TORTURING THE WRONG MAN

by Rania Khalek on January 28, 2013

Dispatches From The Underclass

Demonstrators rally outside the LA County Sheriff’s Department in Compton to demand justice for Jose de la Trinidad. (Dan Bluemel / LA Activist)

“How am I supposed to explain to my daughters that their father was murdered by the police, the people they’re supposed to go to for protection,” asked Rosanna de la Trinidad three days after her husband was killed. Jose de la Trinidad, 36, left behind a wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 6 when he was shot dead by Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputies on November 10, 2012.

An autopsy report obtained by the Los Angeles Times reveals that he was shot from behind. Five of the bullets pierced him in the upper and lower back, one in the right forearm, and another in his right hip. Four were described as fatal.

This makes the deputies who shot him look more guilty of execution-style murder than they already did.

Police say they opened fired because De la Trinidad was reaching for his waistband where he could have been keeping a gun. But this is contradicted by a witness who saw the whole thing. She says deputies opened fire on De la Trinidad after he followed their orders to turn around and put his hands above his head. The autopsy report confirms that he did in fact have his back turned to police when they killed him.

It all started when Jose and his older brother, Francisco, left his niece’s quinceañera. Police tried to pull them over for speeding, but Francisco, who was driving, refused to stop, prompting a brief car chase. A few blocks later, the car came to a sudden halt and Jose jumped out of the passengers seat. Francisco quickly took off again, forcing one deputy to drive after him. Meanwhile, Jose stood on the sidewalk where he was greeted by three deputies in the street with their guns drawn. That’s when, police say, Jose reached for his waistband to retrieve what they could only assume was a gun (because, duh, he’s brown!). ‘Fearing for their lives’, two of the deputies shot and killed him.

Little did they know that a nearby resident, who goes by the name Estefani, to protect her identity, witnessed the entire incident from her bedroom window directly above the shooting.

“His hands were on his head when they started shooting,” she told investigators canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses some 30 minutes after the shooting.

Estefani said De la Trinidad did jump out of the car after it came to a sudden stop. After he ran toward the deputies a few feet, they ordered him to stop and turn around — which he did immediately, she said.

Seconds later, the deputies opened fire, she said.

But they didn’t like what they were hearing:

The deputies, she said, repeatedly asked her which direction De la Trinidad was facing, which she perceived as an attempt to get her to change her story.

“I told them, ‘You’re just trying to confuse me,’ and then they stopped,” she said. Authorities later interviewed Estefani a second time.

In their most recent report on the autopsy, the Times failed to include a vital tidbit: the Sheriff’s Department initially denied having spoken to any witnesses. It wasn’t until they were questioned by, ironically enough, the Times that they came clean, though they blamed it on “a lack of information flowing between various deputies and lieutenants involved in the investigation.”

The family plans on suing the Sheriff’s Department, according to their attorney, Arnoldo Casillas, who argues that De la Trinidad ”complied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies.”

Over 100 people joined De la Trinidad’s relatives in Compton on Saturday to demand justice. They marched through the streets chanting, “No justice, no peace! No killer police!”, a rallying cry sung far too often in neighborhoods of color where police shootings are a regular occurrence. But you would never know this from the Times piece, which includes just two sentences about the weekend protest.

Luckily, the LA Activist’s Dan Bluemel was there:

Converging on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Compton station, protesters demanded justice, not only for the Trinidad family, but for other victims of police shootings.

Speaking to demonstrators, Gigi Fahmi, a friend of De la Trinidad and his wife, described the victim as devoted to his spouse, Rosanna de la Trinidad, and his two daughters, ages three and six.

Fahmi demanded the deputies responsible for De la Trinidad’s death face criminal charges.

“[Sheriff] Lee Baca has no control over his department and should be ashamed of himself, as well as the department, for the way they handled, what deputy sheriffs called a ‘routine traffic stop,’” she said. “You tell me, what’s so routine about two sheriffs instructing an unarmed man to ‘stop, turn around, put your hands on your head,’ so sheriffs can then proceed to shoot him execution style, riddling his body with seven bullets?”

…

Damian Ramirez delivered a personal message to the sheriffs. He was a close friend of Michael Nida II, who was killed by Downey Police in October of 2011. Like De la Trinidad, Nida was unarmed and gunned down in the back.

“No more murders of innocent men because you don’t know how to do your job, because you are afraid of the community you serve,” said Ramirez to the deputy sheriffs. “The time has come to change the way you do business, the way you are trained to police these communities. These are human beings you are stealing from their families, human beings who deserve to live the rest of their lives in peace and freedom.”

