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No Police Brutality Day Calendar
Place a Public Service Announcement on TV. Local cable stations will air our PSA. Call 415-864-5153 or 510-464-4563. for our PSA videos featuring Rashida Grinnage, Iris Beaz and other family members who lost loved ones to police murder.
Man killed by Napa County Sheriff Department on Weekend of 9/28 in Napa
At 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning, there was a 911 call from a resident in a condo at the Silverado Country Club at 268 Kannapali Drive about a break-in in progress. Deputy Steve Tibbetts of the Napa County Sheriff Department arrived and shot and killed Robert Jason McMaster, age 30.
McMaster had a doctorate and worked as a pharmacist at the St. Helena Hospital. According to the latest reports he had a history of run-ins with the law. Apparently, the slandering by the police and the press has started.
How police and officials react to charges of police brutality
Every day innocent people are killed by the police. When police arrive at the scene of a disturbance, the situation too often escalates to the point where police feel compelled to use deadly force. Once this has happened, the police, public officials and the medial immediately mobilize to discredit the victim. When an internal investigation is conducted, the authorities almost always rule it "justifiable homicide" and the officer responsible is completely exonerated.
Recently the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco investigated the police handling of the shooting of Kuan Chung Kao. They discovered some disturbing phenomena about police behavior and how they conducted the investigation. What they found out in this case can be applied to many cases of police brutality.
Typical police response to charges of police brutality
1. There is a willingness on the part of police and public officials to distort and omit the truth to protect the officer and the municipality from civil liability.
2. From the moment of death, the entire law enforcement bureaucracy mobilizes to blame the victim. Police reports call the victim "the suspect" and police who kill the "victim."
3. The victim and the family are investigated and interrogated and slandered by the police and the media.
Typical flaws in internal investigations conducted by police
1. Evidence which implicates the police is suppressed or dismissed.
2. The investigations do not take into account that it is the police who are often the aggressors.
3. These deaths are not investigated as possible homicides and the officers responsible are never charged with murder.
4. The police claim that they killed in self-defense even when they have acted as aggressors. They should not be legally entitled to this defense in those cases.
Stolen Lives Wall - A Traveling Memorial
A Memorial for Who? For many years, people have been deeply moved by the wall in Washington, DC commemorating those who died in Vietnam. Memorials are a way that loved ones or society as a whole bring dignity and meaning to lives tragically cut short. Often they express a sentiment about the cause of the tragedy. Can you imagine a memorial to the victims of police murder in the US where people for just one moment would get a sense of how the families of the victims feel about their lost loved ones?
A War Memorial - For a Secret War. The Stolen Lives Wall is a way to reach out to people - especially those who are shielded from the epidemic of police violence in Black and Latino neighborhoods. Our wall will grow larger and travel throughout Northern California. It will memorialize not just the few victims you may have heard about, but the hundreds who were unjustly killed. The media talks about a homeless street person with a long criminal record or a threatening, "mentally disturbed" person, often non-white. It's similar to how the public has been conditioned to accept images of nameless, charred bodies on foreign battlefields. Think of the impact it might have had if there had been memorials honoring Native Americans slain in the American West.
Creation of the Wall - Leboria Smoore, a member of the San Francisco Chapter of October 22nd, envisioned a tall, black wall with the names and ages and circumstances of the deaths of people killed by the police enscribed in white lettering. The wall was designed with common materials so that it can be copied by others across the country. The wall became a reality last summer when she was joined by volunteers who constructed the shiny black 6-foot panels. Artists carefully painted on the names in late night work sessions at the Labor Temple at Capp and 16th Street in San Francisco. Work is continuing in work sessions on Wednesday evenings. Call the Bay Area office for more information.
The Wall That Travels - Since the first sections of the wall were completed, it has been on the road. It was unveiled at "Art Vs. Cops in the Street" at 24th and Mission in San Francisco on July 20. On August 16, the wall was at the Kao Rally at Union Square in San Francisco, then it went to the "Welcome Back Geronimo" party at Bobby Hutton Park in Oakland. That night it was at the Mumia event at Mission High School in San Francisco. The following weekend it appeared at the California ACLU conference held at Sonoma State University. The following week it was at the Prop 209 events and on August 29 it was in Santa Rosa for a memorial to 2 victims of police brutality. Then it went to an NAACP workshop on police brutality in Sacrameto. For the entire month of September the wall was in the window of Artist Television Access gallery at 21st and Valencia in San Francisco. If you would like the wall to come to your community, call the San Francisco office and we will make arrangements.
Your Support is Needed! Make a donation for the wall, the Stolen Lives Project or the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality by making a check payable to Oct. 22/IFCO and send it to: Bay Area Organizing Committee for October 22nd, 2940 16th Street, Suite 216, San Francisco, CA 94103. To contact the Bay Area chapter of October 22nd, call 510-464-4563 or 415-864-5153.
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