Friday, July 29, 2005
Political Police
I was talking with my significant other this morning at breakfast about how the murder of the Brazilian on his way to work, because he lived in the same apartment building as suspected terrorists, ranks right up there with the truck driver who pulled into a convenience store and blew away a Sikh clerk after 9/11. And we proceeded to discuss how cops are just humans, often young and not exceptionally bright, and every bit as susceptible to prejudice and hysteria on the heels of a mass catastrophe or critical incident as anyone else, except that they are armed and licensed to kill. The fact that these frontline specialists in public safety chose to tail a suspected terrorist (in their hyper-deluded imaginations anyway) for two miles before attempting to apprehend/murder him, only highlights the stupidity factor.
So I'm reading HistoryLink.org and I come across this item from my sophomore year in high school:
Seattle police raid Black Panther office in Central Area, setting off riots, on July 29, 1968.
On July 29, 1968, seven Seattle policemen and two civilians are wounded by gunfire and rocks during a Central Area riot prompted by a police raid on the Seattle office of the Black Panther Party.
Aaron Dixon and Curtis Harris, co-captains of Seattle's Black Panther Party, were arrested for possession of a "stolen" (planted?) typewriter.
The riot continued despite an appeal from Dixon from the King County Jail, delivered by his lawyer William Dwyer (1929-2002), that such a response "will only jeopardize the lives of masses of black people" (Crowley).
In the matter of the typewriter, Dixon and Harris were later acquitted.
So I'm reading HistoryLink.org and I come across this item from my sophomore year in high school:
Seattle police raid Black Panther office in Central Area, setting off riots, on July 29, 1968.
On July 29, 1968, seven Seattle policemen and two civilians are wounded by gunfire and rocks during a Central Area riot prompted by a police raid on the Seattle office of the Black Panther Party.
Aaron Dixon and Curtis Harris, co-captains of Seattle's Black Panther Party, were arrested for possession of a "stolen" (planted?) typewriter.
The riot continued despite an appeal from Dixon from the King County Jail, delivered by his lawyer William Dwyer (1929-2002), that such a response "will only jeopardize the lives of masses of black people" (Crowley).
In the matter of the typewriter, Dixon and Harris were later acquitted.
