The White Night Riot, 21 May 1979, and Lesbians Against Police Violence

(Flyer created and distributed by Lesbians Against Police Violence and The Stonewall Coalition [mixed-gender lesbian/gay organization allied with LAPV] in Summer 1979 in the aftermath of the White Night Riots; Maggie is pretty sure the graphic was drawn by Emily Siegel.)

Today is the 29th Anniversary of the
Most Important Lesbian and Gay Riot Ever

My close friend Maggie Jochild (and good friend of GNB) was there.

The police estimate was there were at least 3,000 lesbian and gays in the rioting. As we all know, police estimates traditionally undercount actual numbers.

The numbers were HUGE.

The rally was lesbian led, Maggie being one of the leaders. The eruption into violence was led by white gay men, Harvey Milk having been their pioneer.

Yet most of those injured were women and or people of color.

The riot began after a jury returned only a verdict of manslaughter in the trial of Dan White (thus the White Night Riot) whose defense team originated the infamous “Twinkie” defense. (Details at the link.)

White, a former police officer and San Francisco City Supervisor, had been charged with first-degree murder for the assassinations of San Francisco City Mayor George Moscone and San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk.

A note about the so-called “Twinkie” defense. While it was played in court, literally, as that White had been eating so much junk-food that it diminished his capacity, thus being one of the reasons he “lost it”, what really was going on in court was emphasis on the double-meaning of the word “Twinkie.” White's defense team rammed home for the jury how Milk smirked at him, while refusing to hire him back. The faggot, “smirked.”

Obviously, no former cop such as White, could take a faggot besmirching his honor and masculinity by not just refusing to hire him back, but “smirking” at him. Had White only killed Mayor Moscone (a true progressive) White would no doubt have been convicted of first-degree murder. But kill that faggot Milk, the “Twinkie” for smirking... Shit-fire boy, that faggot had it coming.

Thus... the White Night Riot.

Meta Watershed

Today is the 29th anniversary of the largest lesbian and gay riot in the history of the world. Not only was I there, I was one of the women in Lesbians Against Police Violence responsible for the rally from which it arose.

I've written about LAPV in other posts, such as Tania: 33 Years Later. In one, Dianne Feinstein, Opportunist, I give a good brief history of the events leading up to Dan White's cold-blooded assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk. I refer you to that for background.

Another excellent source is an article by LAPV members and women I worked closely with, Pam David and Lois Helmbold, in Radical America, Vol 13, no.4 July- August 1979, found online at Sexuality and the State: The Defeat of the Briggs Initiative and Beyond (scroll down about 2/5 of the document to find the pertinent Radical America extract).

LAPV stood in radical opposition to police harassment of minority communities. We saw Dan White's assassination as a rage reprisal by a former cop against progressive forces (not just gay) and linked it to the larger picture of male and white domination. I think it's critical to remember that the riot which came from our agitation was the result of revolutionary lesbians speaking out against the ultimate forces of power in our society, not a bunch of "gays" upset about a verdict.

Several years ago I wrote my own memoir of the event. I'm going to include that below. Not long afterward, I was interviewed by Christina B. Hanhardt, who was writing a doctoral thesis in American Studies at New York University on "Butterflies, Whistles, and Fists: Safe Streets Patrols and the ‘New’ Gay Ghetto". Her interview with me and other LAPVers, as well as review of primary source documents (mostly from the papers I donated to the Meg Barnett Papers in the Queer Nation Collection at the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Transgender Historical Society in San Francisco) formed Chapter Two of her thesis, "Safe Space: Sexual Minorities, Uneven Urban Development, and the Politics of Violence". At a later date, I will include this chapter in a post covering LAPV in more historical depth.


(March to City Hall just beginning, near 18th and Castro; perhaps an hour before all-out White Night Riot in San Francisco, 21 May 1979. Mount Sutro tower visible in background; buses are already being stopped.)

