…the title of Margaret Kimberly’s Oct. 6, 2021 column. A few moths ago I’d emailed Ms. Kimberly, the man who handles readers comments (Choudray?), and Glen Ford (November 5, 1949 – July 28, 2021, Rest in Power), to ask why the content was no longer labeled Create Content at the bottom. Only brother Glen had responded, and was quite baffled about my question. I explained that for some reason, the content never ended, but kept scrolling and scrolling, as in: there IS no bottom. He finally wrote back to consider it all free to publish, bless his ailing heart.
I’ll take him at his word, given the significance of this news.
“Police killings of Black people are a feature of American law enforcement and they are deliberately under counted.
The New York Times and other outlets report that most police killings in this country are “mislabelled .” The sanitized language is worse than an understatement because it implies that these murders are categorized improperly due to ordinary human error. In fact, there is a long and sordid history of covering up these crimes. The initial coroner’s report for George Floyd, whose murder was witnessed by millions of people, reported drug use and underlying health conditions as the causes of death.
According to a report in the Lancet , between 1980 and 2018 police in the U.S. killed an estimated 30,800 people. This number is 17,000 more than reported by the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), which is a misclassification rate of 55%. The deaths of Black people are the most likely to be undercounted, with 5,670 deaths missing out of an estimated 9,540.
It isn’t hard to see how this happens. Coroners are part of the law enforcement system and work closely with the police and prosecutors. Even if they are dedicated to telling the truth they are often pressured to do otherwise when police, their colleagues, are the perpetrators.
Not only have half of all these deaths gone unreported, but this new data once again comes from groups dedicated to keeping track of these crimes, and not from any governmental source. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement’s 2012 Operation Ghetto Storm report was the first to inform the public about the toll of police violence. It was through Operation Ghetto Storm that we learned a Black person is killed by police, private security, or vigilantes every 28 hours. Yet even this groundbreaking effort didn’t capture the full toll.
Thanks to Fatal Encounters , Mapping Police Violence , and the Guardian’s project The Counted , we have a fuller idea of the scope of police violence and how it is routinely swept under the rug. There is still no centralized government database of police killings. While their contributions are valuable, private citizens and the media should not be doing the job of the Justice Department. No one should have to guess how often the police kill when there is a federal agency charged with enforcing the law.
Then again, the law is the problem. All talk of reform and corrections and rehabilitation are farcical in a country dedicated to the use of brute force against Black people. The issue of under-reported police killings demonstrates the systemic injustice of law enforcement, which is dedicated to keeping Black people under physical control.
So great is the imperative to justify the killings that medical examiners often collude with the cops in their cover up schemes. In 47 documented cases, medical examiners falsely claimed that sickle cell trait (SCT) was the cause of death for Black men killed during police encounters. SCT is not a disease. It is a benign genetic condition that is not associated with decreased life expectancy. The President of the American Society of Hematology publicly stated, “The use of sickle cell trait to cover up the deaths of Black people while in police custody is abhorrent and has no scientific or medical merit.” Black lives don’t matter to the state or even to the medical community if telling the truth becomes inconvenient.
Discussions about policing must not skirt around what is undeniable. Anti-Black racism permeates every sector of society and guarantees everything from job discrimination to police killings and extensive efforts to cover up the crimes.
As a result of this corruption, medical examiners, prosecutors, and politicians never pay a price for their role in hiding the criminality. Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and that city’s lawyers forced Laquan McDonald’s family to hide the video which showed how he was killed as a condition of being compensated $5 million for his wrongful death. The deal was done the day after Emanuel won a close primary race in 2016. He has faced no repercussions for his actions and was recently confirmed as the U.S. ambassador to Japan.
Systemic racism, official collusion, and the lack of a consistent and strong movement ensure that the death toll will be high and the likelihood of justice will remain low. These new reports of hidden killings are important and are to be commended. But they must be the basis for forcing radical changes in policing and to punishing all those who aid and abet. If that is not the case, there will be endless exhortations to “say their names” without any hope of seeing justice done.”
