Over a week ago now I was thinking about a good article to write for the blog. In my brainstorming I came up with the idea to write a multi-part series entitled “Stop Snitchin On Yourself (and others)”, which would look to examine the way in which social media, our computers, and our cell phones; have made every single one of us a snitch on ourselves at best, and on many other at worst. Although these have had some positive results, I would deeply question whether the positive outweighs the many negatives. It has been known for quite some time that the state has the ability to intercept pretty much anything digital; from phone calls and texts, to keystrokes and searches (there are ways to protect yourself but that is a whole other article, which hopefully will be coming this summer). Although contrary to the popular and official narrative, if the state has the ability to do something, especially when it has to do with spying on individuals and infringing on our allegedly protected rights, it does it.
Now in my article over a week ago I could have had some citations, and some examples of widespread state surveillance on us fine upstanding citizens, but damn, I am glad I waited a while and I would like to personally thank Mr. Edward Snowden, a true Untied Stateian hero, on behalf of WDCW. People like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning give proof to what is already known, and written on so many walls. So now it’s out there, not in full, but fuller than it has been previously, that the state is spying on millions of hardworking people living in the United States. They track just the “metadata” but we all know they track much more than just that, especially if it is regarding a person of interest. As it was said in Cypherpunks,
“When you communicate over the internet, when you communicate using mobile phones, which are now meshed to the internet, your communications are being intercepted by military intelligence organizations. It’s like having a tank in your bedroom. It’s a soldier between you and your wife as you’re SMSing. We are all living under martial law as far as our communications are concerned, we just can’t see the tanks—but they are there.”
This is not some far off distant dystopia, this is Amerikkka in 2013 and its only going to get worse. This is not a partisan problem, as both of the capitalist parties have endorsed this and supported these measures wholeheartedly. Obama is far worse than Bush ever was, and he continues to expand his powers daily as he continues to bomb and spy on not just citizens, but everyone they can. This is only a prologue, with more details and discussions to come, but its good to be back, and I hope y’all enjoy.
Apologies to all WDC followers and supporters for not keeping up-to-date on the website postings, Facebook, and WDC events over the last couple of months. Although we’ve been doing some Copwatching this past year, we’re looking to get back into the copwatchin game! We’d like to get back to organizing and copwatchin again all over Denver. Look out for some more posts about how to get involved, workshops, meetings, trainings, etc.
To the pigs who I’m hoping have stopped trolling this website, we’ll see you in the streets…
This city is under attack. A powerful gang roams the streets – organized, brutal, and extremely dangerous. Their colors are blue and black. They carry guns and engage in organized crime: from prostitution and dealing meth to selling illegal weapons.(i) They rape, beat, and kill with impunity.(ii) When their deeds are brought into the open, they conspire, under the guise of a brotherhood, to maintain a strict code of silence. They control everything that goes on. The city’s leaders are in their pocket. The City is Denver. The gang goes by the name of “the police.”
The police are not to be taken lightly. In America, you are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist,(iii) and your odds of being killed are dramatically increased if you happen to be male-bodied, queer or trans, of Latin-American descent, African-American, or from a migrant community, for example. The FBI admits that in the US the police “justifiably” kill at least 400 people every year,(iv) in addition to the 100 acknowledged annual cases of excessive use of force, a number of killings that is probably drastically underestimated.(v) Police violence is inherently excessive. From Anaheim to New York, from Oscar Grant to Sean Bell, police brutality is felt in every corner. The damage cannot be quantified.
In Denver the situation is hardly any different. Denver police are viscious, in-fact more brutal than any other force in America.(vi) Many police in Denver do not live in Denver, and are not part of the communities that they claim to serve. Exploits of the police in the Denver metro area range from drug dealing to recent cases of sexually exploiting children, sexual assault of children, multiple instances of rape and numerous killings.(vii) But high profile cases of police abuse can distract from the common, everyday occurrences of police beatings and even murders. Booker, Ryburg, Gidenko, Ashley, Berlin, Yeager: these are just some of the names of people murdered by Denver area police. Police beatings are even more common. Just a few high profile cases of brutality include DeHerrea and Johnson, Landau, Kraus, Mukherjee, and the Martinez family. With heads thrown into walls, jumping on victims’ bodies, assassination in the back seats of squad cars, tazer-induced heart attacks, and execution-style shootings, Denver pigs hold their own against metropolitan police forces from coast to coast.