THE WHITE NIGHT RIOT

© 2008 by Maggie Jochild

The day after the riot, my feelings about it began to change. I was driving a morning route then, delivering something called Veggie Rolls to natural foods store in San Francisco. There were dozens of such stores in 1979. I had arranged my route to go through the Mission, Noe Valley, Bernal and Potrero Hill neighborhoods first, hit SoMa and downtown during the mid morning lull, then head out to the Haight and the Avenues, ending up at Ocean Beach in the afternoon, where I fed the day-old rolls to a keening flock of gulls. On the morning of May 22, however, I began my day by driving past City Hall on the way to Polk Gulch.

I approached it from an indirect route so I could look across the square first and see if cops were there. There were scorched places near curbs here and there, but the burned-out police cars had already been towed away. There was a knot of 20-30 people standing on the sidewalk across from City Hall, standing with their arms at their sides, staring, not talking to each other. Every window on the front facade of the block-long building was covered with plywood, raw and bright in the morning light. There were no parking meters left on that block. I stopped and watched the people for a minute. They seemed to be in shock. I felt a thrill go through me.

While I chatted daily with the managers of the stores where I delivered, and with a few of them I actually conversed (mostly the dykes in the Coop system), the majority of the stores were owned by either white boy hippies or what would soon be called yuppies, and my interest in what they had to say was limited. I knew I was identified as a lesbian by them because one of them had refused to let me help distribute his products, saying I was too “rough looking” for his clientele. I surely hated that man from then on.

On this day, however, there was something new. It mostly took the form of a second look, after the initial glance of recognition. It was as if a new dimension had suddenly been added to my identity as queer, as if they had overnight found out it also meant I could fly, or was immortal. They looked at me in such a speculative way, I wanted to say to every one of them, “Yeah, I was there. Next time we might come for YOU.” I could smell the fear on them, and I liked it. It was as close to respect as I had ever gotten from the straight world.

There's more...

As you'll read, Maggie was one of the primary people behind the rally from which the White Night Riot happened.

This essay is amazing, must-read material.

When it came to the second wave of feminism which came of age with the dykes of the late 60s through early 80s, there was the East Coast group with folks such as Liza Cowan and Alix Dobkin, and the West Coast crowd. Maggie was one of the women at the heart of the West Coast crowd.

Want to know what really happened to feminism from the inside?

Read Maggie's essays at Meta Watershed.

There's more...

Bullying in Arkansas

Billy Wolfe, target of bullies, Fayetteville, AR, March 2008. photo Angel Franco/The New York Times

“He kept spitting blood out”

Billy Wolfe, 16, has been a target of bullies, since he was 12.

Knocked out, stitched up, left bleeding and bruised lying on the street and the floor at school, his mother has one simple hope: "I pray to God every day they don't kill him," said Ms. Wolfe. "Because of all the things that have happened I honestly don't know if he's going to be O.K."

The New York Times

A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he’s going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.

The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold.

Whatever the reason, addressing the bullying of Billy has become a second job for his parents: Curt, a senior data analyst, and Penney, the owner of an office-supply company. They have binders of school records and police reports, along with photos documenting the bruises and black eyes. They are well known to school officials, perhaps even too well known, but they make no apologies for being vigilant. They also reject any suggestion that they should move out of the district because of this.

Judging by school records, at least one official seems to think Billy contributes to the trouble that swirls around him. For example, Billy and the boy who punched him at the bus stop had exchanged words and shoves a few days earlier.

But Ms. Wolfe scoffs at the notion that her son causes or deserves the beatings he receives. She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up, and why school officials are so reluctant to punish bullies and report assaults to the police.

The Wolfes are not satisfied. This month they sued one of the bullies “and other John Does,” and are considering another lawsuit against the Fayetteville School District. Their lawyer, D. Westbrook Doss Jr., said there was neither glee nor much monetary reward in suing teenagers, but a point had to be made: schoolchildren deserve to feel safe.

