POLICE VIOLENCE REVEALS SYSTEMIC RACISM

(The following article is from the December 1-31, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.

By Kimball Cariou

The videotaped death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver Airport has roused a storm of protest against police use of Tasers. Unfortunately, this killing is not unique: about 18 other Taser-related deaths have been reported in Canada over the past four years, and many more deaths involve other weapons. Banning Tasers alone would not solve the issues of widespread police racism and abuse of authority, or the strategy to shield violent officers through internal investigations and other legal tactics designed to provide impunity for their actions.

     Police brutality is widespread across Canada, compounded by the "law and order" and "war on terror" rhetoric of right-wing politicians and the corporate media, who consistently glorify the police and attempt to justify police crimes.

     For example, since November 11, 1987, when Officer Allan Gosset killed Anthony Griffin, police in Montreal have killed at least 37 people. Most have gone unpunished, as coroners, prosecutors, and cabinet ministers cooperate to protect the cops.    The situation in Montreal is not improving. Moroccan immigrant Mohamed Anas Bennis left his Montreal mosque at 6:30 am on Dec. 1, 2005. At 7:20 am, at the corner of Kent Street and Cote-Des-Neiges, he was shot twice and killed by a police officer. The shooting took place during a joint operation by the Montreal police, Quebec Provincial Police, and the RCMP, allegedly targeting "Algerian scam artists" linked to "international terrorism."

     Quebec City police were assigned to investigate the killing, starting a process which can only be described as a cover-up. Eleven months later, it was announced that no charges would be laid, since there was "no evidence" that a criminal act had occurred.

     The Bennis case is highly revealing. The day after the killing, the police claimed that the "unbalanced" victim used a kitchen knife to attack an officer, who fired the fatal shots in "justified self-defense." This tale was immediately challenged by Bennis' family and friends, but widely reported by the mass media. A careful study of the case indicates that the 25-year-old bearded man was "guilty" only of being a visible Muslim in the wrong place at the wrong time. It appears that "racial profiling" led a police officer to jump to the false assumption that Bennis was one of the "terrorists," igniting a tragic train of events which somehow led to the shooting.

     Metro Toronto is also infamous for its levels of police brutality, particularly killings of Black men.

     One early case was the 1979 shooting of 35-year-old Jamaican-born Albert Johnson. A pathologist testified in court that Johnson was probably crouching or kneeling at the foot of a stairway in his home when he was shot from above by Metro police, since the fatal bullet entered his abdomen at a 45 degree angle and travelled downward. One of Johnson's children testified that her kneeling father was shot execution style by police. Two officers were acquitted of the crime.

     In August 2000, Otto Vass, a 55-year-old father of five, who ran a junk shop and a real estate business, was beaten to death by cops in a Toronto parking lot.

     The police story? Responding to a call about a disturbance at a 7-11 store, they found Vass badly injured after a fight with three men who had fled the scene. When they tried to assist Vass, he tried to punch one of them. The injuries sustained in the initial fight were so serious that Vass died shortly afterwards.

     But neighbours with a direct view of the parking lot saw two officers shove Vass to the ground and then savagely punch him and beat him "worse than an animal" with their nightsticks. Two more officers arrived, holding Vass down while the beating continued. Videotape from the 7-11 showed that Vass had an argument with one man, not three, and that he was unharmed when the police arrived. An autopsy report found 51 blows from police nightsticks. Charges were laid against the four officers. The eventual verdict? Not guilty.

     In the early morning hours of May 21, 2004, a plainclothes Toronto officer shot unarmed Jeffrey Reodica three times in the back. The Filipino teenager was an altar boy, a marching band member, and part-time employee at Krispy Kreme Donuts. He was never arrested, nor was he part of a gang. After a four-month review, the province's Special Investigations Unit cleared the shooting officer. Evidence from witnesses at a coroner's inquest two years later disproved police claims about the killing, but the officer has gone unpunished.

