-Caveat Lector-
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/USDomCovOps1.html
How COINTELPRO Helped Destroy
the Movements of the 1960s
Since COINTELPRO was used mainly against the progressive movements of the
1960s, its impact can be grasped only in the context of the momentous social
upheaval which shook the country during those years.
All across the United States, Black communities came alive with renewed
political struggle. Most major cities experienced sustained, disciplined
Black protest and massive ghetto uprisings. Black activists galvanized
multi-racial rebellion among GIs, welfare mothers, students, and prisoners.
College campuses and high schools erupted in militant protest against the
Vietnam War. A predominantly white New Left, inspired by the Black movement,
fought for an end to U.S. intervention abroad and a more humane and
cooperative way of life at home. By the late 1960s, deep-rooted resistance
had revived among Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asian Americans, and Native
Americans. A second wave of broad-based strugglefor women's liberation had
also emerged, along with significant efforts by lesbians, gay men, and
disabled people.
Millions of people in the United States began to reject the dominant
ideology and culture. Thousands challenged basic U.S. political and economic
institutions. For a brief moment, "the crucial mixture of people's
confidence in the government and lack of confidence in themselves which
allows the government to govern, the ruling class to rule...threatened to
break down."
By the mid-1970s, this upheaval had largely subsided. Important progressive
activity persisted, mainly on a local level, and much continued to be
learned and won, but the massive, militant Black and New Left movements were
gone. The sense of infinite possibility and of our collective power to shape
the future had been lost. Progressive momentum dissipated. Radicals found
themselves on the defensive as right-wing extremists gained major government
positions and defined the contours of accepted political debate.
Many factors besides COINTELPRO contributed to this change. Important
progress was made toward achieving movement goals such as Black civil
rights, an end to the Vietnam War, and university reform. The mass media,
owned by big business and cowed by government and right-wing attack, helped
to bury radical activism by ceasing to cover it. Television, popular
magazines, and daily papers stereotyped Blacks as hardened criminals and
welfare chiselers or as the supposedly affluent beneficiaries of reverse
"discrimination." White youth were portrayed first as hedonistic hippies and
mindless terrorists, later as an apolitical, self-indulgent "me generation."
Both were scapegoated as threats to "decent, hard-working Middle America."
During the severe economic recession of the early- to mid- 1970s, former
student activists began entering the job market, some taking on
responsibility for children. Many were scared by brutal government and
right-wing attacks culminating in the murder of rank-and-file activists as
well as prominent leaders. Some were strung out on the hard drugs that had
become increasingly available in Black and Latin communities and among white
youth. Others were disillusioned by mistreatment in movements ravaged by the
very social sicknesses they sought to eradicate, including racism, sexism,
homophobia, class bias and competition.
Limited by their upbringing, social position, and isolation from older
radical traditions, 1960s activists were unable to make the connections and
changes required to build movements strong enough to survive and eventually
win structural change in the United States. Middle-class students did not
sufficiently ally with working and poor people. Too few white activists
accepted third world leadership of multi-racial alliances. Too many men
refused to practice genuine gender equality.
Originally motivated by goals of quick reforms, 1960s activists were
ill-prepared for the long-term struggles in which they found themselves.
Overly dependent on media-oriented superstars and one-shot dramatic actions,
they failed to develop stable organizations, accountable leadership, and
strategic perspective. Creatures of the culture they so despised, they often
lacked the patience to sustain tedious grassroots work and painstaking
analysis of actual social conditions. They found it hard to accept the slow,
uneven pace of personal and political change.
This combination of circumstances, however, did not by itself guarantee
political collapse. The achievements of the 1960s movements could have
inspired optimism and provided a sense of the power to win other important
struggles. The rightward shift of the major media could have enabled
alternative newspapers, magazines, theater, film, and video to attract a
broader audience and stable funding. The economic downturn of the early
1970s could have united Black militants, New Leftists, and workers in common
struggle. Police brutality and government collusion in drug trafficking
could have been exposed in ways that undermined support for the authorities
and broadened the movements' backing.
By the close of the decade, many of the movements' internal weaknesses were
starting to be addressed. Black-led multi-racial alliances, such as Martin
Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign and the Black Panthers' Rainbow
Coalition, were forming. The movements' class base was broadening through
Black "revolutionary unions" in auto and other industries, King's increasing
focus on economic issues, the New Left's spread to community colleges, and
the return of working-class GIs radicalized by their experience in Vietnam.
