A Long Time for Killing
By Michael Parenti
September 23, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "Dissident
Voice"-
Today, across the nation, we witness homicidal
violence delivered against unarmed people by law enforcement
officers. These beatings and killings are carried out with something
close to impunity. The cops almost always get away with murder.
Moreover, these crimes are nothing new; they are longstanding in
practice.
A study of police brutality in three major
cities–conducted just about half a century ago in 1967–found that
all the victims had one thing in common: they were from low-income
groups. Other studies however showed that it often was enough just
to be Black, even if middle class. Take the case of Carl Newland, an
African-American, 48-year-old accountant who happened to be walking
by a newsstand that had just been robbed one evening in 1975. He was
roughed up by the police, then brought before the newsstand clerk,
who emphatically denied that Newland was the stickup man.
Nevertheless, because of his “belligerent attitude” he was taken to
jail and severely beaten by the police, according to statements by
several prisoners. He died in his cell that same night. Consider
some other cases.
About a half century ago, a Black man was forced
to lie face down in a Detroit motel and a policeman cold-bloodedly
pumped a bullet into his head.
–At about that same time, a 10-year-old Black boy
walking with his foster father in Queens, New York, was killed by a
plainclothes policeman who leaped from his unmarked car, firing away
without identifying himself, shouting “Hey niggers!”
–A White “hippie” (as counterculture people were
called in the late 1960s and 1970s ), finding his home suddenly
surrounded by unidentified, armed men in Humboldt County,
California, fled in terror out the back door only to be shot dead by
county police and narcotic agents surrounding his house, the wrong
house. Raiding the wrong house and shooting its frightened
inhabitants became a regular pastime decades ago. “Fighting crime”
and “fighting the drug war” were the call of the day.
–A 12-year-old Chicano boy in Dallas, arrested as
a burglary suspect, was shot through his head by a cop.
–A Black shell-shocked Vietnam veteran was killed
by two police on a Houston street as he reached into his pocket to
take out a Bible.
–In Champaign, Illinois, in 1970, a frightened
African American bookstore employee attempted flight when police
menacingly approached his car. He was shot in the back. The culpable
officer was indicted for voluntary manslaughter, released on a
$5,000 bond and soon found “not guilty” by an all-White,
middle-American jury.
–In Cambridge, Massachusetts, an Italian-American,
working-class youth was beaten to death by cops in a police van.
–A New York policeman shot a 22-year-old Black
college student who was standing with his hands in the air. Then the
cop planted a toy pistol next to the victim’s body.
–A Chicano youth in Houston was taken to a
secluded spot by cops, beaten until unconscious, then thrown into a
bayou to drown.
–A Black youth, who was attempting to retrieve a
basketball in a schoolyard, was shot through the head by Chicago
police. One could go on and on with stories from years past about
how the courageous Thin Blue Line repeatedly saved us with their
endless killings.
Today, sparked by body-cam videos and social media,
people are giving more attention to eye-witness accounts of such
frightful events. Our Boys in Blue are being challenged by groups
such as Black Lives Matter. But let us not overlook the many who
were victimized by police during the late 1960s and 1970s and who
are still with us, not merely in memory but in actuality. That is to
say, a substantial number of those unjustly convicted long-ago are
still in prison today. We all can name some of them: Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Herman Bell, Janine Africa, Hugo Pinell,
and others. Consider also the lesser known cases. One that I have in
mind is Gary Tyler.In 1974 in Louisiana, a
bus carrying Black children was attacked by a mob of Whites, some of
whom were armed. According to the bus driver, a gun was fired from
the attacking crowd. The shot missed the bus but killed a White
youth in the surrounding crowd. The police arrived and forced the
Black students out of the bus and to their knees. One of them, Gary
Tyler (16-years-old at the time) was arrested for “interfering with
an officer.” What he actually did was voice his objection to the
deputy sheriff’s putting a gun to the heads of kneeling Black
students.
The police claimed they found a gun on the bus but
it curiously turned out to be a police revolver with no
fingerprints. Nevertheless Gary was charged with being the possessor
of the gun and murderer of the White youth. He was convicted by an
all-White jury and sentenced to die in the electric chair. The
prosecution’s case rested entirely on two witnesses, both of whom
recanted their testimony. Both charged that police had coerced them
into fingering Tyler. The police had threatened to take one witness’
child away from her and charge her as an accessory to the killing.
In any case, the judge refused to grant a new trial. Gary ended up
with a life sentence and no chance of parole.
This 16-year old student, Gary Tyler, had
attempted to calm a snarling officer who was uttering threats while
pointing his loaded weapon at the heads of Black school children.
Gary could sense the rage emitting from the trigger-happy cops. Over
the years many of us have confronted police in one or another such
situation. Nowadays we get numerous same-day recordings of “cops
gone wild” with pile-on beatings and shootings of unarmed civilians.
On each occasion the local police department announces, “The
incident is under investigation.” The killer cop usually is given
“administrative leave with pay,” or what some of us would call “paid
vacation.”
The police tell us that the victim was reaching
for his waist ban or was holding a cellphone in his hand that looked
like a gun–certainly enough like a gun to perforate him with a
deluge of bullets. The public hears the cop’s familiar story. When
attorneys and media ask for more information, what we get is what
the police department decides they want us to see. Before too long,
the accused cop is kindly stroked by a White, suburban Grand Jury
and an obligingly soft-handed prosecutor who has his own eye on a
more elevated juridical or political office, and who therefore does
not want to offend his war-against-crime White constituency.
Gary Tyler is now 57 years old. He has been in
prison since he was 16. He will likely remain incarcerated for the
rest of his life unless the numerous pleas from around the country
and from countries around the world should start having some impact.
There are scores of prisoners of political note, and hundreds of
others like Gary who were just in the wrong place or just speaking
up against the potentially lethal behavior of police. They continue
to be victimized by a law enforcement system capable of the most
venal acts both within the community and in the courtroom, taking
away whole lifetimes of innocent people by use of street executions
or judicial killings or perpetual incarcerations–an abuse of justice
that is beyond measure.
Michael Parenti's most recent books are Waiting
for
Waiting for Yesterday: Pages from a Street Kid's Life
(an ethnic memoir) and
Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies.
Read
other articles by Michael, or
visit Michael's website.