life or because I am concerned about cop killing becoming a trend but, because as an advocate for youth in the criminal justice system, I am realizing what these youth are up against when it comes to recieiving a second chance at life after being released from incarceration. This has been most apparent w/ peoples response and lack of understanding of the life of someone re-entering society after prison. There are a couple of things that people should remember and consider when understanding our criminal justice system.
For those that don’t remember Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12 students and a teacher, as well as wounding 23 others, before committing suicide at Columbine High in Littleton, Next month is the 10 year anniversary. It is the fourth-deadliest school shooting in United States history. In the days and hours following the Columbine Massacre, Eric and Dillon were profiled by everyone. Major talk show host from Geraldo to Oprah aired profile specials on these two young men. There were an awful lot of people, especially parents of white teenagers who began asking the question “how did this happened?” There were primetime specials that analyzed their upbringing, created a list of “signs to look for”for parents who potentially may have been raising “eric and dillons”. There was such an interest in trying to do everything possible to find a reason for their behavior and not call them devil children and cold blooded killers. But not Lovelle.To discuss the contributing factors to his behavior is “insensitive” of the police that lost there lives.It is providing an excuse for a man many believe did not deserve to live.