At the same time, the women's movement was confronting the deep sexism which
permeated 1960s activism, along with its corollaries: homophobia, sexual
violence, militarism, competitiveness, and top-down decision-making.
While the problems of the 1960s movements were enormous, their strengths
might have enabled them to overcome their weaknesses had the upsurge not
been stifled before activists could learn from their mistakes. Much of the
movements' inability to transcend their initial limitations and overcome
adversity can be traced to COINTELPRO.
It was through COINTELPRO that the public image of Blacks and New Leftists
was distorted to legitimize their arrest and imprisonment and scapegoat them
as the cause of working people's problems. The FBI and police instigated
violence and fabricated movement horrors. Dissidents were deliberately
"criminalized" through false charges, frame-ups, and offensive, bogus
leaflets and other materials published in their name. (Specific examples of
these and other COINTELPRO operations are presented on pages 41-65.)
COINTELPRO enabled the FBI and police to exacerbate the movements' internal
stresses until beleaguered activists turned on one another. Whites were
pitted against Blacks, Blacks against Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, students
against workers, workers against people on welfare, men against women,
religious activists against atheists, Christians against Jews, Jews against
Muslims. "Anonymous" accusations of infidelity ripped couples apart. Backers
of women's and gay liberation were attacked as "dykes" or "faggots." Money
was repeatedly stolen and precious equipment sabotaged to intensify pressure
and sow suspicion and mistrust.
Otherwise manageable disagreements were inflamed by COINTELPRO until they
erupted into hostile splits that shattered alliances, tore groups apart, and
drove dedicated activists out of the movement. Government documents
implicate the FBI and police in the bitter break-up of such pivotal groups
as the Black Panther Party, SDS, and the Liberation News Service, and in the
collapse of repeated efforts to form long-term coalitions across racial,
class, and regional lines. While genuine political issues were often
involved in these disputes, the outcome could have been different if
government agencies had not covertly intervened to subvert compromise and
fuel hostility and competition.
Finally, it was COINTELPRO that enabled the FBI and police to eliminate the
leaders of mass movements without undermining the image of the United States
as a democracy, complete with free speech and the rule of law. Charismatic
orators and dynamic organizers were covertly attacked and "neutralized"
before their skills could be transferred to others and stable structures
established to carry on their work. Malcolm X was killed in a "factional
dispute" which the FBI took credit for having "developed" in the Nation of
Islam. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of an elaborate FBI plot to
drive him to suicide and replace him "in his role of the leadership of the
Negro people" with conservative Black lawyer Samuel Pierce (later named to
Reagan's cabinet). Many have come to view King's eventual assassination (and
Malcolm's as well) as itself a domestic covert operation.
Other prominent radicals faced similar attack when they began to develop
broad followings and express anti-capitalist ideas. Some were portrayed as
crooks, thugs, philanderers, or government agents, while others were
physically threatened or assaulted until they abandoned their work. Still
others were murdered under phony pretexts, such as "shootouts" in which the
only shots were fired by the police.
To help bring down a major target, the FBI often combined these approaches
in strategic sequence. Take the case of the "underground press," a network
of some 400 radical weeklies and several national news services, which once
boasted a combined readership of close to 30 million. In the late 1960s,
government agents raided the offices of alternative newspapers across the
country in purported pursuit of drugs and fugitives. In the process, they
destroyed typewriters, cameras, printing presses, layout equipment, business
records, and research files, and roughed up and jailed staffers on bogus
charges. Meanwhile, the FBI was persuading record companies to withdraw
lucrative advertising and arranging for printers, suppliers, and
distributors to drop underground press accounts. With their already shaky
operations in disarray, the papers and news services were easy targets for a
final phase of COINTELPRO disruption. Forged correspondence, anonymous
accusations, and infiltrators' manipulation provoked a flurry of wild
charges and counter-charges that played a major role in bringing many of
these promising endeavors to a premature end.
A similar pattern can be discerned from the history of the Black Panther
Party. Brutal government attacks initially elicited broad support for this
new, militant, highly visible national organization and its popular
ten-point socialist program for Black self-determination. But the FBI's
repressive onslaught severely weakened the Party, making it vulnerable to
sophisticated FBI psychological warfare which so discredited and shattered
it that few people today have any notion of the power and potential that the
Panthers once represented.
