Town Hall on OPD Misdeeds, Orloff Resignation, Mehserle's Defense & more, 9/12/09: audio

Minister Keith Muhammad speaks about police protecting the privileged and governmental policies being designed to benefit the "haves" over the health and well being of the majority of people. He discusses recent issues with the Oakland police department regarding their declaration that they are not searching for the missing five-year-old Hasanni Campbell and they have not released the videotape depicting the OPD murder of Brownie Polk. Minister Keith adds that the city of Oakland settled with the family of Gary King by agreeing to pay $1.5 million for his murder by OPD officer Pat Gonzales, who is still on the force while taxpayers foot the bill for his police brutality. Minister Keith details the failures of Alameda District Attorney Tom Orloff in the case of Oscar Grant, from January 7th when he first refused to meet with community members at his offices, through the official City Hall runaround resisting the effort to recall him, through Orloff's recent resignation and his effort to rush through the recommendation for Nancy O'Malley to be his replacement without any vetting of what Alameda might want in a DA. Minister Keith talks about Jerry Brown as Mayor of Oakland having displaced long-time residents to make way for developers downtown, in contrast to statements he had previously made on his radio show on KPFA prior to his election as Mayor. He mentions the injustice of JR Valrey now being tried on false felony charges that arose out of the January 7th Oscar Grant Rebellion. He speaks about the recent actions of attorney Michael Rains in defense of Johannes Mehserle with his failed 995 motion to dismiss the case and by filing another motion to move the trial out of Alameda County and the racist implications. Lastly, he speaks about the racial gentrifying of San Francisco that has chased out African Americans and is now down from 120,000 African Americans to just about 30,000 today. He notes that similar things have been occurring in Oakland since the tearing down of 1/2 of the Acorn ten years ago. Minister Keith closes by encouraging Town Hall attendees to make it out to the Supervisors meeting in San Francisco on the following Tuesday.