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Demand Oakland Fire Racist Cops!!

by Malaika Parker from Police Watch
Repost of article written by Malaika fromt Police Watch, originally printed by SF Bayview.
This is a background article on the current struggle to get Oakland to fire 2 racist cops who have a long history of abuse in the community. There was also a rally before Oakland's Citizen Police Review Board. I will post an update on that rally with pictures either later tonight, or tomorrow. - upton sinclair
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Demand Oakland Fire Racist Cops!!
Rally at Oakland City Hall Thursday 5:45pm
Bay Area PoliceWatch

This Thursday, there will be an important rally in Oakland for police accountability. A number of recent incidents of police abuse and violence are coming before the Citizen Police Review Board, the official local watchdog agency. The community needs to come out and show the CPRB that Oakland won't stand for violent, racist and potentially murderous police walking our streets.

Oakland youth have for too long been causalities of the war on crime. We say: "No more!"

After the rally Thursday, March 25, 5:45 p.m., outside City Hall, at 14th and Broadway, we will go inside to the meeting of the Citizen Police Review Board at 6:15 on the 11th floor.

Join us in demanding NO MORE RACIST COPS IN OUR COMMUNITIES. We are demanding that the Oakland Police Department fire Lt. Mike Yoell and Officer Joseph McGuinn, both notorious for being abusive in the Black community.

Lt. Mike Yoell

Lt. Yoell has a long history of abuse, excessive force and falsification of reports. He is well known in the community and in the police department as a problem officer. But, despite numerous community complaints against him, Lt. Yoell has remained a high-ranking official in OPD. Here's what the CPRB will be talking about Thursday:

Last June, Oakland officers under Yoell's command brutalized two young men, Elliot Noble and Michael Henry, in Oakland's Brookfield neighborhood. (See “East Oakland youth hit by cop car, handcuffed, choked” by JR, Bay View 6/18/03, and “Police terrorism: the community strikes back” by JR, Bay View 8/13/03, http://www.sfbayview.com/081303/policeterrorism081303.shtml.)

An officer in a patrol car chased Michael on his bike. The officer hit Michael with the car and knocked him off his bike. As he lay on the ground injured, Lt. Yoell tried to choke him.

Elliot heard that this was happening to his friend and went to the scene with his camera. As soon as he arrived, Elliot began taking pictures. A cop took his camera away and grabbed Elliot by his testicles and throat. The officer slammed Elliot into a police car and detained him for no reason. Read below the testimony that Elliott’s mother will deliver to the CPRB on Thursday.

Officer Joseph McGuinn

Joseph McGuinn also has a long history of brutality. In 2001, he was one of six cops involved in the brutal killing of Jamil Muwwakkil, a 36 year-old black man who was literally beaten to death by OPD officers.

Since then, McGuinn has racked up numerous complaints. Last month, OPD officers, including McGuinn, detained, harassed and threatened three Oakland high school students. McGuinn forced one of the students to submit to a search of his bare gentalia at least four times. During the incident, the cops repeatedly called the students "niggers." (See “Welcome to the ghetto: Another case of OPD terrorism on Black teenagers in East Oakland” by JR, Bay View 2/25/04, http://www.sfbayview.com/022504/welcometotheghetto022504.shtml.)

Despite an official complaint detailing this serious abuse and misconduct, the Department allowed McGuinn back on the streets. A month later, McGuinn harassed a black man at his home in Sobrante Park – another example of blatant racial discrimination and profiling. (See “Police terrorism in Sobrante Park, East Oakland” by JR, Bay View 11/26/03, http://www.sfbayview.com/112603/sobrante112603.shtml.)

Statement of Venus Noble, mother of Elliott Noble

On the evening of June 10, 2003, at approximately 10 p.m., an event occurred that has forever changed my view of the Oakland Police Department. To have one’s 17-year-old son brutalized for exercising his right to observe officers during a very public display of perceived misconduct was indeed shattering.