What proved most devastating in all of this was the effective manipulation
of the victims of COINTELPRO into blaming themselves. Since the FBI and
police operated covertly, the horrors they engineered appeared to emanate
from within the movements. Activists' trust in one another and in their
collective power was subverted, and the hopes of a generation died, leaving
a legacy of cynicism and despair which continues to haunt us today.
** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye **
/** pn.publiceye: 23.6 **/
** Written 6:50 pm Jan 24, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
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Black Panther Party Program:
What We Want
-adopted 1966
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black
Community.
2. We want full employment for our people.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALISTS of our Black Community.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this
decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true
history and our role in the present-day society.
6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.
8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city
prisons and jails.
9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a
jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined
by the Constitution of the United States.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace. And
as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to
be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects
will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of
black people as to their national destiny.
** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye ** /** pn.publiceye: 23.7 **/ **
Written 6:51 pm Jan 24, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
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THE DANGER WE FACE
Domestic Covert Action
Remains a Serious Threat Today
The public exposure of COINTELPRO and other government abuses elicited a
flurry of apparent reform in the 1970s. President Nixon resigned in the face
of impeachment. His Attorney General, other top aides, and many of the
"plumbers" were prosecuted and imprisoned for brief periods. The CIA's
director and counter-intelligence chief were ousted, and the CIA and the
Army were again directed to cease covert operations against domestic
targets.
The FBI had formally shut down COINTELPRO a few weeks after it was
uncovered. As part of the general face-lift, the Bureau publicly apologized
for COINTELPRO, and municipal governments began to disband the local police
"red squads" that had served as the FBI's main accomplices. A new Attorney
General notified several hundred activists that they had been victims of
COINTELPRO and issued guidelines limiting future operations. Top FBI
officials were indicted for ordering the burglary of activists' offices and
homes; two were convicted, and several others retired or resigned. The
Bureau's egomaniacal, crudely racist and sexist founder, J. Edgar Hoover,
died in 1972. After two interim directors failed to stem the tide of
criticism, a prestigious federal judge, William Webster, was appointed by
President Carter to clean house and build a "new FBI."
Behind this public hoopla, however, the Bureau's war at home continued
unabated. Domestic covert action did not end when it was exposed in the
1970s. It has persisted throughout the 1980s and become a permanent feature
of U.S. government.
** End of text from cdp:pn.publiceye ** /** pn.publiceye: 23.8 **/ **
Written 6:52 pm Jan 24, 1991 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye **
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Domestic Covert Action
Did Not End in the 1970s
Director Webster's highly touted reforms did not create a "new FBI." They
served mainly to modernize the existing Bureau and to make it even more
dangerous. In place of the backbiting competition with other law enforcement
and intelligence agencies which had previously impeded coordination of
domestic counter-insurgency, Webster promoted inter-agency cooperation.
Adopting the mantle of an "equal opportunity employer," his FBI hired women
and people of color to more effectively penetrate a broader range of
political targets. By cultivating a low-visibility image and discreetly
avoiding public attack on prominent liberals, Webster gradually restored the
Bureau's respectability and won over a number ofits former critics.
State and local police similarly upgraded their repressive capabilities in
the 1970s while learning to present a more friendly public face. The "red
squads" that had harassed 1960s activists were quietly resurrected under
other names. Paramilitary SWAT teams and tactical squads were formed, along
with highly politicized "community relations" and "beat rep" programs
featuring conspicuous Black, Latin, and female officers. Generous federal
funding and sophisticated technology became available through the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration, while FBI-led "joint anti-terrorist
task forces" introduced a new level of inter-agency coordination.
Meanwhile, the CIA continued to use university professors, journalists,
labor leaders, publishing houses, cultural organizations, and philanthropic
fronts to mold U.S. public opinion.[f-41> At the same time, Army Special
Forces and other elite military units began to train local police for
counter-insurgency and to intensify their own preparations, following the
guidelines of the secret Pentagon contingency plans, "Garden Plot" and
"Cable Splicer." They drew increasingly on manuals based on the British
colonial experience in Kenya and Northern Ireland, which teach the essential
methodology of COINTELPRO under the rubric of "low-intensity warfare," and
stress early intervention to neutralize potential opposition before it can
take hold.