Criticizing the police can bring reprisal and repression. Yet, sometimes those who criticize will misrepresent instances of their own repression as equivalent to the acts of brutality common in the most oppressed communities. Some people choose when they face police oppression, others face it every minute of every day. At the same time, local police have become emboldened by the timid response to the suppression of speech in the streets of Denver. Additionally, they exploit the confusion amongst those who attempt to confront systemic abuse, confusion about the role of the police – serving the rich and defending the powerful. Ultimately, the police defend social forces which promote foreign conflicts, global poverty, and ecological catastrophe. Yet destruction abroad is paired with oppression at home, and they play an instrumental role in the ever-expanding role of surveillance and expansion of the police state. The police are not our friends, they are not on our side, and our interests are not the same.
We march for a world without police. We know that we can do better by and for ourselves. We do not need an occupying army telling us how to live our lives. We also remember the victims of the police in the Denver area. We will voice our opposition – our total rejection of outside control. But we also seek to liberate space where, however briefly, we engage in a collective gestures to give form and substance to our vision of the future. We are still here. We never forget.
March for a World Without Police!
In love and solidarity,
Denver Alliance for Community Self-Defense
vi.The city of Denver ranks number one in the nation for publicised excessive force complaints, The CATO institute. National Police Misconduct Reporting Project. http://www.policemisconduct.net/…
This was posted by an (A)nonymous organization on Colorado Indymedia! Come join them and WDC in rage and retaliation against these vicious acts of police terror and repression on Tuesday, August 21st at 6:00 pm. Bring your anger and your passion for justice!
This was not organized by West Denver Copwatch, but we will be there to Copwatch and in support and so should you!
Solidarity with those resisting state repression in the Northwest!
On July 31st, metro area police murdered yet another unarmed person. 22 year old Kevin Ryberg was shot multiple times while being held in the back of a Denver police cruiser while it was en route to the District 2 police station in Northeast Denver.
Ryberg is alleged to have assaulted the officer driving the car. Police claim he was able to slip out of his handcuffs and somehow get through a metal and plexiglass security wall that specifically exists to protect a police officer from a passenger attacking them. A second police vehicle came up alongside the car. It is unclear which officer shot the suspect, and how the events transpired.
At least one of the officers involved in the shooting, Randall Krouse, has a history of lying about suspects assaulting officers, not to mention using racially inspired epithets against suspects. According to the Denver Post, “In January 2006, Krouse used a Taser on the neck of a handcuffed drunk, Kenneth Rodriguez, 46, who ended up serving four days in jail after Krouse filed a report falsely accusing the suspect of assaulting another officer. A videotape of the incident showed Krouse asking, “Understando Taser?” before using the Taser while escorting the belligerent but unarmed Rodriguez into a holding cell.”
The dust has barely settled on this most recent shooting, but already it is hard not to think of the various incidents in recent history where Denver area law enforcement have killed unarmed suspects. The names of Alonzo Ashley, Oleg Gidenko, Marvin Booker, and Emily Rice are but a few that most in Denver might be familiar with.
Two Members of WDC were interviewed today on KGNU by Irene Rodriguez an amazing ally and organizer within the anti-police brutality movement. Click the link below and scroll to Metro, Tuesday, 7/10/2012 3:00 PM – click play to listen!
On July 9th 2010, Street Preacher Marvin Booker was murdered by 5 Sheriff’s Deputies in the Van Cise-Simonet Detention Facility. The Denver community has rallied behind the Booker family, working hand in hand with love and resistance against the Denver police and Sheriff’s departments to end their reign of terror and brutality in our streets. Our Denver and Aurora communities have fought a long, ongoing battle against these injustices, and we will continue to organise, fight, and protect ourselves against this occupational force.
Two-years after the brutal murder of Marvin Booker, with the Denver and Aurora police continuing to threaten, brutalize, and murder our friends, neighbors, and families, we will hold a Know Your Rights Training outside of the building where Marvin Booker was murdered, to kick-off a month of solidarity against police.
A few days ago, Denver pigs began their government-ordered attack on the homeless, supported by local politicians and businesses like Snooze (a fucking bourgeois breakfast restaurant). Snooze co-owner Jon Schlegel, who considers himself and fellow co-owner Brianna Borin “homeless experts” (despite the fact that they both OWN A FUCKING RESTUARANT and are clearly not homeless), was interviewed by the Westword after an Occupy Denver protest targeted Snooze for backing the Homeless Camping Ban: “As I’m talking to you sitting in my office, I’m watching what looks like a drug deal go down. I just saw a prostitute get picked up as I’m talking to you. I’m sitting here looking at them right now, and these people have got to get help” (The Westword).
