PHOTO/JOSH SISK, JOSHSISK.COM
BALTIMORE, MD — The Baltimore Police Department has shown the City who is boss. After “a homocide” was committed on Freddie Grey while in the custody of six Baltimore City police officers, the officers were found innocent in court and awarded back pay.
The US Justice Department has been investigating the Baltimore City Police Department (BCPD) because of hundreds of citizen complaints that they were racist, sexist, violent toward those arrested in handcuffs and gave ‘rough rides’ to prisoners in police vans. The City has paid millions of dollars to innocent people who were maimed and terrorized by the Baltimore police.
The Justice Department recently released its report that made official that the BCPD violated the rights of citizens every day. Police leaders filled out arrest forms in advance in which the subject was listed as a ‘Black male.” Police commanders order the arrest of young men without cause, instructing their officers to “make something up.”
Police laughed about violating people’s rights in front of US Justice investigators riding along with them. People were beaten while handcuffed. Women were maced just because they did not move fast enough while under arrest.
The Justice Department ordered many cosmetic changes, but BCPD had the last laugh.
Under the nose of the US Justice Department, the BCPD operated an illegal spying operation that spied on all the people of Baltimore, including the Mayor and City Council.
Baltimore City Police received funds from a wealthy Texas capitalist, who shifted millions of dollars through a Police foundation in Washington, DC, and a “community organization” in Baltimore City. The foundation took a cut of the cash and passed the rest to the police department as a grant.
The police then purchased surveillance from contractors who formerly worked for the US Army in Iraq. The contractors flew airplanes above the city and recorded all motion in a 30-mile radius. This allowed the police to see when the Mayor left her house in the morning or when the District Attorney left her office in the afternoon. It also allowed them to trace the movements of the Justice Department investigators. This activity was just recently made public by accident and the people of Baltimore are left to wonder what next?
Dropping the benign mask of “Serve and Protect,” the police stand exposed as the ”watchdogs of private property.” Militarized, divorced from society, striving to become a law unto themselves, their every brutal, illegal act shapes and concretizes an American fascist police state.
We must confront each and every attack on what liberty we have left. Most of all, we must see that new labor replacing technology has fundamentally changed the world. There is no going back. We must visualize the world of peace and freedom that electronics makes possible and fight for that future.