There's more...

Jill is absolutely on the mark.

Brilliant at Breakfast

This just breaks my heart. As someone who endured my share of bullying when I was a kid, from being psychologically tormented by a troubled kid who was Catholic and delighted in telling me I would go to hell when I died to the boy in fourth grade who used to hit me every day to the time I was asked by a high school principal what I did to make so-and-so angry, I'm appalled that more than thirty years after I finished high school, nothing has changed.

That schools are still blaming the victim because they don't know what else to do is reprehensible. And the prevalence of social networking web sites make tormenting misfits an even more efficient operation.

I think back to the recent case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide at the age of thirteen after a boy she liked had turned on her, and the boy turned out to be a fake MySpace account set up by the parents of a girl with whom she'd had a falling out. And I wonder what on earth parents and schools in this country are doing when they want to put every kid whose brain functions differently on medication, but when you have actual cases of kids being tortured by their classmates, the schools blame the kid being victimized and the parents look the other way.

There's more...

The same thing happened to me.

Group News Blog

I Know and You're Stupid
Ass Kicking 101: Age Nine

I got my first serious beating at age nine (not counting Dad and any of the times he beat the shit out of me.) It was downtown at the Temple of Music and Art after choir practice. At nine I was in the Tucson Boys Chorus, working my way up towards the Touring group which I wouldn't make till I turned thirteen after a year spent living in Europe. I attended church regularly and was to all outward appearances a good boy. Boy were appearances wrong.

The problem with genius is simple. Genius plays by its own rules. Yet lives in the world with others. I tested out in the 160's both as a kid and then in my late teens on the adult tests. Certainly there are many people more adapt at solving intelligence tests than I am, but so far as relating to people who are "average", I didn't have a clue for a long, long time. Till I figured out how to put a stop to the bullying, people tended to beat the shit out of me because I was socially clumsy and freely volunteered my opinion that not only was I right, but everyone else was stupid for not seeing life my way. *laughs*

Dad forgot to pick me up on time so I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually two older kids, teenagers, showed up down in South Tucson where we rehearsed. After questioning me for a bit, they started to hit me. I was different, that's what mattered. My answers were off; I knew too damn much for a freaking nine-year-old and didn't yet know how to hide it. (Sometimes I still don't.) So they hit me. First a little, then a lot. Didn't matter what I said. Didn't matter what I knew. Only mattered that they were bigger and stronger. They beat on me with fists, boots, belt buckles, rocks, whatever was handy, for close to forever. Had me cornered all the way upstairs back where no one could hear me scream. It got dark as they kept it up. Eventually I wore out their fists on my head and they left.

Dad got there several hours later. I was huddled under a lamp post, waiting. Bloody. Not crying.

There's more...

What is happening to Billy is wrong.

He is a strong young man to be standing up to this. I applaud his parents for suing the bullies directly, and hope they soon sue the school district as well.

The refusal of the school administration to deal with these attacks is wrong.

Bullying is wrong -- verbal, sexual, classism, racism, and physical.

Attacking someone because they're different is wrong.

All of these are forms of violence against people.

All bullying (violence) is wrong, both individually and in mobs.

Anyone who participates in mobbing or bullying is wrong.

Anyone who watches mobbing or bullying and doesn't help stop it is wrong.

There's more...

I Must Be Right Even When I Know I'm Wrong

Penn State University Student Nathan Jones
Refuses To Apologize For Dressing Up on Halloween As A
Virgina Tech Massacre Victim

“Do you want me to insincerely apologize?

That would show a lack of integrity on my part.”

People need to be right.

People need to be right so badly we (me too) will stick with being right even when we know we're wrong.

That's what happens here with Nathan Jones.

When you watch the tape, starting at 4:30 in to the tape, Nathan finally comes around and admits he is sorry that the Virgina Tech students and friends and family who viewed the pictures (of him and others in costume of dead students) -- to the extent that he played a part in that, he's sorry.

