Monday, December 29, 2014

Thinly Veiled Anti-Communism Will Back-Fire in Brazil


On Sunday 12/28/2014 the New York Times Published an Editorial, "Shifting Dynamics for Cuba's Dissidents."
This is my push-back (it is unlikely to be published as an OPED)

EDITORIAL
 Thinly Veiled Anti-Communism Will Back-Fire in Brazil
Martha K. Huggins, University of Sao Paulo’s Cold War Research Group

        The New York Times (Editorial 12/28/2014: 18) urges Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff to “speak up unequivocally for democratic values that are embraced by most nations in the Americas…and be [a] strong champion…of Cuba’s opposition leaders….”  After all, “as a former political prisoner, a leftist and the leader of one of Cuba’s main trading allies,” President Dilma would “arguably carry the most weight” in supporting Cuban dissidents who want  political change in their country.  Isn’t there a contradiction between Brazil’s (and the rest of Latin America’s) awful experience with US interference into their internal affairs and asking them to do likewise in Cuba? 

          The NYT’s editorial declares pontifically that, in Cuba, “State surveillance is widely assumed to be so pervasive that…wary Cubans pop out the batteries of  their cell phones if they want to speak privately, fearing  that the state’s extensive armies of domestic spies can listen in on virtually anyone at any time.”  One can be sure that Brazil’s president has not forgotten  that the US National Security Agency (NSA)  tapped into her personal phone conversations.  NSA’s spying on President Dilma, not to speak of  US citizens in North America, may have left her inured to the  New York Times’ self-serving images of Cuban government surveillance.

Brazil knows all too well the dangers from Cold War thinking about politics.  Brazilian General Carlos Brilhante Ustra, who headed Sao Paulo’s murderous DOI/CODI—an organization with which the US had interactions including during the period that its agents were torturing  Dilma--was out to cleanse his country of  political enemies----communists, ‘rebels,’ and  students labeled ‘leftists.’ The NYT goads those Latin American governments that it says have previously “coddled, or appeased, the Castro regime” to become “strong champions of Cuba’s opposition leaders….”  This seems to assume that naive Latin American leaders living under the overarching might of  the US  never had any politically-reasoned strategies for their geo-political actions.  Hardly the way in the 21st century to get Latin American leaders to do US bidding.  President Dilma, the Brazilian Congress, and the people of Latin America’s biggest democracy will surely see through the NY Times’ condescending invitation. 

          Identifying Brazil as among the countries that have shown a “traditional reluctance to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs,” Brazil is asked to do just that.  Yet many Brazilians--especially after release of Camillo Tavares’ film, “The Day That Lasted 21 Years,” remember with great caution US having assisted elements within Brazil’s military in  toppling their country’s democratically-elected President João Goulart.   That 1964 golpe began a US-supported internal war against Brazilian citizens that lasted over two decades; the military regime’s human rights abuses are systematically documented in a report recently released by Brazil’s National Truth Commission. Something tells me that President Dilma will not fall for the NYT’s trap:  She’s too smart to do such a thing and her country is too politically savvy to let her. 


Martha K. Huggins, living 90 miles from Cuba, is a researcher with the Universidade de São Paulo’s Cold War Group.  Having written extensively for 40 years on human rights in Brazil, two of her 7 books focus specifically on torture and killing of  assumed dissidents there, Political Policing: The US and Latin America (Duke, 1998) and Violence Workers:  Brazilian Torturers and Murders Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities (U of California Press, 2002). 


 





Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Homages to the unknown beaten, raped, or killed by US police

Linking personal to political: HOMAGES TO THOSE BEATEN, MAIMED, OR KILLED BY POLICE AND FORGOTTEN BY ALL BUT FRIENDS AND FAMILY


homage #1:  To Adolph Grimes III
 
Letter to the Editor, Times-Picayune after the killing of a Black youth in New Orleans

“Shooting follows a formula”
Martha K. Huggins,  The Times-Picayune NOLA.com January 08, 2009