In the City of Oakland, every parent’s nightmare is of receiving a frantic call from a neighbor or a homicide detective about their young Black son. On June 10, 2003, my son Elliott’s father and I received a distressing phone call that caused us to rush to the corner of 98th Avenue and Edes to find our son in the back seat of a police vehicle. He held his hands up, allowing me to see the tightly clasped handcuffs on his wrists. I could literally see my son’s pulse beating due to the pressure of the clamped metal on his skin.

More horrifying was the sight of a young man lying on the ground with his head on the curb and body plastered on the pavement. My initial perception was that the child was dead.

To add to that dreadful evening was a scene that could have been likened to a Western! There was utter chaos, a mass hysteria so profuse that it was difficult to ascertain what was really occurring! Police officers were scattered a block long. Elliott’s father and I walked up to Lt. Michael Yoell, though I did not know his name at the time, cordially introduced ourselves with warm handshakes, and inquired as to the nature of our son’s plight.

Neighbors were shouting, attempting to relay the story that Officer Yoell had just hit Elliott’s friend Michael Henry with a vehicle on purpose and that Elliott had been abused by other officers for taking pictures of the incident. Store vendors came outside of their business establishments. In a word, it was pandemonium!

Eyewitnesses reported the police had pulled my son’s hair and yanked his testicles. My eldest son, Larrie Noble Jr., was at the scene beside himself with fear that his brother was being harmed. I was told that he had been warned, “Get back on the curb you Black MF!” I heard one of the officers - I believe it was Officer Alcantar - use profanity more than once. It amazes me that no officer admits to having seen or heard these brutal events taking place.

When I inquired as to why my son had been detained, Officer Alcantar was belligerent and sarcastic. “Your son should be arrested, and he should be in the house at 10 o’clock at night.” I gave him my son’s date of birth and my address, only to have this officer retort hostilely, “I know his birthday!”

I then told him that my son was not a drug dealer and asked if he had seen so much as a history of my son’s criminal activity. He didn’t see it, because there was none. He also found no narcotics in my son’s possession.

The officer’s rudeness was the basis for my mentioning that I was acquainted with Chief Word. Alcantar became even more arrogant. I was then prompted to ask for his name and badge number, which he tauntingly, almost in a singsong manner, recited.

I knew that it was imperative not to fuel this arrogance. I simply took his name and badge number down, inquired once more as to the nature of my son’s detention, and asked that he be released. The officer again snapped angrily at me, “He should go to jail. I am doing you a favor by releasing him. He got in the way of police business! Do you want the camera or what?” I simply smiled at the finale of his performance, stated that I would like the camera and alerted him that the chief would hear about the episode. He then reluctantly uncuffed my son and released him without giving me any paperwork indicating charges.

As his vehicle pulled away from the curb and the crowd dissipated, Alcantar cynically retorted, “Yeah, everybody knows Chief Word, ma’am.” I waved at him. “Not like I do,” I calmly replied. When I returned home, I contacted Councilmember Larry Reid, and he put me in direct contact with Chief Word, who called my home personally the following evening.

Though Elliott was taken to the hospital for a thorough examination, both physically and mentally, the cavernous emotional wounds sustained as a result of what I will term an unfounded terrorist attack will remain with both him and his friend Michael indefinitely. The results have imprinted in their psyche an unhealthy fear and mistrust of the police, and that should not be.

It would appear that my son Elliott, my family and his comrade Michael Henry became victims of the horrid legacy of police brutality in the City of Oakland. However, Elliott has not been taught to be a victim or to sing a victim’s song.

We do not embrace the definition of victim, for that would be admitting to the absurd notion that all young Black men who sport so-called “dread” locks and trendy baggy clothing are deviant derelicts. What I as a mother, social worker, community activist and instructor of African American studies do embrace is my right, my son’s right and the right of any other citizen to feel safe in their own community and not to be abused by those who claim to uphold the law.

Email Venus Noble at vzuhura [at] yahoo.com. The rally is sponsored by Bay Area PoliceWatch, All of Us or None, and the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement. For more information, contact George Galvis at (510) 501-4185 or Malaika Parker at (415) 902-0643.


for more background go to
http://www.sfbayview.com/081303/policeterrorism081303.shtml

 
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