But at 4:55, as the CNN anchor tries to get Nathan to make his apology more explicit, he instantly retreats and defends his actions, taking back even the limited apology he'd made.

People need to be right no matter what it costs them. And it costs them. Their reputation, love, money, their health. People die in order to be right. What do you think religious wars are about?

People who are willing to be wrong, are people who can learn quickly, make progress, adapt to a world of reality as it occurs for them, instead of being stuck in their mental images.

The best people in any domain are people who are willing to be wrong, and who communicate frankly and candidly about their failures.

The more failures I make, the faster I get to my successes. When I screw up at GNB, I almost always send out an email to my colleagues announcing the fact, detailing how I screwed up, and what I'm going to do next (or asking for advice.)

I screw up faster, more often, and recover quicker than anyone I know. Because I'm not at all timid about screwing up, and I'm passionate about communicating.

For this to work, you have to be willing -- no, committed -- to letting go of a position that's wrong. Even if it makes you look like an ass. Especially then.

And it isn't as if your buddies are going to be all enlightened and say, "Oh, Jesse. You're so brave. I see now how you're just letting go of a position you're holding on to where you think you have to be right. Thank you for being willing to be wrong, in order to move the communication forward within our group. I honor you."

*snorts*

They're going to say (or at least think), "That was really stupid. Don't do it again, asshole. Next time, don't fucking admit to being wrong. You made our whole group look bad. And for Gods sake, if you're dumb enough to get caught, lie!!!"

What I and the people like me who have been trained to communicate no matter what, are attempting to do, is change the culture, from one based on lies and distrust, to one based on communication and trust.

I'm right, probably 85-90% of the time. Not talking about how often I make typing errors, but the choices I make. Of that last 10-15%, I have trusted friends, colleagues, professionals, and family I check in with all the time, especially on big stuff. I'm not at all afraid to reverse myself, even if temporarily it makes me look like an idiot. Anyone who knows me well, knows I have the capacity to screw up in a major way. It's evidence I'm taking big bites out of life.

(There have been a few stretches when the percentage was much higher. Sometimes much higher, during which I was checking damn near everything. I had children I had to protect against myself.)

I like to keep my mistake percentage at about 10-15%. Any less would mean I'm spending too much time trying to be perfect. Any more would mean too much time correcting errors. 1 to 1.5 out of 10 means I'm taking risks and learning from them.

Having to be right is a basic human drive. It's built in, part of our linguistic soup.

Recognizing that having to be right is part of our Automatic Pilot mechanism, just like breathing or having a heart beat, starts to give us some options. Because once we recognize something as Automatic Pilot, at least with the linguistic parts, we begin to have the option to choose otherwise.

Because being right all the time isn't always, well, right. Sometimes it's just stupid.

There's more...

Breaking: Staffers Taken Hostage in Clinton NH Office

ARMED MAN HOLDING HOSTAGES
INSIDE CLINTON NH OFFICE

WMUR Live Video streaming coverage of hostage situation at Hillary Clinton Campaign Office in Rochester, NH.

WMUR Chanel 9

Officials with the campaign confirmed that there were two workers taken hostage in the office on 28 North Main St., and NBC News reported that the man demanded to speak to Clinton.

Clinton, who is not in New Hampshire, canceled a National Democratic Committee meeting in Virginia.

A woman and her baby told workers at a neighboring business that she was released by the hostage-taker.

"A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, 'You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,'" witness Lettie Tzizik said.

"There are sharp shooters on the roof, and police are negotiating with someone in the building," said another witness, who did not want to be identified. "The police are notifying all the business owners on the street to evacuate. There are fire trucks behind the Hillary Clinton office."

There's more...

I won't link to the freepers, but it took less than two minutes before someone wondered if Hillary was staging this herself.

There's more...