     As a scholar of police violence for 30 years, I see familiar signs in the Adolph Grimes III shooting by New Orleans police. Hit 14 times by police bullets in what Superintendent Warren Riley labels a "gun battle," Grimes died with two frontal wounds and 12 in his back and legs.
     Grimes' case is not exceptional; it follows a known formula. Police shooting is an execution when, after immobilizing the alleged criminal, police continue to shoot. Police superiors pre-empt public outcry by claiming that a "shoot-out" occurred after an attack on police. In an actual "shoot-out" some police are usually wounded or killed.
     Citizen shootings have civil rights implications when victims are disproportionately minorities and the minority "lethality index" (the ratio of deaths to injuries) is higher than for non-minorities.
Minorities will continue to be victims of police violence unless the racist nature of such killings is addressed.

Martha K. Huggins, Ph.D. Professor of Sociology Tulane University New Orleans

Adolph Grimes III: Killing’s Back-Story: Linking personal to political
           As the US War on Drugs intensified law enforcement killings were increasingly carried out by teams of cops—dubbed special “elite task-forces”—that took down their allegedly dangerous victims gangster-style in  a spray of hit-and-miss bullets.   New Orleans native Adolph Grimes III was killed by just such a police task force early on the  morning of New Year’s day 2009.  Twenty-two years-old at the time,   a high school graduate with no criminal record and regular employment with a cable company, African American Adolph Grimes III died in what New Orleans’ Police Chief  Warren Riley described as a “gun battle.”  Hit mostly in his back and legs as Grimes fled  police fire and died,  not a single cop in the  NOPD’s proactive narcotics task force was injured in the alleged gun battle. 
 
          Adolph Grimes III’s killers were a curious combination of police for a unit dubbed ‘elite’-- the majority of the team was relative newbies:  three rookie cops--one  a sharp-shooter  who had recently returned from Afghanistan; two female dog handlers--apparently without their dogs; four veteran police, including the squad’s two NOPD commanders, Lt. Joseph Meisch and Sgt. Daniel Scanlon.  Not to worry that over half of the squad was very likely inexperienced at robbery task-force proactive policing[1]:  most such police get trained on the job and newbies can usually be depended upon to follow their superiors’ lead. 

          Grimes, who was at the right place/wrong time on the day of his killing, had returned to New Orleans from Houston with his fiancé and their 17-month-old son to spend New Year’s day with his family, a long-standing tradition.  Young Adolph, who had lived in Houston since Hurricane Katrina devastated his family’s New Orleans’ neighborhood, was staying for the New Year’s holiday at his grandmother’s house in the Crescent City’s historic Tremé neighborhood.  His father, Adolph Grimes II, was there too.

         On the night of his killing Adolph had celebrated in the French Quarter, returning after midnight to his grandmother’s place on Governor Nicholls Street near the I-10 Interstate to shower and change before meeting a friend to go to an uptown New Orleans after-hours bar. Waiting alone at 3:00 AM in his rental car in a dark residential section of  Tremé,  in  New Orleans’ 6th Ward--a location law enforcement designated as a ‘high-crime’ area’-- young Adolph must have seen the unmarked Ford SUV Explorer pull up behind him.  He might well have thought that it had civilians inside —the police were in plain-clothes and “dressed like tourists,” as Police Superintendent Riley described their wear.  One can only speculate about what Grimes assumed was about to happen; it is safe to say that he likely felt unsafe. 

           The NOPD task-force targeting robbers, but  killed Adolph Grimes III told  police investigators after the youth’s killing that their unmarked car’s blue emergency light had been lit when they pulled up behind Grime’s car.  In the words of one  task-force cop,  the blue light “virtually identified” the car’s occupants as police.  An officer in the SUV’s back passenger seat told police investigators that  when he shined his flashlight into Grime’s car  he saw Grimes holding a gun.  ‘Fearing for their lives,’ as the police account goes, the task force began shooting with Grimes firing back at them.
 
