Santa Cruz: Protesting the Cop Killing of Happy John Dine

More details:

Happy John never had a chance - it was a set-up by a bouncer at a local dance club/restaurant, friend of one of the officers, who had psyched up the police minutes before they went "trolling" for their target. The bouncer was never even investigated!

Happy John was a developmentally disabled young adult, innocently waiting for a bus. He was shot, in my opinion, partly because police here -- most of whom are young rookies -- aren't paid enough in Santa Cruz to support them here. It is traditionally hard to keep good police oficers in Santa Cruz: the cost of housing here is a major contributing factor.

Still to this day, police on the local force are not being trained about how to deal with people with special needs. Instead, they apparently get encouraged to practice intimidation and harrassment: as if poor people, homeless folks, and our youth will dissolve in the rain if frightened enough. They seem clueless to the fact that they are creating a nighbmare of public relations when they talk to young people, calling them names and berating them: children for whom this inappropriate attitude is often their first experience of police in action.

Several youth visited the memorial for Happy, and shared with us their own recent stories about being bullied by cops on Santa Cruz's main street, Pacific Avenue, and elsewhere. ...the official commercial holiday season, it appears, has been launched.

Our timid Civilian Police Review Board was unable to find the courage to even make a recommendation for training after looking into the Dine shooting. They appear to be strictly a "thumbs up, thumbs down" City entity, and often appear to take their cues about which thumb from the Chief of Police or the Policemen's Union Rep.

I was across the street, downtown Santa Cruz, when the shooting occurred. I did not see it, but on hearing it, I checked it out because there had been a focussed campaign by the police department in the two weeks prior to this incident; a campaign of flushing outpeople who slept along the riverbanks (much like the indigenous Ohlone peoples did before being destroyed by settlers). What I saw, as other police cars rushed to the site, was a very speedy hosing down of the blood flowing from Happy's body. Down the sewers before even the ambulance and the commercial media arrived. A lot of blood flowing across the sidewalk -- that's my memory of the murder of Happy John Dine.

http://www.indybay.org/2001/11/109582.php