While domestic covert operations were scaled down once the 1960s upsurge had
subsided (thanks in part to the success of COINTELPRO), they did notstop. In
its April 27, 1971 directives disbanding COINTELPRO, the FBI provided for
future covert action to continue "with tight procedures to ensure absolute
security." The results are apparent in the record of 1970s covert operations
which have so far come to light:
The Native American Movement: 1970s FBI attacks on resurgent Native American
resistance have been well documented by Ward Churchill and others.[f-44> In
1973, the Bureau led a paramilitary invasion of the Pine Ridge Reservation
in South Dakota as American Indian Movement (AIM) activists gathered there
for symbolic protests at Wounded Knee, the site of an earlier U.S. massacre
of Native Americans. The FBI directed the entire 71-day siege, deploying
federal marshals, U.S. Army personnel, Bureau of Indian Affairs police,
local GOONs (Guardians of the Oglala Nation, an armed tribal vigilante
force), and a vast array of heavy weaponry.
In the following years, the FBI and its allies waged all-out war on AIM and
the Native people. From 1973-76, they killed 69 residents of the tiny Pine
Ridge reservation, a rate of political murder comparable to the first years
of the Pinochet regime in Chile.[f-45> To justify such a reign of terror and
undercut public protest against it, the Bureau launched a complementary
program of psychological warfare.
Central to this effort was a carefully orchestrated campaign to reinforce
the already deeply ingrained myth of the "Indian savage." In one operation,
the FBI fabricated reports that AIM "Dog Soldiers" planned widespread
"sniping at tourists" and "burning of farmers" in South Dakota. The son of
liberal U.S. Senator (and Arab-American activist) James Abourezk, was named
as a "gunrunner," and the Bureau issued a nationwide alert picked up by
media across the country.
To the same end, FBI undercover operatives framed AIM members Paul
"Skyhorse" Durant and Richard "Mohawk" Billings for the brutal murder of a
Los Angeles taxi driver. A bogus AIM note taking credit for the killing was
found pinned to a signpost near the murder site, along with a bundle of hair
said to be the victim's "scalp." Newspaper headlines screamed of "ritual
murder" by "radical Indians." By the time the defendants were finally
cleared of the spurious charges, many of AIM's main financial backers had
been scared away and its work among a major urban concentration of Native
people was in ruin.
In March 1975, a central perpetrator of this hoax, AIM's national security
chief Doug Durham, was unmasked as an undercover operative for the FBI. As
AIM's liaison with the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee during
the trials of Dennis Banks and other Native American leaders, Durham had
routinely participated in confidential strategy sessions. He confessed to
stealing organizational funds during his two years with AIM, and to setting
up the arrest of AIM militants for actions he had organized. It was Durham
who authored the AIM documents that the FBI consistently cited to
demonstrate the group's supposed violent tendencies.
Prompted by Durham's revelations, the Senate Intelligence Committee
announced on June 23, 1975 that it would hold public hearings on FBI
operations against AIM. Three days later, armed FBI agents assaulted an AIM
house on the Pine Ridge reservation. When the smoke cleared, AIM activist
Joe Stuntz Killsright and two FBI agents lay dead. The media, barred from
the scene "to preserve the evidence," broadcast the Bureau's false accounts
of a bloody "Indian ambush," and the congressional hearings were quietly
cancelled.
The FBI was then free to crush AIM and clear out the last pockets of
resistance at Pine Ridge. It launched what the Chairman of the U.S. Civil
Rights Commission described as "a full-scale military-type invasion of the
reservation"[f-46> complete with M-16s, Huey helicopters, tracking dogs, and
armored personnel carriers. Eventually AIM leader Leonard Peltier was tried
for the agents' deaths before a right-wing judge who met secretly with the
FBI. AIM member Anna Mae Aquash was found murdered after FBI agents
threatened to kill her unless she helped them to frame Peltier. Peltier's
conviction, based on perjured testimony and falsified FBI ballistics
evidence, was upheld on appeal. (The panel of federal judges included
William Webster until the very day of his official appointment as Director
of the FBI.) Despite mounting evidence of impropriety in Peltier's trial,
and Amnesty International's call for a review of his case, the Native
American leader remains in maximum security prison.
The Black Movement: Government covert action against Black activists also
continued in the 1970s. Targets ranged from community-based groups to the
Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika and the surviving
remnants of the Black Panther Party.
In Mississippi, federal and state agents attempted to discredit and disrupt
the United League of Marshall County, a broad-based grassroots civil rights
group struggling to stop Klan violence. In California, a notorious paid
operative for the FBI, Darthard Perry, code-named "Othello," infiltrated and
disrupted local Black groups and took personal credit for the fire that
razed the Watts Writers Workshop's multi-million dollar cultural center in
Los Angeles in 1973. The Los Angeles Police Department later admitted
infiltrating at least seven 1970s community groups, including the Black-led
Coalition Against Police Abuse.