          Adolph Grimes III—hit by 14 of the more than 60 bullets fired early New Year’s morning--collapsed near his grandmother’s house just 40 paces from his rental car.  New Orleans’ then Chief Coroner, Frank Minyard’s initial assessment for local media was that Adolph Grimes III had been “shot up pretty good.”   An internal police investigation naturally found that Grimes had fired first, a  finding  allegedly supported by Grimes having  9-mm handgun and a shotgun in his rental car.  Adolph’s parents verified that their son had legally purchased a handgun and shotgun in Houston for protection there.  Both of Grimes’ firearms were registered in Texas, a fact confirmed by the NOPD.  Louisiana—an ‘open carry’ state—permits toting legally registered firearms.  

          Described by his police killers as an “individual [who] continued to fire a handgun at [them],” Grimes—who was running away from police when he was killed--had twelve bullets in his back and legs and two in his front torso.  Not one cop in the proactive narcotics task-force was injured in the alleged gun battle that brought down Adolph Grimes III.   Adolph’s father, who awakened to gunfire outside his mother’s house, walked out the door to find his son’s bloody body-- hands in restraints-- sprawled on the sidewalk.  The story goes that Adolph Grimes III had been handcuffed by police post-mortem.  Patricia Grimes, his mother who apparently was not in her mother-in-law’s house on New Year’s eve, says that she “had to wait for the 5 o’clock news to find out…[her] son was murdered.” [2] 

          I met Patricia Grimes about a year after her son’s slaying  at the federal civil rights trial of five police implicated in the killing and conspiracy to cover-up Henry Glover’s shooting and incineration  by cops during the first days after Katrina in 2005.  Henry Glover was lethally wounded by NOPD rookie David Warren, a voracious gun collector and award-winning sharpshooter.  Warren feared for his life-- as he stood safely on guard on the second floor landing of a provisional police base at an Algiers New Orleans strip mall—claiming that he saw something in Henry Glover’s hand that ‘could have been a gun.’ Firing a single round from his own assault rifle, Warren left Henry Glover severely wounded to the edge of  death. 

          William Tanner, a neighbor of Henry Glover, along with Glover’s brother—both in the area of the strip mall at the time--put Glover into Tanner’s car and sped away seeking medical assistance for Glover.  Ending up at a temporary barracks of an NOPD SWAT team that had been set up at New Orleans’ Habans Elementary School—with Henry Glover barely alive and  bleeding heavily in the car’s back seat—Tanner and Glover’s brother were handcuffed  by police and interrogated.  ‘Arms-up’ and on their knees they became the SWAT teams’ focus of attention as Henry Glover bled to death in Tanner’s car from police-inflicted wounds.  The police clearly knew that they had a problem when Henry Glover died:  what to do with Glover’s body?  His shooting and death in police custody could trigger an investigation. 

          Hearing in court the slow repetitive accounts and the counter interpretations of David Warren’s shooting of Henry Glover and his ultimate death was difficult for many listeners in the court room divided  neatly between those supporting the defendant cops and those lending support to Henry Glover’s family.  Even more problematic was learning about the police complicity in letting Glover to ‘bleed-out’ in the near-by car.  The lynchpin that held these infamous deeds together was a police conspiracy to hide evidence of police burning of the car that held Henry Glover’s by-then -headless body.   I wondered why  Patricia Grimes would subject herself to hearing all of this so soon after she had  lost her son to lethal and possibly conspiratorial police action and inaction?  I assumed that Ms. Grimes was attending the trial to support the Glover family.

           Much later I discovered that Henry Glover’s and her son’s killing were linked, Ms. Glover obviously knew this.  A key informant for federal government prosecutors at the Henry Glover federal civil rights trial was NOPD Lt. Joseph Meisch, one of the two police commanders of the plainclothes police squad that in 2009 had gunned down Patricia Glover’s son, Adolph Grimes III.  Lt. Meisch--who had worked out a plea deal with the Feds before testifying at the Henry Glover federal trial—had  carefully elaborated his role in the conspiracy to cover up Henry Glover’s incineration.  But Lt. Meisch had failed to report seeing NOPD policeman Gregory McRae throw lighted flares into the Chevrolet Malibu that contained Henry Glover’s bloody,  headless body, although Meisch had seen an NOPD cop shoot  the car’s  closed windows to accelerate the fire’s power to burn away Glover’s remains. 

