Nah, They Just Worshiping at They Temple

Of Dunkin Donuts.

Asked by Officer Liu's family & @CommissBratton not to turn their backs on the Mayor this morning NYPD does it anyway pic.twitter.com/rQXCr79MRc
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) January 4, 2015

Time to end the nonsense, but De Blasio is not the one to do it, methinks. Bratton won't do it.

More NYPD Sadism

Cops Smash Boy Through Window in the Bronx

The headline makes the story of what happened to Javier Payne the other day in New York seem quite routine. Cops do smash people into and through windows -- in New York and elsewhere -- with sickening regularity. Also into car hoods, floors, walls, bars, sidewalks, streets, lamposts, you name it. 

It's policy. After all, if compliance isn't immediate and perfect, it must be compelled. What better way to compel compliance than to smash people into or through stationary objects? I ask you...

In this case, Javier Payne, 14 and a resident of the Bronx, and a friend were visiting The Hookah Shop on Arthur Avenue around 11pm. Police pulled up and confronted the boys. The proprietor of the shop heard heated voices outside and then the sound of shattering glass. According to Payne a police officer smashed his head through the plate glass window at the front of the shop, causing cuts to his face, a large gash to his chest and a punctured lung. 

He was handcuffed and left bleeding on the stoop of the shop while police were "nonchalant" about the boy's condition and the medical emergency they had created.

“He looked like a young man who was facing down his own mortality,” said one city employee familiar with the incident. “This is a kid who was staring at his own doom. He looked like he was going to die. And if he didn’t get help when he did, he would have.”

An argument ensued between the paramedics and police about removing the teenager’s handcuffs so they could treat his injuries. Initially, the police refused, but eventually relented, witnesses said.

One of the paramedics had to hold the boys chest wound closed while they rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center. Medical experts said it may have saved Payne’s life.

Clearly yet another one who needed killing, only the EMTs in this instance were not going to allow it.

The boy is said to be recovering.

Permission Granted...

The recent trial, conviction, and sentencing of Cecily McMillan in New York is emblematic of something that has been going on in this country for a very long time but which has reached a kind of tragic climax.

Permission has been granted to "authority" -- no matter who -- to attack those without acknowledged power and authority at will with nearly complete impunity.

As I say, this has been going on for a very long time, but almost always with a proviso: police and those with power could do pretty much what they wanted to certain categories of people without power (young, brown and black men in particular, but by no means just them), but they couldn't go beyond those categories without facing consequences. A DA, judge or jury might not throw the book at them for assault, battery, murder, mayhem or what have you when they beat up or killed a mouthy white woman or a high-powered white business executive (as examples), but they might face "discipline," and that could amount to a sternly worded rebuke from higher up all the way to firing or even (very rarely) jail time.

For the most part, police know what they can get away with, and in New York, especially during the Occupy Wall Street period, they knew they could get away with just about anything short of gunplay, when it came to suppression of the movement. No, NYPD was not allowed to shoot down Occupy demonstrators in the streets and parks when they went marching or occupying encampments. Also, the NYPD rarely (or never?) appeared in standard issue Robocop/riot gear when confronting Occupy demonstrators. They mostly wore their regular uniforms. Some of the police infiltrators, of course, wore civilian clothes, trying to blend in with the motley crowds, but infiltrators were often easy to spot because they were so roided up and aggressive. Hello?

When it came to suppression of Occupy NYPD were often outrageous, brutal, deliberately cruel, and yet so very, very delicate. Touch a cop, and quite often demonstrators would wind up beaten bloody and trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys before being hauled off in the wagon for whatever "processing" was thought necessary.

Cecily McMillan got caught up in that matrix on St. Patrick's Day, 2012, when she went down to Zuccotti Park/Liberty Square to meet some friends to go out for the evening. Well, yes, it was St. Patrick's Day, and there were celebratory festivities down at the Square for the six month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. A large and boisterous crowd had gathered at the park (soon to be outnumbered by police), and many were having a good time canoodling and reminiscing over past triumphs and failures. It was a party.