Wal-Mart Defends Its Staff. Oh Wait, No, It Doesn't.

photo THR/JEFF GOULDING

Wal-Mart Customer Service Manager Fired After Being Assaulted By Shoplifter

I guess the Customer IS always right.

Even when right is defined as 18-year-old Angel Rivera of the City of Newburgh being:

• gets caught shoplifting,
• is offered a polite way out without any trouble,
• Runs out of the store,
• Runs back in and SCREAMS at the soon-to-be fired Manger,
• Smashes a McDonald's drink on her shoulder,
• "Landed a hard hook to her cheek",
• Punched someone else in the eye,
• Spit in someone else's face, and
• "Pummeled another manager."

All before Ms. Rivera was hauled off to jail under arrest on "robbery and assault, felonies, and petty larceny." Security cameras having her dead to rights on the major charges.

Obviously this breach of Wal-Mart's peace and decorum calls for the firing of the woman who CAUSED IT ALL TO HAPPEN, the Customer Service Manager, Victoria Smith.

If only she'd had the good sense to just let the alleged thief steal from Wal-Mart, Ms. Rivera wouldn't have gone bat-shit fucking insane and assaulted FOUR people.

Thank Goodness Wal-Mart provides World-Class Health Care and Vacation benefits to all employees -- as behooves one of the world's largest and most profitable companies -- and trusts its employees and managers to do the right thing. I'm sure each of these people got adequate time off to heal from the attack, along with proper counseling, and that no one is being scapegoated in any way for the random attack of a criminal.

That crazy & quirky Wal-Mart. Always doing the right thing.

Someone should do a crazy & quirky network television show about a triangle of crazy & quirky kids who love, live and work at... Wal-Mart.

Call it, Well-Met@Wal-Mart, with Wally, Wendy & Wesley. Wednesdays.

Well?

There's more...

Judge Screws Sex Worker In Court

The Screwing You Get For The Screwing You Got

A defendant in the Philadelphia courts was accused of raping a hooker at gunpoint, and giving three buddies a ride.

That's gang-rape at gunpoint.

That night the sex-worker -- WITH A GUN POINTED AT HER -- "gave permission" for sex. In tears.

CUT TO:

PHILADELPHIA MUNICIPAL COURT - INT. - DAY

Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni drops all rape and assault charges to armed robbery for "theft of services."

Yes... you heard correctly.

Philadelphia Daily News

Deni told me she based her decision on the fact that the prostitute consented to have sex with the defendant.

"She consented and she didn't get paid . . . I thought it was a robbery."

The prostitute, a 20-year-old single mother, agreed to $150 for an hour of oral and vaginal sex on Sept. 20, according to assistant district attorney Rich DeSipio. The arrangements were made through her posting on Craigslist.

She met the defendant, Dominique Gindraw, 19, at what she thought was his house, but which turned out to be an abandoned property in North Philadelphia.

He asked if she'd have sex with his friend, too, and she agreed for another $100.

The friend showed up without money, the gun was pulled and more men arrived.

When a fifth man arrived and was invited to join, DeSipio said, he asked why the girl was crying - and declined. He helped her get dressed so she could leave.

It's true the prostitute negotiated sex with the defendant - but not unprotected gang sex at gunpoint.

"The Legislature has defined sex by force as rape," said DeSipio, accusing the judge of "rewriting her own laws."

DeSipio said Judge Deni's ruling was based, not on the law, but on moral contempt.

"Certainly if a jury wants to make that judgment, they're entitled to. But for a judge to make a judgment on a human being - I've never seen that before."

Deni did seem contemptuous of the victim:

"Did she tell you she had another client before she went to report it?" Deni asked me yesterday when we met at a coffee shop.

"I thought rape was a terrible trauma."

A case like this, she said - to my astonishment - "minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped."

The defendant was charged in an identical incident involving a 23-year-old woman four days later, DeSipio said.

Neither woman knew the other and both told identical stories. The other men involved in the attack couldn't be identified.