          Sitting in the federal court room one row in front of Patricia Grimes, I heard her draw a deep breath as Meisch  gave graphic testimony about the all-consuming fire that reduced Mr. Glover’s lifeless body to bones and ashes—his head was never located.   Meisch, who had suppressed for five years important evidence about  a possible police crime, was not let go by the NOPD until 2012--seven years after Henry Glover’s killing and three after Meisch’s involvement in Adolph Grimes III’s killing by the elite squad that Meisch co-commanded.  In its 2012 dismissal of Lt. Joseph Meisch, New Orleans’ Civil Service Commission ruled that Meisch had neglected his duty in the Henry Glover matter “by failing to report what he observed in a timely fashion.”[3] 

        Meisch’s police record reflects a pattern and practice of civil rights violations much more formidable than the relatively innocuous issue for which he was finally fired from the NOPD.  At the time of young Adolph Grimes’s killing by the narcotics task force under his co-command, Lt. Joseph Meisch, a Marine Corps veteran, had “a handful of disciplinary complaints” against him, including two for “unauthorized force,” according to the Times- Picayune’s tireless investigative reporter, Brendan McCarthy.[4]  One can easily calculate that Meisch’s police squad killed Adolph Grimes while Meisch was already under federal investigation for conspiracy to hide evidence about Henry Glover’s September 2, 2005, slaying and incineration. 

          Likewise, the robbery task force’s other co-commander, Sgt. Daniel Scanlon, was no stranger to civil rights complaints.   In fact, Scanlon had an even more questionable police record than his task-force superior, Lt. Meisch.  Scanlon, a twenty-two- year NOPD veteran known as “Blue Eyes” to New Orleans’ poor in predominantly Black neighborhoods where he was assigned,  had been sued in federal court “for allegedly hitting a handcuffed man with a flashlight, breaking the man’s jaw.”  Settled out of court, that case went away, but Scanlon  continued to “amass… a dossier of citizen complaints ranging from brutality to false imprisonment and theft.”  Just the same, or perhaps precisely because of his record, Sgt. Scanlon received dozens of police metals and letters of commendation, including  in 1995 the Henry Morris Award for “police officer of the year.”

          Another six members of  the nine-cop plainclothes squad--three white women and three men, the latter white, Hispanic, and African American--that killed Adolph Grimes III “had modest disciplinary histories.” The  other squad member, rookie Gregory Lapin, was a white male and the squad’s sharpshooter.  The newest member of the task-force, Lapin had no civilian complaints against him for NOPD police work. 

          Apparently in  2010 or 2011 Lapin became part of the VATA Group (Visibility  Assessment and Threat Analysis Group), with its training center in Slidell, Louisiana.  According to VATA’s website this organization was established in 2009  “by two guys sitting off the coast of Somalia in 30-foot seas saying, ‘There has got to be a better way.’”   One of  Lapin’s  responsibilities for VATA has been serving as a “Detail member [for the] Department of State's Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS) in several high-threat arenas.”   By 2011, Lapin has become a relatively regular UTube video trainer on “Trigger Time TV,” where in one of the show’s segments he taught ‘how to take out a vehicle and get inside it by using a fire arm to break stuff on the vehicle.’ It triggered my memory of the Adolph Grimes III shooting that VATA invites its Facebook Friends who need “stocking stuffers” to purchase their “ Concealed Carry 2 DVD” from Visit shopguntalk.com/.  Might it have saved young Adolph’s life to have studied  VATA’s “Concealed Carry” videos 1 and 2 before traveling to New Orleans on the day he was Killed?

          The local criminal case is now closed—“slabbed”--involving  the NOPD  task force police implicated in Adolph Grimes III’s killing—apparently there is insufficient evidence for a criminal trial.  The FBI investigation into Adolph Grimes III’s killing is still ‘on-going’ in 2014.  A civil rights case filed in 2009 in New Orleans’ civil court has not yet come to trial and I suspect it never will.  At this point all that I can do is write about Adolph Grimes III’s killing in the hope that this injustice will be known.  Along these lines, I will be looking into the relationship of  the New Orleans Police Department—now under DOJ pressure to get training—to VATA as well as VATA’s relationship  to the US State Department.