A decision was made to clear the park for its ritual "cleansing," and notice was given. Of course it was ignored, as was often the case during the Occupy Wall Street hey-day. Officers were then delegated to start removing people one by one, and they were authorized to arrest people who resisted.

Cecily says she was approached from behind by a strange man who did not identify himself who told her she had to leave. She ignored him. He was insistent. Rather than debate the matter, she decided to leave on her own volition, and as she was doing so, the unidentified stranger who was walking behind her grabbed her right breast and squeezed it hard. She reacted, she said, instinctively, by elbowing the man, who then tackled her and beat her and trussed her up with zip-ties. He was a cop. She had no idea.

Injured, apparently with a cracked rib and many bruises, she was hauled off to a holding area by a bus, where others who had been arrested were awaiting transport for "processing." She tried to escape the holding area, though she was still in zip-ties. She was re-captured and thrown down to the ground hard. She was in a great deal of pain and barely conscious by this point. After a while, arrestees started calling for medics -- they thought she had a broken rib and was in extreme distress. Their calls were ignored.

Soon, she was grabbed from the group and roughly hauled to the bus where she began to have a seizure. Then she was apparently thrown off the bus, falling hard on the street, and left in a seizure condition in the street for some minutes before being carried to the sidewalk -- so as to clear a path for traffic. She was left without any kind of medical attention for what I understand was sixteen minutes, while police hovered about chatting. EMTs in the crowd offered to help. They were ignored. People hurled invective at the police for their disinterest and neglect. Cops saw their main job as crowd control and taking those who had been arrested to jail.

Eventually, the fire department medics arrived and began treating Cecily. As far as I could tell, watching on livestream and later videos, she wasn't having a seizure as such, she was hyperventilating due to the injury to her rib, and the rough treatment and neglect she'd suffered had badly aggravated her condition.

After some time with the fire department medics, she was transported to the hospital where her numerous injuries were assessed and treated. She was released. Quite a while later, she was charged with assault on a police officer, a great surprise to her.

Thus her trial, conviction, and sentencing as the "last Occupy protester" to face judgement in the courts.

That's the story as I understand it, and in the retelling, it doesn't seem all that bad, given some of the other horrors that went on during the Occupy Wall Street suppression, and it is hardly worth mentioning given the numerous police shootings of innocent black and brown men in New York during that period as well as before and afterwards.

So what if a well-off young white woman is roughed up by the police? Who cares? Black and brown women face much worse on a daily basis in New York and all over the country. Maybe it's a good thing that this uppity white bitch gets a taste of what black and brown women go through all the time.... she's actually lucky, runs this line of reasoning, because if she weren't white and well off, she'd face much worse treatment than she did.

That's true enough. Making a cause celebre out of Cecily McMillan seems perhaps a bit unwise when so many black and brown men and women face far worse all the time, and nobody (well, hardly anybody) bats an eye.

If Cecily were black or brown, who would care what happened to her? She could be brutalized, raped, disappeared, chopped up for cat food, and hardly anybody would ever notice. That's the way it is in this country, that's the way it's long been for women of color.

So why should we care about Cecily above all? Or care about at all?

The only real reason to care about what happens to Cecily is if such concern is tied in with growing concerns about an out-of-control policing and injustice system that grinds down and grinds up thousands in New York and millions around the country, operating unjustly day in and day out, targeting the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, the young, the black and the brown. This is a monstrous system that destroys families and whole communities routinely, kills the innocent with impunity, declares entire categories of people to be... less than human.

It's insane.

The only reason to care about what happens Cecily is if caring about her opens eyes to what's been happening to so many, many others unjustly accused, imprisoned or killed by "authority" run amok.

She represents the consequences of this highly unjust system, that's all.

It's an unjust system of authority that has once again been granted permission to behave with impunity toward whomever it chooses.


Some of the jurors -- nine out of the twelve who convicted Cecily -- seemed to wake up to what they had done and implored the judge to grant leniency. Observers have said he did, by sentencing her to 90 days rather than the more typical 180 days. Maybe so, but that doesn't change the fact that the system he and they serves is unjust at its core, is arbitrary, and it targets the young, the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, and the black and brown for special interest and treatment.