DeSipio was so stunned by Deni's ruling in the first case that he refused to present the second one.

"I wouldn't demean her that way," he said of the second victim, calling the proceedings "a farce."

Judge Deni then threw out the second case for failure to prosecute.

Police Detective Jack Ryan, who investigated the incidents, said the victims in the two cases "were in fear for their lives. Since they saw one of the doers really well, it crossed both of their minds that they'd be killed."

Deni's decision to drop the sex charges is " frankly, appalling," he said.

DeSipio said he'll file to reinstate the charges in both cases right away - before a different judge, of course.

Wow, I just love this quote. And coming from a judge no less.

"minimizes true rape cases and demeans women who are really raped."
- Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni

Because being gang-raped at gunpoint isn't truly rape if you're a sex worker.

Tell me Judge Carr... Since clearly, sex workers can't be raped on your bench -- Yo, Philly -- open fucking season on hookers; for a good time, call Judge Carr, 1-800-Judge-Me -- tell me this:

How do you feel about spousal rape?

Can a husband rape his wife, or must she just lie their and take it, the disobedient little whore, least her unwillingness to spread her legs wide open on demand for her owner bring shame on all the good wives of Philadelphia?

If Philly cramps your style, may I suggest you move to Maryland? You'd fit right in on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

You live in a fucked up world, Judge. It's Teresa's moral world of sin, pleasure and pain.

Problem is, when you're on the bench, we count on you for the Rule of Law.

Get it right, or get the hell off the bench.

Gang rape at the point of a gun is rape. It's not possible to give consent with a gun aimed at you.

In what way is that unclear?

Asshole.

There's more...

Breaking: Off-Duty Wis. Deputy Kills Six

Six Dead, One Critical. Shooter Taken Down By Sniper.

Early Sunday morning in Crandon, Wisconsin, a 20 year-old off-duty sheriff's deputy, in what is believed to be jealousy, burst into a house party and shot to death six high school students and recent graduates.

Chicago Tribune

The gunman, whom police identified as Tyler Peterson, was later killed after he evaded law-enforcement officials, forcing this town of 2,000 about 225 miles north of Milwaukee to be virtually locked down by police for several hours.

Crandon Mayor Gary Bradley said Sunday afternoon that the suspect was dead. "He was brought down by a sniper," Bradley said. However, Forest County Sheriff Keith Van Cleve would not confirm that Peterson had been killed by fellow officers.

Many details were still sketchy late Sunday, but police believe Peterson shot the seven people, ranging in age from 14 to their early 20s, around 3 a.m. in a small downtown home where they had gathered to eat pizza and watch a movie. At least eight people were inside the house at the time of the attack, family members say, after celebrating the local high school's homecoming.

While it was unclear what the gunman's motive was, the mother of one victim said he may have been a jealous boyfriend. "I'm waiting for somebody to wake me up right now," said Jenny Stahl, 39, the mother of 14-year-old Lindsey Stahl, who was killed in the shooting. "This is a bad, bad dream. All I heard it was a jealous boyfriend and he went berserk. He took them all out."

Savannah Cleereman, 14, knew Lindsey and the five others who were killed. "Lindsey was my best friend since 1st grade," she said. "It's just the way she died. She didn't deserve it. None of them deserved to die at all. I had six friends, but they all died."

Cleereman said she had been invited to the same house party but didn't go because she was too tired from an early volleyball meet.

Instead, she and a friend—the sister of a young man at the party—stayed at Cleereman's house together. The two learned of the shooting Sunday morning when Cleereman's friend received text messages on her phone from people saying they were sorry to hear about her brother.

"Then my mom came in and told me that six of my best friends were dead," Cleereman said.

A second victim was Bradley Schultz, 20, a third-year student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was home to visit his friends, said his aunt Sharon Pisarek.

"We still don't have many details, but from what they've told us, there was a girl next to him and he was covering her, protecting her," she said, sobbing. "He was loved by everybody. He was everybody's son."