According to the Times, there have been at least 238 police killings in Los Angeles County since 2007, which Bluemel highlights at the LA Activist, adding:

Jubilee Shine, an organizer for the LA Coalition for Community Control Over the Police, referred to the officer-involved shootings as a “long pattern and practice of abuse of poor, black and brown and working-class people.”

Since 1983, he said, only one California police officer has been jailed for killing a civilian while on duty. That was Johannes Mehserle, a former transit cop who killed Oscar Grant while Grant was lying face down and pinned by another officer. Grant was unarmed. Mehserle said he had mistaken his sidearm for his Taser when he shot Grant in the back.

Shine, who called attention to the diverse racial makeup of the crowd, told the demonstrators they had a “common enemy and a common purpose.”

“These police and these deputy sheriffs, they do not come from these neighborhoods,” he said. “They do not come from Compton, Watts or Inglewood. They bring these cops and deputy sheriffs in from out of town — from Anaheim, Pasadena and the Westside. They give them good salaries to come and act like armies in our streets.

People on the left often worry about extrajudicial killings abroad, as they should. But do they realize that in certain US neighborhoods, state-sanctioned murder is routine.

The fickle finger of capitalism.

“Capital eschews no profit… just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent, will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent certain, will produce eagerness; 50 per cent, positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both.” -Karl Marx-

TSA screener Reggie Edwards was arrested after allegedly stealing $36 from a suitcase at the Charlotte airport on Jan. 1, 2013. He was fired from his job and charged with larceny. (Mecklenburg County Sheriff)

Transportation Security Administration baggage screener Sean Henry is shown in this police booking photo. (Port Authority Police Department)

Clayton Keith Dovel pleaded guilty to stealing iPads from travelers’ luggage over eight months at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. He was sentenced to three years deferred adjudication probation, meaning that the conviction will be expunged from his record if he completes probation without incident. Dovel was charged after a passenger tracked his missing iPad to Dovel’s Texas home. (Dallas – Fort Worth Airport Police)

Pleaded no contest and was sentenced to three years probation, after prosecutors said he stole around $50,000 in electronics over six months at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport and allegedly posted photos of the merchandise online for sale. He was caught when an airline employee saw him take an iPad from a passenger’s suitcase and stuff it down his TSA-issued pants. (Broward County Sheriff’s Office)

Al Raimi pleaded guilty to theft by a government officer after federal prosecutors said he stole between $10,000 and $30,000 cash from travelers at a security checkpoint over a year at Newark airport, and that he gave a cut to his TSA supervisor Michael Arato. He was sentenced to three years probation. (Port Authority Police Department) [For turning state’s evidence?]

Michael Arato pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from his subordinate Al Raimi at Newark airport. Prosecutors said he took kickbacks from Raimi for turning a blind eye to ongoing thefts from passenger carry-on bags. Arato was sentenced to 30 months in prison. (Port Authority Police Department)

Coumar Persad pleaded guilty to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct for stealing $40,000 in cash from a checked bag at John F. Kennedy Airport, along with TSA coworker Davon Webb. Persad was sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation. (Port Authority Police Department)

Davon Webb pleaded guilty to grand larceny, obstructing governmental administration and official misconduct for stealing $40,000 in cash from a checked bag at John F. Kennedy Airport, along with TSA coworker Coumar Persad. Webb was sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation. (Port Authority Police Department)

Elliot Iglesias pleaded guilty to stealing four computers from passenger baggage at Orlando International Airport. He was sentenced to two years probation. (Orlando Police Department)

Karla Morgan pleaded guilty to stealing a passenger wallet in a TSA sting in June 2011 at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. She was sentenced to one year of probation. (Houston Police Department)

Michael Pujol was fired from his job as a TSA officer at Miami International Airport after he was charged with grand theft for allegedly stealing items from passenger bags and hiding them in a special pocket he’d added to his TSA jacket. Pujol was arrested after an iPad he allegedly stole was tacked to Craigslist. (Miami-Dade Police Department)

Toussain Puddie was fired from his job as a TSA screener at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport for allegedly stealing a $450 pen from a passenger at a security checkpoint. He’s currently charged with grand theft in the third degree in Florida and is due in court next month. (Broward County Sheriff’s Office)

Alexandra Schmid was fired from her job as a TSA screener at John F. Kennedy International Airport for allegedly swiping $5000 in cash from a passenger’s jacket at a security checkpoint. She has been charged with grand larceny in the third degree and entered a not guilty plea. (Port Authority Police Department)

Kerry Cunneen, the self avowed Portland (A)narchist, defiantly and publicly pronounced her hatred for the state, its prisons, its cruelty, its sponsored terrorism, death, violence, injustice, genocide, it’s complicity with the wealthy/privileged exploiters of the commons/environment, and its brutality while facing a potential arrest warrant after recently refusing to comply with a federal Grand Jury Subpoena.