We're told that Cecily has made her personal crisis within this unjust matrix into an opportunity to do good on behalf of those who face a much worse situation than she does.

For that, we can be grateful.

Daniel Murphy March 22, 2012 Facing Off With Police At Union Square, NYC

A rant:



A transcription was requested by ThD at FDL who was arrested with Daniel in the notorious raid on the Chicago NATO protestors in May of 2012; the trial of the NATO 3 -- the only ones who were tried in connection with the raid -- recently concluded with "not guilty" verdicts on charges of terrorism, but guilty verdicts on charges of mob action and possession of materials to commit arson, convictions which carry maximum 30 year penalties.

My balky transcription of Daniel's address to the NYPD heard in the video above follows:

[Daniel Murphy, to the NYPD, in progress] You'll probably beat us...

Ain't that right? Were you guys here last night? So was I. It was great.... 

Then you assholes came back at 9:30. I had just gotten to sleep. It would have been great if you'd a waited a little longer, but you chose not to. 

I'm here because I wanted to ask you guys a question: How many times do you ask yourselves, "Why the fuck am I here?"

Do any of you ever stop to think "Maybe what I'm doing is not actually great? Maybe what I'm doing is actually quite possibly immoral?"

 Do you ever think... [unintelligible; there is laughter and a voice over on the video saying: "This is the kid that was arrested twice in one... uh, a couple of days..."]

 [Daniel continues to the cops:] How many times do you go home and say, "Maybe I shouldn't have hit that guy over the head, maybe I shouldn't a pushed that woman to the ground, maybe I shouldn't have tied that guy's cuffs on so fuckin' tight so he can't feel his fingers a week later." That guy is me. I still can't feel my fingers, assholes. Thanks a lot.

And for what? What did I do? God knows. I guess we'll go to trial, maybe the charges will get dropped. [Unintelligible...].... the fuckin' videotape, ain't that wonderful. But you sure held me in jail for two days, wasn't that great, right? I loved the food in there, too, so I'm probably gonna go back tonight. You know why? Because you assholes just follow orders and never question why the fuck you do what you do.

I invite you to stop being mindless zombies, and quite possibly, once in a while, take off your uniforms and engage in conversation. I think if you thought of us as human beings and not as objects, you would stop beating us, but instead, you're trained to dehumanize and to think of us as criminals, when really what we're doing is not wrong at all. Legality does not equal morality. Just because something is the law does not make it right. Just because we break a law does not make us wrong.

You should go fuck yourselves and stop following orders -- only zombies and robots do that.

You are human beings. You are just like us. Except when you put on your uniforms, you turn into pieces of shit. I don't understand why.

I wear a "uniform." It's the only set of clothing I have. You guys are free to take it from me and everything else I have, cause you try to every day. But I kinda still have the last shred of dignity.

You know why? Because I can stand up here and talk to you, not because I think I have more power than you. You have guns, and if we lived in a different country, you would have killed me long ago. But we're in America.  There's still a little bit of protection. I don't think that's gonna last too much longer. I think, pretty soon, as we continue to break the law, you will have to shoot us, cause we'll get tired of you beating us. When we get tired of you beating us, we're prolly gonna fight back.

Wouldn't that be an amazing sight?

 I hope we wait until you beat us so badly that the public joins us, cause you're prolly so stupid that you'll wait that long.

I think you should change your minds. I think you should join us. There is no one else here who will fight for your pensions or your wages or any other measly benefit you get for having such shitty jobs.... [Daniel continues unintelligible...]

 [Fades....]

 Sorry if I missed anything...

---------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: I originally posted about Daniel Murphy and the very public torture he was subjected to on the streets of New York back in March of 2012, during the demonstrations against police brutality -- which featured heaping helpings of police brutality, not only to Daniel Murphy but to Cecily McMillan and many, many others.