When I’d reported on Operation Ghetto Storm (130 pages long; 29 are text, photos, and graphics, Memorial pages. The remaining pages are charts identifying the dead with photos, locations, armed or not, mental health issues, self-medicating issues or not, police report claims and alleged circumstances, then additional comments pertaining to dissenting eye-witness claims, investigations yielding X effects or ongoing ones, etc.) at My.Firedoglake on April 24, 2013, as I recall, there were few, if any comments. As in: it depend on one’s perception, as in the following:
Trévon Austin’s 1 October 2021 coverage of the news at wsws.org is lengthy and excellent, but differs as to reportage:
“The national media and the Democratic Party frame police violence as a purely racial issue. Following the sentencing of former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin, President Joe Biden claimed the murder of George Floyd “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism” imbedded in American society.
The “race, not class” mythology of police killings has been incessantly promoted by the Democratic Party and its political satellites. Regardless of a victim’s skin color, the epidemic of police violence in America devastates families and impacts entire communities. However, this is not how police brutality is presented in the national media.
Austin also pithily notes:
“The new study provides a clearer picture of the issue of police violence in the United States. However, it does not fully account for the real social toll. What’s missing from this report is the untold number of victims that are brutalized by police but survive the physical and emotional scars bore by the victims and their families and the immeasurable suffering inflicted on families and communities that lose a loved one at the hands of police.”
“Researchers discovered the top five states with the highest underreporting rates were Oklahoma, Wyoming, Alabama, Louisiana and Nebraska. The states with the highest mortality rate of police brutality were Oklahoma, Washington D.C., Arizona, Alaska, Nevada and Wyoming. Additionally, the paper found that men are killed by police at significantly higher rates than women, with 30,600 police-involved deaths recorded among men and 1,420 among women between 1980 and 2019, a difference of over 2,000 percent.”
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
Look at the highest mortality rate states:
“Oklahoma, Washington D.C., Arizona, Alaska, Nevada and Wyoming”.
Except for the chocolate city that is our nation’s capitol, these are all states with a relatively high proportion of Native Americans.
One could add to an old saw in the following way these days…
awesome catch, amigo. but you’re in ABQ, no? i was trying to think of prof david correa’s last name, who was srsly the first i’d seen of rampant police state, and the failure of ABQ being under a federal mandate, etc., and what shit he’d reported on from the city council and the ‘citizen review board’.
but of course more and more of my my little leak away each day.
nice to see you, le moyne.
Yup, still in Burque though i may be on the way out. A particular Red state and love wanting me there looks very inviting
I too had forgotten Correa, don’t know if what he’s up to, if he’s still associated with La Jicarita, or at UNM, etc…
We’ve had a ?sensible?friendly?effective Mayor for a term now. I wonder if Tim Keller will be re-elected next month… probably.
I don’t know how well the IRB really functions, but it is something to at least have a place to take reports of problems that isn’t a direct part of APD or the City.
Can’t vote in the City elections without a valid ID. Might get that before the election.
The NM State MVD website decided I am incapable of driving because i checked “other” on the “limits” question and put in I need glasses, so no DL for me without higher level intervention from God or a doctor, or,,,
Haven’t seen a Dr. in 15 years andf I know software error compounded by beareaucratic inflexibility is NOT a medical issue for me or any doctor.
The NM State DOH has disqualified me from visiting my parents because I don’t want to join the national vax madness.
Ahhhh, the Land of Entrapment.
Covid aint gonna wipe us out
The vaxxing aint gonna wipe it out
Mass vaccination of the young is insane:
the risk-benefit is completely upside-down.
At least before Delta hit in July, flu killed more young kids than covid in the US and all those numbers are relatively miniscule. Saw an Aussie comment that covid is behind “falling tree branches” and “attack by nesting birds” as a cause of death in children there.
NM, OR and other states are running at >20% of all confirmed cases being fully vaccinated breakthrough infections. Most states aren’t even counting (or reporting if they are), WA just started looking in their own vax database around Sept 1, they’re >20% breakthrough cases since then. Also quite sure they’re undercounting if the vaccine actually does what they keep saying it does then there are many, many uncounted mild and asymptomatic cases where testing doesn’t happen because vaccines are perfect, right?
All the sold-out Dems are actively giving credit to the vax for what God-given natural immunity is actually doing. And they’ll keep up the insane mandatory vaxxing, long after the danger of over-stressing the chintzy for-profit hospital system has passed.
It will be interesting to see what happens this winter flu season. Sooner or later breakthrough infections will pass 50%.
Somehow I doubt they will call it:
“A pandemic of the vaccinated” then.
At least im back to laughing about the whole mess at times.