At least 3 of her fellow Grand Jury Resisters are being held in federal isolation cells (dungeons) near Sea-Tac for an indeterminant period in an effort by the state to so traumatize/damage them as to cause their breakdown.

Photojournalists aren’t permitted to document their conditions, but lest we forget the kind of brutality Kerry speaks of inherent in ALL states…:

State Security Apparatus

Above:  Authorities carry out the court-ordered amputation of the fingers of a convicted thief in a public square in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz, Jan. 24, 2013. Convicted for being part of a 10-member gang that carried out burglaries in the city, he was sentenced to the amputation of three fingers, the confiscation of his property and three years in prison.

For those homesick Iranians: Just urinate into a humidifier and crank that puppy up–this usually does the trick.

Some readers may observe the functionaries of these state security apparatuses invariably are hooded, hidden, or otherwise anonymous. If their cause/actions were just, there’d be no need. You needn’t attend an execution or amputation–simply pick up your phone and call virtually any State office. Ask for the complete name of the person with whom you’re speaking. ?? ‘Nuff said!

The above photo provides a graphic example of why some (A)narchists have argued, “F(*)ck your STUFF!”/”F(*)ck the Law!”

Grand Jury resister Kerry Cunneen gave an interview to Finn’s Revolution radio show.  Notably, she doesn’t respond to the question of how she justified the injuries, such as those to photojournalists, (requiring medical attention) covering Seattle’s 2012 May Day street violence. She only acknowledged the property destruction/vandalism by attempting to justify it as a valid/legitimate response to state sponsored violence/terrorism. Here is a rough transcript of the interview:

Kerry Cunneen, Avowed Portland (A)narchist

Question: What is (A)narchism and how did (A)narchists find themselves at May Day in Seattle?

Kerry: (A)narchism is a political philosophy centered on the idea that a society without domination is better suited to foster the wellbeing of its members. (A)narchists are necessarily anti-capitalists because capitalism hinges on exploitation and economic division in society. We also oppose the concentration of power that we refer to as the state. These various bodies of law, force, and control seek to contain the possibilities for society and compel us all to perpetuate capitalism. There are many other forms of social domination that (A)narchists will fight to abolish, such as racism and patriarchy, that are also deeply entwined with capitalism.

As for May Day, it is, among other things, an (A)narchist holiday. It is a day that commemorates the militant labor struggle for the eight hour work day and the (A)narchists who were killed or imprisoned by the state for participating in this struggle. In Chicago, where the labor struggle was particularly militant, the police opened fire on a picket, killing and wounding picketers. The next day a demonstration was called and a bomb was thrown at the police line, killing an officer and wounding others. The state tried eight (A)narchists for the murder, and regardless of whether they were at the demonstration or not, all eight were sentenced to death or life in prison. We take May Day as a chance to remember these militant struggles and to inspire us to keep fighting against the state that wants us submissive or dead.

Every year there are demonstrations and other events in cities all over. In the Pacific Northwest, Seattle was calling out to (A)narchists to come together and have a really massive anti-capitalist march. Many (A)narchists answered the call and showed up in Seattle that day.

Question: What was May 1, Seattle all about? Were there progressive groups involved? What was your involvement? Were you arrested or investigated? If so, how were you treated?

Kerry: There were a lot of events and marches scheduled for May Day in Seattle this past year. A lot of them were related to occupy. I can’t say much about the organizing of Seattle’s May Day because I don’t live there and was not part of the organizing. I can say that May Day demonstrations have in many places become somewhat placid, not resembling the spirit of resistance to state control. They often get city permits, and designate peace police to make sure the march is whatever the organizers want it to be. The anti-capitalist march in Seattle was organized to be different. This march was meant to be a disruption of capital. It had no permit and there was no leadership in the march or expectation of abiding by laws.

I was in Seattle at the anti-capitalist march on May Day. It was a glorious day for (A)narchists, in my opinion. We effectively disrupted the goings on of downtown Seattle. I was not arrested or anything, but clearly I have become involved in the investigation somehow. But, with secret investigations it is difficult to glean much information.