I didn't know that Daniel Murphy had gone to Chicago in May of 2012, to attend the NATO conference protests, or that he had been arrested with TarheelDem and the others initially referred to as the NATO 9 (two of whom were undercover cops, two of whom were Polish nationals who were promptly deported, two of whom were TarheelDem and Daniel Murphy, and three of whom were later tried for terrorism and other offenses, and who were recently convicted of those 'other offenses' only) until I happened to Google Daniel's name and ran across a Pacifica Radio interview with him recorded shortly after his release from custody. I don't know where he is now or what has become of him, but I imagine he's found an ashram somewhere -- do they still have ashrams? -- and is doing good works building his community.

That's what I would imagine, anyway...

Daniel Murphy

From a distance and the relative comfort of our own easy chairs and daily lives, it can sometimes be difficult to grasp just what is being done in the name of Authority to suppress domestic dissent and to terrify us into submission.

On March 24 in New York City, there was a march against police brutality during which the police engaged in arbitrary arrest and... police brutality. One of the victims was Mesiah Hameed whose arrest and... disposal is documented in a previous post.

Another was that of Daniel Murphy. From reports, he was seized while standing on the sidewalk. He was then subjected to very public and prolonged torture via too-tight flexi-cuffs. From the beginning of the suppression of Occupy activities, there have been numerous instances of police tightening flexi-cuffs to the point of intense pain, prolonged restriction of circulation, nerve damage and worse. It is a form of torture.

I saw a briefer video clip of Murphy's arrest previously, but the one above is far more graphic and disturbing. In it, a number of seemingly completely arbitrary arrests are documented, starting with people who appear to be randomly picked out of the crowd. This tactic has been employed by the NYPD extensively, and it is also used by other police departments (notably, Portland, Oregon) and it is thought to be a form of psy-ops intended to intimidate others from joining the protest. In almost every case, charges against those arbitrarily detained are never filed.

Shortly before scenes of Mesiah Hameed's arrest in this video, we see a young man carrying a yellow "Occupy" flag be arrested. As this young man is grabbed and taken away, the crowd chants: "This is what we are protesting!" He will be seen later in the paddy wagon that comes to pick up Murphy.

At first, it is not really clear what is happening with Murphy's arrest, and from appearances, the police are trying to block its documentation. Murphy is seen on the sidewalk on his stomach, an officer with a knee in his back, but he is only glimpsed briefly between the legs of the numerous officers who are protecting the arrest from view by the public. (NYPD has been repeatedly warned and reprimanded about their practice of blocking the view of their arrests.) Also note is made of the fact that TARU videographers for the NYPD do not record this arrest -- unusual, since they are clearly present, and their job in part is to document arrests.

Finally, when he is sufficiently trussed up, two white shirts hoist him and half-carry him into the street where other officers join in by carrying his legs. He is asked his name by someone in the crowd. He says it is Daniel Murphy.

The police put him face down in the street. Police then harass NYT photographer Robert Stolarik -- who has been repeatedly set upon by NYPD officers during various OWS actions. From appearances, he has been specifically targeted by NYPD, against all their stated regulations about interfering with the press and media.

On the ground, Murphy starts pleading that his handcuffs are too tight. He gets louder and louder, "Please remove my handcuffs, I cannot feel my hands!" He says, "Let me go because I was complying. I don't want any problems." Soon after a couple of cops try to pick him up, he says, "I'm asking you to please take off my handcuffs. I cannot feel my hands. I'm in excruciating pain! I'm begging you, please take my handcuffs off! My hands are turning purple!"

The video evidence shows it is true.

Murphy continues to call out in agony for the next however many minutes -- there's approximately 11 minutes more of the video recording, but at least 5 minutes have been cut out. The crowd becomes extraordinarily concerned (though not quite as intensely as the witnesses to Cecily McMillan's situation), but the police stand around with bovine indifference, more concerned with keeping people on the sidewalk than with a young man in pain not more than a few feet away.

Murphy explains that he has nerve damage from the last time he was cuffed so tightly -- so this is not his first arrest, which may have something to do with why he is being arrested in this case -- and that he had asked that his cuffs not be put on so tight this time. From appearances, however, they were put on even tighter, which is simply an act of sadistic torture.

It's clear, even at the distance of the camera, that his fingers are turning blue.