In the mid-1970s, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
conspired with the Wilmington, North Carolina police to frame nine local
civil rights workers and the Rev. Ben Chavis, field organizer for the
Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ. Chavis had
been sent to North Carolina to help Black communities respondto escalating
racist violence against school desegregation. Instead of arresting Klansmen,
the ATF and police coerced three young Black prisoners into falsely accusing
Chavis and the others of burning white-owned property. Although all three
prisoners later admitted they had lied in response to official threats and
bribes, the FBI found no impropriety. The courts repeatedly refused to
reopen the case and the Wilmington Ten served many years in prison before
pressure from international religious and human rights groups won their
release.
As the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) began to build autonomous Black economic
and political institutions in the deep South, the Bureau repeatedly
disrupted its meetings and blocked its attempts to buy land. On August 18,
1971, four months after the supposed end of COINTELPRO, the FBI and police
launched an armed pre-dawn assault on national RNA offices in Jackson,
Mississippi. Carrying a warrant for a fugitive who had been brought to RNA
Headquarters by FBI informer Thomas Spells, the attackers concentrated their
fire where the informer's floor plan indicated that RNA President Imari
Obadele slept. Though Obadele was away at the time of the raid, the Bureau
had him arrested and imprisoned on charges of conspiracy to assault a
government agent.
The COINTELPRO-triggered collapse of the Black Panthers' organization and
support in the winter of 1971 left them defenseless as the government moved
to prevent them from regrouping. On August 21, 1971, national Party officer
George Jackson, world-renowned author of the political autobiography
[Soledad Brother,] was murdered by San Quentin prison authorities on the
pretext of an attempted jailbreak. In July 1972, Southern California Panther
leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt was successfully framed for a senseless $70
robbery-murder committed while he was hundreds of miles away in Oakland,
California, attending Black Panther meetings for which the FBI managed to
"lose" all of its surveillance records. Documents obtained through the
Freedom of Information Act later revealed that at least two FBI agents had
infiltrated Pratt's defense committee. They also indicated that the state's
main witness, Julio Butler, was a paid informer who had worked in the Party
under the direction of the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department. For
many years, FBI Director Webster publicly denied that Pratt had ever been a
COINTELPRO target, despite the documentary proof in his own agency's
records.
Also targeted well into the 1970s were former Panthers assigned to form an
underground to defend against armed government attack on the Party. It was
they who had regrouped as the Black Liberation Army (BLA) when the Party was
destroyed. FBI files show that, within a month of the close of COINTELPRO,
further Bureau operations against the BLA were mapped out in secret meetings
convened by presidential aide John Ehrlichman and attended by President
Nixon and Attorney General Mitchell. In the following years, many former
Panther leaders were murdered by the police in supposed "shoot-outs" with
the BLA. Others, such as Sundiata Acoli, Assata Shakur, Dhoruba Al-Mujahid
Bin Wahad (formerly Richard Moore), and the New York 3 (Herman Bell, Anthony
"Jalil" Bottom, and Albert "Nuh" Washington) were sentenced to long prison
terms after rigged trials.
In the case of the New York 3, FBI ballistics reports withheld during their
mid-1970s trials show that bullets from an alleged murder weapon did not
match those found at the site of the killings for which they are still
serving life terms. The star witness against them has publicly recanted his
testimony, swearing that he lied after being tortured by police (who
repeatedly jammed an electric cattleprod into his testicles) and secretly
threatened by the prosecutor and judge. The same judge later dismissed
petitions to reopen the case, refusing to hold any hearing or to disqualify
himself, even though his misconduct is a major issue. As the NY3 continued
to press for a new trial, their evidence was ignored by the news media while
their former prosecutor's one-sided, racist "docudrama" on the case, (Badge
of the Assassin,) aired on national television.
-----Original Message-----
From: Aleisha Saba <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, April 12, 2001 7:29 PM
Subject: [CTRL] Fwd: Mayor declares curfew in Cincinnati
Remember the Black Panthers who went to a banquet where Mrs Bush was
guest speaker in an attempt to intimidate here - some of these
"Panthers" armed with Uzis, and ones who were not armed with this guns
like the Israelies carry about presumably they were felons and could
have been picked up.