First-off, just because a Person of Color (POC) shakes another POCs hand does NOT mean they’re doing a hand-to-hand, or dealing drugs; and furthermore, just because you see a woman get into a car she’s a sex-worker?! Please, that did not fucking happen Jonny-boy, don’t try to hype-up your interview with some sassy comment about how fucking hard that area is, and how desperate you are for help against the masses and masses of drug dealers and prostitutes in Downtown Denver. Come-on man, this isn’t east fucking Baltimore, it’s Downtown Denver…
Schlegel says that “we all want to help the homeless”, that “these people have got to get help”, but how does criminalizing their ability to survive help the homeless? How does a year in jail, or a $1,000 fine help the homeless? Oh ya it doesn’t… Schlegel and all the other
where could we put them? Well the shelters are all full, and we don’t wanna spend money on those anyways…. Hmmm so what’s something we spend trillions of dollars on, where we could hold people against their will, out-of-sight so we don’t have to see them anymore? Oh ya! JAIL!’capitalist cronies and politicians just don’t wanna have to look at them while their eating their pancakes and eggs in the morning. They say ‘hey, these people may have no homes (hence the term homeless), but if they’re just standing out in the open here they’re ‘bad for business’ [translation: they scare us], so
Meanwhile, as capitalists and politicians walk hand-in-hand escorting homeless folks into the jailhouse, as opposed to spending money in order to provide decent housing to persons without it (or solving the truly deep-seated causes of homelessness IE: unemployment, eviction, (cough) capitalism); these same capitalists and politicians are spending $36 million dollars on a new Denver Pig Department forensic lab, complete with two-story “light-up DNA strands”, and “shockwave and bullet sculptures” (Huffington Post).
The new Denver crime lab is a “77,000-square-foot’, ‘four-level building“, that includes an indoor shooting range and a gun ‘library’. “Also, there are facilities that will be used for DNA extraction, ballistics and fingerprint examinations, and there are spacious evidence-examination rooms. Crime-linked vehicles that are now probed at police district garages and the traffic-operations-bureau garage will be examined in a garage at the new lab” (Denver Post).
Not to mention the new crime lab comes complete with equipment to make hydrogen and other gasses, and “an 80-seat auditorium”. “The auditorium, which is wired into the Colorado Department of Transportation and other security-camera systems [HALO], can be used as a command center for large operations such as political conventions” (Denver Post).
Wow, so let me get this straight: you’re sending people to jail because they don’t have homes, but spending $36 million on a forensic lab with an 80-seat auditorium, gas-making equipment, a gun library, “shockwave and bullet statues”, and a fucking three-story double-helix statue?! Do I even have to say more?!
This reminds me of a story: Once upon a time, in a classroom far, far away, I remember a student presenting to a political science/model government class about how housing the homeless would take a minuscule amount of money compared to locking them up, compared to the amount spent on policing, and how they should vote to house the homeless. Mind you this was a fucking mock government, with no money or monetary limitations what-so-ever, but still the bill wasn’t passed; of course, the very next proposal to ‘save the pigeons‘ WAS. This class decided to save the pigeons, but not the homeless…
This is indicative of the importance that part (the 1-40%) of society places on some human lives; they claim that we are useless, they’re ‘let them live in the gutter or throw them in jail, make them illegal and just get them out of our sight’. I’m sure Schlegel and Borin would agree, as have our politicians and representatives, and as have the fucking pigs in the streets. So I wanna give one last FUCK YOU to ya’ll: FUCK THE URBAN CAMPING BAN, FUCK SNOOZE AND COUNCILMAN CHARLIE BROWN FOR BACKING IT, FUCK THE BETTER DENVER BOND, AND FUCK THE DPD FOR TAKING MONEY FOR BULLET STATUES WHILE CUFFING AND CRIMINALIZING THE HOMELESS…. THIS ONE’S FOR MARVIN BOOKER (RIP JULY 9, 2010) MOTHER FUCKERS – SEE YOU JULY 9TH!
Raise the Fist has upped the anti, and damn is it beautiful. They got a program online, that anyone is able to join a Copwatch list, and anyone is allowed to text any police activity they see and it goes out to everyone on the Copwatch list in a 7 mile radius instantly. Now this is a beautiful use of technology; check it out, sign up, and everyone is better equipped to be a Copwatcher. The streets are watching…
On Saturday there was an armed bank robbery at a Wells Fargo. Aurora PD, although with no actual description of the suspect, got a “reliable tip” that the suspect was in a car at a red light. So how does the Aurora PD, whom have made our website time and time again for their insane and brutal tactics, respond? By surrounding all of the 19 cars, and pulling out ever single person in the cars and handcuffing almost all of them, holding them at gunpoint. They were then “asked” for permission to have their car searched, and once they searched the car, then and only then were the innocent upstanding citizens un-cuffed.
They eventually found the suspect with two guns, $2000, and a mask in his vehicle. The police chief has apologized for the “inconvenience” to citizens, but supports the officers decision at the scene, and well it should all be ok because they caught him.