He gets to his feet and is assisted to a safety curb on the opposite side of the street where he sits very uncomfortably asking repeatedly that his handcuffs be removed while officers stand around indifferently or attempt to herd the crowd. Murphy lies down on the curb.

Members of the crowd are quite aware that what is happening is quite conscious and deliberate on the part of the NYPD; after the Cecily McMillan inciden on M17, it cannot be a surprise to anyone that it is apparently the policy of the NYPD to cause as much public suffering by those they detain as possible.

(The scene at the typewriter is after my own heart!)

Members of the crowd are calling out "loosen the handcuffs!" but of course the police pay no attention. Someone says, "Call 911!" which apparently someone does. In New York, when police are the cause of someone's suffering or medical trauma, apparently the only way to get emergency assistance is to call 911 yourself.

The crowd is clearly very distressed by what they are witnessing (and I would argue that is the psychological point of being so public about these things.)

In the distance, New Yorkers are seen casually going about their business. Ah, the city!

Eventually the paddy wagon comes, and the officer who I assume is the driver opens up the back. We see the young man who was grabbed earlier sitting inside.

Some of the officers on the scene are black, and members of the crowd make remarks about firehoses and dogs and Birmingham and Martin Luther King and "just following orders" that actually seem to resonate with some of the officers. It's impossible to tell what the effect is, if any, but some seem to be at least thinking about what they are doing -- or not doing. And perhaps they are wondering...

Two officers pick up Murphy, and he starts screaming. A member of the crowd says, "I've got EMS on the line and they say not to move him!" A member of the crowd is saying, "His leg is broken! His leg is broken!" while officers use their feet to try to force Murphy's feet to the ground. He is not standing, he is being held up by two officers, one on each arm.

The man I assume is the driver of the wagon is obviously concerned and tries to talk to Murphy, but he continues to cry and scream, saying "No, no, no, no, no!" His hands are clearly seen and clearly blue.

A white shirt approaches Murphy and say something to him that I can't make out, but it appears that he is trying to get Murphy to stand on his own. Murphy says, "I can't feel my fucking hands!"

Murphy is placed bodily face down in the wagon by four or five officers while the young man who was arrested earlier looks on in a kind of horror. Murphy is heard screaming louder and louder inside the wagon while the crowd erupts in outrage.

The young man inside the wagon can be seen talking to the driver -- and the driver actually seems to be the only officer on the scene who is concerned about Murphy's condition.

The driver talks to other officers; I can't make out what he is saying, but he is obviously quite agitated. The young man inside the wagon slides down to the door and starts talking to the officers as well. The driver tells him to get back.

The driver then leaves the rear of the wagon and I assume goes to the front. A woman in the crowd is asking the police "Why are you arresting him?" The police don't respond, but another member of the crowd says, "He was standing on the sidewalk." The driver returns to the back of the wagon with a new set of flexi-cuffs and enters the rear with another officer.

Murphy can be heard moaning inside the wagon, and the woman in the crowd asks, "Why is he moaning?" A man in the crowd says, "Because of police brutality. Thank you for proving our point today." Some of the officers seem to show just a trace of shame. The woman in the crowd says, "Why are you still hurting him? Stop! Someone's crying in there. Someone's in pain in there. Is there a paramedic in there?"

Officers who had just moments before shown a smidgen of what might have been shame start laughing with one another; one checks his watch. The officers come out of the back of the wagon. The driver locks it up. The woman in the crowd says, "Is there a paramedic in there? He's in pain. Someone's crying in there." And the camera pans to the dozen or so impassive and indifferent NYPD officers lining the street to make sure the crowd stays on the sidewalk.

It is a horrifying scene that those of us of a certain age can easily relate to another era of official indifference to suffering that officials themselves have caused.

It is a horrifying scene and it is meant to horrify those who witness it, for any sane person watching is going to say, "That could be me." And any sane person will tremble at the thought.

Below is a video of Murphy shot on March 22, as he has words with the police at Union Square after his arrest during which he suffered nerve damage to his hands.



Is this why he was singled out and tortured so publicly on the 24th?