     Nor is this just a "big city" syndrome. On Oct. 29, 2005, Ian Bush, a young worker in the northern B.C. mill town of Houston, was ticketed by the RCMP for holding an open beer outside the local hockey arena. Bush made a flippant comment and was taken into custody. Less than half an hour later, the back of his head was blown off by an RCMP revolver. The force immediately closed ranks around the officer who pulled the trigger, taking months to concoct a "self-defence" story involving body contortions which are impossible given the angle of the shooting. No charges were ever laid in the killing.

     A recent Vancouver public forum heard that there were 11 deaths in "police custody or pursuit" across British Columbia during 2004, and 13 more the next year. All such deaths in B.C. are investigated solely by police, whose findings becoming the basis for any charges. Not surprisingly, this rarely happens.

     Sometimes the methods used by police to "get rid" of "troublesome" people are more devious. Perhaps the most infamous example is the racist "starlight tour," the Saskatoon police tactic of callously dumping Aboriginal men in fields outside the city during winter. That was the fate of 17-year-old Neil Stonechild, who died on a minus-28 degree night in 1990.

     There are too many cases of deaths in custody to begin giving details of each. But here are a few more.

     On Jan. 1, 2000, holding a pellet gun, Henry Masuka demanded help for his infant son at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. He died after Emergency Task Force officers shot him five times. The provincial Special Investigations Unit (SIU) said police had no choice.

     In Etobicoke on Nov. 9, 1991, Jonathan Howell, a young Jamaican-born man, survived being shot but suffered brain damage. Detective Constable Karl Sokolowski was found guilty on a firearms charge, only to be granted an absolute discharge with no criminal record.

     In February 1997, Charles Cooper, a suicidal man armed with a knife, was shot in the chest with a beanbag gun by an Ottawa police officer. The supposedly non-lethal beanbag lodged in Cooper's heart and killed him. A tactical unit member was cleared by the SIU.

     Dudley George, a 38-year-old Chippewa man, was killed at Ontario's Ipperwash Park in 1995 by OPP Sgt. Kenneth Deane. In a rare decision, Deane was found guilty of criminal negligence causing death when a judge ruled that he knew George was unarmed.

     There have been a number of deaths involving pepper spray. For example, in July 2000, Luc Aubert died of a heart attack after being pepper sprayed by four Montreal officers. Roy Sheppard died in February 1996, shortly after being pepper sprayed by Calgary police during a scuffle at the group home where he lived. Kasim Cakmak, a 37-year-old Turkish immigrant who suffered from schizophrenia, was pepper sprayed and handcuffed by police and a male nurse at the Alberta Mental Health Board on May 11, 2001. He stopped breathing and was later pronounced dead. Vernon Dale Crowe died after being pepper sprayed by Regina police inside an ambulance on July 10, 2001.

     Police violence is commonplace in Winnipeg, where cops shot native leader J.J. Harper in 1988. In the early morning of Oct. 24, 1998, 27-year-old James Alexander was beaten senseless by police outside a Burger King restaurant on the city's Notre Dame Avenue. Charged with two counts of assaulting police, Alexander was later acquitted.

     In 2006, cops pulled over a car in the city's North End. When a 16-year-old Aboriginal youth got out, he was elbowed in the face, thrown to the ground, and charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. Allegations of racism and police misconduct in this case were investigated by the Winnipeg police Professional Standards Unit! According to Manitoba's Law Enforcement Review Agency, 251 formal complaints against the police were placed in 2005, but over half were abandoned or withdrawn, often because of the lengthy and complex process involved.

     Across Canada, police attacks against Aboriginal people, members of immigrant and minority groups, and demonstrators are appallingly commonplace. Recent examples include the RCMP pepper spray assault on Squamish Nation members celebrating a soccer tournament victory, Montreal police brutality against International Women's Day marchers, and the stunningly violent arrest of US black journalist Tonye Allen by Toronto police.

     The underlying problem is not the choice of weapons - it's the systemic racism and attitudes of impunity which are engrained in police forces, and the refusal of the ruling class to crack down on police violence.

Found at: http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint08/02__POLICE_VIOLENCE_REVEALS_SYSTEMIC.html