This is the work of the NAACP and ADL and it has been in the making
since Bush won the election......like King schemed for the riots using
his call to Macedonia - his riots were timed - but he professed not to
know what the left hand was doing while he spoke words of peace.
What was it he said - I want to be your brother, not your brother in
law.....really?
Look at TV today and who controls what and it is the same scenario......
Remember the 5 people murdered in Witchita by this many pig tailed
savages....sodomized, raped, tortured - one was to be a priest, the
other lady was a celloist - this were nice people and oh these are under
privileged people......
If Cincinnati burns they deserve it for not calling out the troops -
this is the same old line.
One Black Panther stated years ago during the rioting where Washington
burned and not a damned thing was done about it - for these are poor
deprived black folk....this guy said he wanted to come with the heads of
the McClellan Committee-------strange this is the Committee working to
put away organized crime figures, and JFK and RFK worked with them at
one time.
These are not Farrakhan's men; this is your NAACP in action and Jesse
Jackson has taken his zulus to the streets.
Saba
Mayor declares curfew in Cincinnati 'It is dangerous and getting more
dangerous' Cincinnati police arrest an unidentified man during
Wednesday's unrest, which was sparked by the police shooting of an
unarmed 19-year-old black man.
MSNBC NEWS SERVICES
CINCINNATI, April 12 — Mayor Charles Luken declared a state of
emergency and curfew in Cincinnati Thursday, saying parts of his city
resembled Beirut after violent protests over the shooting death of an
unarmed black man by police. "It is dangerous and getting more
dangerous," he said. He also said the National Guard may be brought in
to restore order.
'I think the black citizens are tired and scared, I think the white
citizens are tired and scared.'
— CHARLES LUKEN
Mayor of Cincinnati LUKEN SAID the citywide curfew would
be in effect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and that police would "clear the
streets" of people during those hours. Only people going to and from
work will be allowed on the streets, he said.
"The time has come to deal with this seriously," said
Luken, who was interrupted during his news conference by protesters.
"The message ... is that the violence must stop."
Luken said his first priority was to restore order, then
look into complaints of police brutality against blacks.
TENSIONS RISE
The fatal shooting over the weekend of Timothy Thomas,
19, by a white officer sparked days of unrest, a federal investigation
and calls for accountability.
Thomas was killed as he fled Officer Steven Roach, who
was trying to arrest him for failing to appear for misdemeanor charges
and traffic violations. Roach's union said he feared for his life during
the encounter.
Tensions between blacks and police have heightened over
the past few years. Since 1995, 15 black men died at the hands of
police, including four since November.
Small groups of vandals roamed several neighborhoods
Wednesday night and early Thursday, breaking windows, looting stores and
assaulting at least one white motorist who was dragged from her car,
police said. Others in the neighborhood came to the woman's aid.
Local coverage from WLWT-TV
POLICE OFFICER SHOT
A police officer was shot Wednesday night. The buckle of
his gun belt caught the bullet and saved him, though he was severely
bruised, Luken said. No arrest had been made in that shooting.
Advertisement
Youths reinvaded several stores that had previously been
looted in Over-the-Rhine, a poor and predominantly black district just
north of downtown.
"I think the black citizens are tired and scared, I think
the white citizens are tired and scared," Luken said.
At least 66 people have been arrested on such charges as
disorderly conduct, criminal rioting, obstruction, felony assault, theft
and breaking and entering since the violence began Monday.
'BEAR WITH US'
Luken said he signed a document minutes before the news
conference declaring the state of emergency, and City Manager John
Shirey authorized the curfew to begin Thursday night.
"We don't like the fact that we have to declare a
curfew," said the mayor, who was flanked by five of the nine city
council members. "For 99.9 percent of the citizens of our city, a curfew
is completely unnecessary. We ask our citizens to bear with us."
It was not immediately clear how the curfew would affect
a planned nighttime town meeting called by Kweisi Mfume, president of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He had
planned to lead the meeting Thursday night at a church near downtown.
A man interrupted Luken at the news conference to ask
whether the mayor was ready to meet with a group calling itself the New
Black Panthers. He was pulled out of the room after shouting that the
mayor was a "liar."
"That's the kind of incivility we've been dealing with,"
Luken said.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this
report.
Bush: U.S. crew not at fault in China collision WashPost: U.S.
seeks end to Chinese intercepts Mayor declares curfew in
Cincinnati Canadian train derails, hits building Probe begins into
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CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
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directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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