Peace y’all
part I:
our son’s on his way down here from fort collins, and i have a few chores to do before he arrives.
well, the only mayor i knew was berry, so…. and david and other folks occupying his office. srsly, it was abq that first got police state on my radar.
bummer about your eyes and driving. i don’t do doctors either, after decades of dental and medical malpractice.
“A particular Red state and love wanting me there looks very inviting/” explain if you will? gotta scoot for now, more another day.
Looking through your older posts, this was the first time I heard that Glen Ford had passed away. That guy was a beacon of integrity all though the Obama years, when virtually nobody in the black community dared to criticize the sociopathic con-man in the White House, but Glen Ford told it like it was in Black Agenda Report, and I’m so sorry that he’s gone.
his passing was hard, as was bruce dixon’s. but may others at BAR have shown lights on the US (and lackeys) war machine. i’d been searching my Empire and War Crimes category…but there a just too many to zero in on all the ones on nato and ukraine.
there are several new homages to glen at the site, but these are notable reads:
Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the Policies of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination, ajamu baraka, jan 12, BAR
https://blackagendareport.com/black-alliance-peace-condemns-policies-useunato-axis-domination-ukraine
‘Ukraine and U.S. War Propaganda’, margaret kimberly, BAR, jan. 26
“The 2014 coup against an elected Ukrainian president took place in part because the Russians underestimated the extent of U.S. and NATO determination. They roused themselves quickly however and Crimeans, who are mostly of Russian origin, voted to rejoin the nation they had been a part of until 1954. The U.S./NATO regime change effort came at a steep price for Ukraine. Thanks to Atlanticist meddling it is now the poorest country in Europe that won’t get the NATO and EU membership it was promised. It remains a pawn between two powerful countries.
The U.S. is pulling all the hybrid warfare schemes out of the tool box. For months they claimed that Russian troops were massed on the border, ready to invade. They have engaged in diplomacy but only to try and get their way. Russia has held firm on a guarantee of no further NATO encroachment and the removal of missiles from their border. The French and Germans are feckless and do what Washington wants. They should be pressuring Ukraine to live up to the Minsk II Agreement which requires talks with the breakaway Donbass region.
https://blackagendareport.com/ukraine-and-us-war-propaganda
‘Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the Policies of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination’, ajamu baraka, jan 12, BAR
https://blackagendareport.com/black-alliance-peace-condemns-policies-useunato-axis-domination-ukraine
““During the latter part of 2013 until February 2014, the Obama/Biden administration gave material support and encouragement to anti-democratic right-wing elements in Ukraine to execute “regime change” against the democratically elected government of Victor Yanukovych. This plunged Ukraine into crisis because substantial sectors of Ukrainian society did not support the coup, especially sections of predominantly Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens in the Eastern portions of the nation. Those Ukrainian citizens rejected the legitimacy of the coup government and began to voice support for independence from the neo-Nazi government that took power. And what was the response from the illegal coup regime? It attacked their citizens in the East. In other words, they attacked their own citizens – a crime that the Obama administration pretended was the excuse for U.S. subversion in Syria. “
The conflict that ensued as a result of the invasion of Eastern Ukraine by the Ukrainian government with the full support of right-wing paramilitary forces like the neo-Nazi Azon battalions, did not succeed in forcing the republics that subsequently referred to themselves as the Donbas Peoples’ Republic to submit to the coup government. An agreement between Donbas and the coup government was arrived at that became known as the Minsk II agreement. Terms of the agreement included a commitment to a ceasefire along with relative autonomy for Donbas. The agreement avoided all-out war and provided some degree of “stability” until the Biden administration came back to power.
Back in power, Biden and the democrats who have now become the party of war, begin to encourage Ukraine authorities to ignore Minsk and to forcefully take back control of Donbas. Even more dangerously, the U.S. and some European powers began to indicate that Ukraine might be invited to become a member of NATO. That could allow NATO with its nuclear weapons to be positioned right on the borders of Russia and with its nuclear arsenal.
Back in power, Biden and the democrats who have now become the party of war, begin to encourage Ukraine authorities to ignore Minsk and
begin to encourage Ukraine authorities to ignore Minsk and to forcefully take back control of Donbas. Even more dangerously, the U.S. and some European powers began to indicate that Ukraine might be invited to become a member of NATO. That could allow NATO with its nuclear weapons to be positioned right on the borders of Russia and with its nuclear arsenal. ”
of course nato MUST include ukraine, because: Revanchist Russia!
i may have jumbled these horribly, sorry.