The suspect is a former high school music teacher. Now the police are framing it as they were protecting the public from a dangerous criminal. Yes a dangerous evil former high school music teacher that although no one knows the details, must have been forced into some pretty hard times to go to these lengths, for $2000. Now many of us as well as our readers have dealt with Wells Fargo and their predatory practices, charging interest at rates that would cause Jesus to come in wreck their banking “temple”. $2000 (of insured money) is certainly a drop in the bucket for Wells Fargo. Yet the Aurora PD are so concerned about the safety and well being of the good citizens of Aurora, that they denied them of the civil rights, treating every single person at that stop light as a criminal, holding guns to their heads, to find a suspect. Once someone is handcuffed with a gun to their head, there really is not a choice about searching their car. This is clearly crazy misconduct and abuse by the Aurora PD, denying citizens of their basic human, as well as civil rights.
Although the full details are not known, what would have happened if this suspect had been more “dangerous”, what happens if he took hostages or a gun battle had taken place? How many innocent citizens in handcuffs would have been shot, “accidentally” or “justified” by the Aurora PD or “dangerous suspect”. All of this over $2000.
This whole case is an obvious breech of their duty to “serve and protect”, as well as flagrant rights violations. We don’t need to hear any more unmitigated horseshit coming out the Chief Daniel J. Oates mouth, this fucker should be fired and prosecuted!
In a 12-page decision, Criminal Courts Judge Stanley Sacks ruled that the law [which essential made the videotaping of police (Copwatching) illegal] is too broad and potentially criminalizes ‘wholly innocent conduct.’ He cited as an example a parent recording her child’s soccer game and inadvertently capturing a conversation between two bystanders. ‘Although it is extremely unlikely that this doting parent would be charged with a felony offense, the fact remains that she could, thusly punishing innocent conduct,’ Sacks wrote.”
This ruling comes just weeks before thousands are expected to descend into Chi-town to protest the G8 & NATO meetings in May. Such a large mobilization of protesters (like those expected in Chicago), is routinely met by even larger occupying po-lice forces, shipped in from pig units around the country, armed with new, hi-tech gear, and itching to use it.
It is no surprise then that these large mobilizations and mass protests are often (if not always) met with rampant police misconduct, abuse, harassment, and violence. Therefore, it is almost essential that these persons are able to demonstrate their own rights – like the right of freedom of speech cited by Judge Stanley Sacks – in videotaping this rampant police misconduct and abuse, to at the very least document these atrocities without being further accosted by the pigs.
Although there is still little clarity on the Eavesdropping Law, as there are a multitude of cases, appeals, and further amendments to the current law still being examined.
Originally, the Illinois Eavesdropping Act made it a felony to record police interactions, carrying a sentence of up to 15 years in prison. Several cases since then have played out, and are continuing to play out in court, of which the decisions could have an enormous impact on the Eavesdropping Act. West Denver Copwatch has attempted to continually update our readers on those cases, but here’s an overview in case you missed it:
In August, a woman was acquitted of eavesdropping charges, after she testified that she only recorded the pigs because they were trying to ‘convince’ her not to file sexual harassment charges.
In September, Crawford County deemed the law unconstitutional, in a case in which a man was accused of recording a police interaction without permission. This case is being appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.
Finally, we are still waiting for a ruling from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, arguing that the law violates First Amendment rights.
Furthermore, Representative Elaine Nekritz (D) is attempting to pass a bill that would make it legal to video tape pigs in public and on duty.
Even dumb-fucking Supt. Garry McCarthy says he doesn’t object to the law, because he encourages persons to film his little piglets, especially at summits like the G8/NATO, as it shows how the dumb-fuck piggies really treat the protesters! Hahahaha, ya that’s a great idea – have you not heard of the payouts pigs hand to protesters for abuse? Want to pay us millions and encourage copwatching, fine by me! Oh ya and go ahead and take a look at Miami – FTAA Settlement.
Of course the Fraternal Order of Pigs (KKK) is against repealing the act as it “would have a chilling effect on witnesses’ coming forward to aid police and could create situations in which victims of crime are re-victimized by viral videos of their suffering.”
Please mother fuckers, you’re rarely there to stop a crime, and people aren’t video taping a ‘crime’, they’re video taping you mother fuckers. You’re the ones with cameras EVERYWHERE (<- Click here to view a map of all pig cameras in Chi-Town [for those of you going a little later this month!]) to catch these victims, and then you give it to the evening news. You stupid mother fuckers, what a dumb excuse, just admit you wanna beat people without reprisal, without a video camera taping your constant abuse and harassment; and what’s a better platform to harass, abuse, and beat folk than the G8/NATO Summits. TRY IT MOTHER FUCKERS – SEE YOU IN CHICAGO…
West Denver Copwatch 