The impunity with which officers behave, and the protection they afford one another for this lawless impunity, and the absolution granted by courts and elected officials for police misconduct -- or in this case very public torture -- is one of the main reasons that so many people are so disgusted with the police. It was the reason for this march.

But in the larger context, the lawless and torturous behavior of the police toward Daniel Murphy is emblematic of the lawlessness and impunity with which the vaunted 1% and the public officials they own and control behave toward all of us.

We are all Daniel Murphy.

Today In New York

Video streaming by Ustream

That was Tim Pool's video of the arrest of this 16 year old:

whose name is Messiah, according to posts I've read about her. She's been an activist with OWS for some time, and I saw her interviewed on one of the livestreams from Union Square last night.

You see in the picture that some of her comrades are trying to "de-arrest" her, but they are not successful. In the video, though we don't see the arrest itself, and we only see part of the aftermath, we can pretty much figure how it went down. When the crowd started going back into the street, police targeted this young woman for arrest, and they made a very ostentatious show of seizing her, throwing her to the ground, trussing her up and then hauling her bodily down the middle of the street to an awaiting vehicle.

It was a very deliberate show.

Meant to intimidate. And for the most part, it worked. Despite the catcalling and insults from the crowd, they returned to the sidewalks and they didn't persist in trying to de-arrest her. That was sufficient for the NYPD to declare "victory" -- at least in their own eyes.

The march was called "Let Freedom Spring" against police brutality and calling for the immediate resignation of NY Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

This is a picture of her that was posted by Timothy Krause at dKos:


Here is another video of her being carried down the middle of the street:



From The Local East Village Vimeo Channel. Here's their story of the events:

Videographer Paul Davis, who witnessed the arrest of Mesiah Hameed on Mott Street below Prince Street around 2:50 p.m., said the teenager was obstructing police movement before she was detained. “She was blocking the scooters from going,” he said. “Civil disobedience. Somebody grabbed her, one of the deputy inspectors.”

Jared Malsin

Mr. Davis said Ms. Hameed, who has participated in multiple demonstrations and was present at the clearing of Zuccotti Park, was ordered to disperse and was arrested five to ten seconds later.

As The Local’s cameras rolled, four officers, one wearing a riot helmet, carried the young woman to a waiting police van as protesters yelled, “She’s just 16!” Her hands were cuffed behind her back and her shirt was pulled up to reveal her bra, causing one demonstrator to yell, “You are a child molester!” Others shouted, “Let her go!”

FURTHERMORE: I found the following statement by Mesiah Hameed in a post by Eve Ensler at HuffPo that is dated 10/20/11 (the post includes stories from many OWS participants, and approaching what's going on at that early date through story rather than "message" strikes me as just right.)

Excerpt:

I have read newspapers and watched videos on this revolution. Many of them share false and fabricated information regarding our purpose. What the media does not know is that the purpose is much to big to be titled. i have met everyone from in debt students to homeless grandmas. We all fight together. Personally i am here to represent the youth. It is an issue when you are not born knowing about the corruption of our systems worldwide. it should not take several years to come to reality that we are being cheated of our freedom! I was raised in such a way that even if it does not affect me i am aware and do all i can because it could very well affect me anytime or moment. I am very passionate about this movement. I wake up at Zucotti Park with such drive, an open heart, and wide ears to listen to all. I know that my passion for this sparks passion within others! This is so important for the world. We must get our youth to the protest and tell them what is happening. ALL AGES NEED TO BE APART OF THIS. we need to stop having authority over the young and let them find their own understanding of life. That is why i am here. I will stay until we see change.

----------------------



Other video of Mesiah showing her blocking a ScooterCop -- referred to in some of the news reports but not shown in Tim Pool's video above.

The question has been raised whether she was "targeted" for arrest or not. I believe she was arrested during the M17 raid and fracas at Zuccotti/Liberty, though I could be wrong about the date.

Knowing how NYPD does target what they think of as movement "leaders" for arrest -- quite arbitrarily in most cases -- it wouldn't be at all surprising.

Her actions in briefly blocking the progress of the ScooterCop might or might not subject her to arrest; but if she was targeted, arrest would be certain, and more than likely she would know it before she engaged in disobedience.