Question: Some people are appalled when property damage and injury occur in these kinds of events. What can you say regarding that?

Kerry: I would say that property destruction is an important tactic in the fight against capitalism. I think property destruction does a number of things that further the struggle against domination. For one, it solidifies for us and reminds us that the powers we fight are not abstract and insurmountable. They are vulnerable to attack. I think also that when an institution which forcibly maintains power over us is targeted by property destruction, this will often resonate with others who experience the violence of that institution. It makes us feel less alone and less like victims.

I think property destruction has a good effect on those who carry it out. I think most people need to unlearn submission and show themselves they have the capacity to act for their own liberation. I think when people burn cop cars, break bank windows, or blockade a road (thwarting the transfer of goods and or law enforcement) they are also demonstrating to themself some of the magnitude of their ability to resist. I think, too, that in some cases the economic damage of property destruction can be effective against the state and capital.

It is not as though breaking windows is an end goal, but it is a
tactic that people shouldn’t thoughtlessly cast aside as if it were the introduction of violence into the fight against the state, instead of the response to endless state sponsored violence.

There are many flawed arguments against property destruction, but without a specific one to debunk, I would only extrapolate on this point: In general people are accustomed to experiencing and absorbing state violence as normal. There is a desensitization and sometimes a blame shifting that goes on to justify state violence against people. But, when people fight back against these concentrated powers, it is sensationalized and often viewed as unprovoked or illegitimate. In the case of a demonstration in the streets, it is really awful to hear someone criticize the breaking of windows as they gloss over the acute violence at the hands of the state. Demonstrations are often brutally repressed, people are beaten, pepper sprayed, arrested and imprisoned and this is expected and often accepted by witnesses and people in general. How can a rational person deny efforts of resistance against the use of violence by those who hold it in a monopoly? We want to win; we really mean to destroy capital, and for that we will need to be open to the idea of property destruction. We have to strip capital of its power over society. This is not an easy or voluntary occurrence but one that is achieved by force. Property, after all, is a farce.

Question: Kerry, you, Maddy, Matt & Kteeo are currently refusing to cooperate with a Grand Jury in Seattle which is investigating events which occurred during May Day protests last year. First, why do you think the government has subpoenaed you and has decided to pressure you to testify? And why are all of you refusing to appear?

Kerry: I don’t know why I was subpoenaed to the grand jury. I am an (A)narchist. I am known to have been in Seattle on May Day and the Feds are grasping at straws trying to make a case against (A)narchists in whatever way they can. I doubt they have any idea who broke the courthouse windows, nor do they care. I think they are using the attack on the courthouse as a pretext to bring down a heavy hand and try to scare (A)narchists away from militant resistance. It isn’t working, and I am glad to think that this is frustrating to the state.

I refuse to appear because I despise the state. They are working to undo everything that (A)narchists stand for. I refuse to help them on the principle prisons should be abolished. I refuse because I am in complete support of the crimes being investigated. I refuse with a visceral hatred for the law and all of the lives they ruin. I am glad for the little bit of resistance I can provide in denying them information. I respect and admire Matt, Kteeo and Maddy for making the sacrifice that is involved in sitting for an indeterminant jail sentence. I just am not personally willing to take a step in the direction of my own jail cell.

Question: Clearly the government is attempting to intimidate you and (A)narchists and activists in general. First by calling you to testify in a Grand Jury setting thereby trying to force you give up your right to remain silent which exists in standard judicial courts, and then by jailing some of you to wear you down. Can they legally keep any of you in jail indefinitely until you testify, and just how long do all of you think this can last? Can you talk about what legal actions are being taken on your behalf?

Kerry: The state has the power to do lots of things, legal or not! Legally though, people can be held in civil contempt for not testifying for a period up to 18 months or whenever the grand jury ends, whichever comes first. The grand jury is slated to end by March of 2014, so there could be a lot of people in jail for a long time over this. There are currently no legal actions being taken on my behalf that I know of. I am not in need of any legal help unless I am arrested. There doesn’t appear to be much that lawyers can do to help people who are subpoenaed. All of their attempts to get the subpoenas thrown out have been laughed out of the courts. They [feds] are going to do all they can to turn people against their principles. I don’t see it working with most (A)narchists though.

Question: Kerry, where can listeners find out more about all this, and what can they do to get involved and help?

Kerry: So, the support group for the subpoenaed folks has a website. It is nopoliticalrepression.wordpress.com. That is where you can go for news and updates about the grand jury in the Pacific Northwest. It is also where you can donate some much needed money which will help us fill the commissary of the folks in jail so they can continue to write letters, eat and such things.

We also need money for lawyers fees and in case of indictments coming from the grand jury. There is a support site for the 5 people recently indicted for alleged crimes during the various marches of May Day in Seattle. The site is seattleantirepression.wordpress.com. There is also a site, saynothing.info, which is cataloging the numerous actions of property destruction which are being carried out in solidarity with those resisting the grand jury and its targets.

I would say that people can help by holding fundraisers and other events to raise money and awareness about what is happening. You can contact either support groups to figure out how to set something up in your area. Probably the most important thing though, is that people continue to struggle in the spirit of the anti-capitalist May Day march. People need to attack, in whatever way they feel they can, the institutions that hold us down. We are all inspired by resistance and it helps those of us facing repression to know we don’t struggle alone.

“Everybody cheats to the best of their ability.” -Grandma-

“Anything worth having is worth cheating for.” -W. C. Fields-

Fiscal Responsibility

Epiphany: Social Security is NOT a ‘retirement’ system, no matter what semantics they use. And it isn’t a ‘life insurance’ policy either, just as Obama-care isn’t really a health insurance plan–it’s a REQUIREMENT to have health insurance, much like mandatory auto insurance. And, like the latter, there are penalties imposed for not having it.

Social Security is really much more like a Tontine. A tontine is unlike a life insurance policy–a death bet…you have to die to ‘win’ (or for your heirs to win),  Thus your optimum plan w/such a policy would be to die the week after you took out the life insurance. Not so the tontine.

With a tontine (like Social Security), the biggest rewards go to those who live the longest. Tontines were quite popular in the 1600’s and 1700’s. Governments and big insurance companies raised money for projects and grew enormously wealthy from the profits of marketing them. Today, they’re illegal in Europe and most American States. Why? For the same reason Social Security is going broke: The funds raised by the tontines were so enormous they were too tempting a target for fraud, embezzlement, and theft. The funds were paid into the tontines (like Social Security) and they were enormously solvent if left secure from ‘borrowing’ (i.e. theft).

Social Security began under Roosevelt as a kind of involuntary tontine. Those who didn’t live long enough, like any other tontine, got little/nothing. Those who lived long enjoyed the fruits of their death bet through longevity. The dead, along with the still living workers, funded the geezers, as in any tontine. Moreover, the dead, once gone, do not complain about how paltry their share might be. But no life insurance scheme or tontine will work when the escrow/company/government starts dipping into the principal as has predictably happened in the U.S. Those frauds are little more than pyramid schemes. And like all pyramid schemes, the must ultimately fail.

People should understand Social Security isn’t like, say, your local library which is supported by property taxes, thus is a social service. Social Security is a tontine investment that was fully funded on a sound basis for solvency regardless of the baby boomer curve by working Americans who paid contributions into it. After all, the bigger the boom curve, the bigger the contributions that were made by its members. No contributions?–no tickee, no washee!

Imagine buying a life insurance policy, then, after years of paying the premiums, being told that dying wouldn’t help you win the bet–you now had to be over 70 (or whatever number is convenient for the company to pick) AND die to ‘win’? You’d recognize this changing of the terms of the deal already paid for was a breach of contract. That’s exactly what has occurred due to government theft from the Social Security tontine principal fund. The government is not only in breach of contract (consistent with the fraudulent historical record of tontines) but has the chutzpah to argue the resulting insolvency isn’t a result of dishonesty, but of the government being too ‘generous’.

It’s like your town’s bank branches are being repeatedly robbed by a desperado the police are unable to catch. One day, the town gets lucky as the masked bandit makes for his escape and is wrestled to the ground, money bag in hand. Depositors present hold their breath as one of them unmasks the thief…and it’s UNCLE SAM! Of course, Uncle Sam then begins to spout about how we made him do it and he went along out of generosity/government largess.

Groucho Marx had it right: This IS your life!…only he was a lot funnier than the government leeches workers are funding today. People talk about the near financial collapse of the global economy due to mortgage fraud, derivative manipulation, speculation, and the real estate bubble. But who speaks of the far greater ripoff of Social Security tontine funds that has been ongoing for decades? The good news is this cancer within will ultimately cause the collapse of the parasites. The bad news is it’s going to prove fatal to the patient.