Three of the victims were Crandon High School students, said schools Supt. Richard Peters, and the other three had graduated within the past three years.

"There is probably nobody in Crandon who is not affected by this," Peters said, adding that students would be especially affected. "They are going to wake up in shock and disbelief and a lot of pain."

Peters did not know whether Peterson had also graduated from the 300-student high school. But Crandon resident Karly Johnson, 16, said she knew the gunman and that he had helped her in a tech education class.

"He graduated with my brother," she said. "He was nice. He was an average guy. Normal. You wouldn't think he could do that."

On Sunday afternoon, Crandon residents gathered inside churches and area stores to talk about what had happened.

With the hymn "The Glory-Land Way" being sung by a congregation behind him, James Crawford, 36, tried to talk in a phone interview about his cousin who was killed. The Tribune is not identifying the cousin because it was not clear whether all family members had been notified about the death. "I just can't believe something like this would have happened here," he said.

Twenty-five people met for hours inside the Church of Christ in Crandon, which Crawford attends.

Earlier Sunday, Crawford had learned of his cousin's death when he awoke to a phone call from family members: His teenage cousin, "who wouldn't have hurt a fly," had died in a shooting that had happened only three blocks away.

And just when he went outside for a front-yard discussion with his neighbors, they learned from police that their child, who had been at the party, was dead, he said.

Damn.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everyone involved.

These things are just senseless. People try and make sense out of them, but you just can't. Because people are involved we think somehow we should have could have known.

No.

It's no different than a sudden storm, a freak tornado coming up without warning. The odds of one hitting your family are vanishingly small. Which doesn't help at all when it's right on top of you.

Damn, damn, damn.

There's more...

“Ooooowww... Fuck!”

“Non-lethal Weaponry”

Yes, I'd rather be hit with a pain blast than a burst from an M4 Carbine.

Not the problem.

Daily News

"Where do I put my finger? There ... OK? Nothing's happening ... is it on?"

"Yes, it's on. Move your finger a bit closer."

"Er ... ow! OW!" Not good. I try again. "OWWW!" I pull my hand away sharpish. My finger is throbbing, but seems undamaged.

I was told people can take it for a second, maximum. No way, not for a wimp like me.

I try it again. It is a bit like touching a red-hot wire, but there is no heat, only the sensation of heat. There is no burn mark or blister.

tested a table-top demonstration model, but here's how it works in the field.

A square transmitter as big as a plasma TV screen is mounted on the back of a Jeep.

When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings.

It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile.

Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury.

But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonising sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about.

"I have been in front of the full-sized system and, believe me, you just run. You don't have time to think about it - you just run," says George Svitak, a Raytheon executive.

Silent Guardian is supposed to be the 21st century equivalent of tear gas or water cannon - a way of getting crowds to disperse quickly and with minimum harm. Its potential is obvious.

"In Iraq, there was a situation when combatants had taken media as human shields. The battalion commander told me there was no way of separating combatants from non-combatants without lethal force," Mr Svitak tells me.

He says this weapon would have made it possible because everyone, friend or foe, would have run from it.

In tests, even the most hardened Marines flee after a few seconds of exposure. It just isn't possible to tough it out.

This machine has the ability to inflict limitless, unbearable pain.

What makes it OK, says Raytheon, is that the pain stops as soon as you are out of the beam or the machine is turned off.

This will be used to torture.

It isn't up for debate. It isn't open for question. No matter how many safeguards we put on their sale.

This will be used to torture. As the article goes on to say, quoting a goddamn Ph.D. biologist who specializes in how the brain perceives pain, "They are so obviously useful as torture instruments."

Gee Gidge. I got that one first go-round. The damn machine is tuned straight into our pain receptors.

Furthermore, the numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven. Most blokes you know, will be torturing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten. Where can you go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do with the Raytheon ray-gun if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to eleven. Exactly. One more painful.

Coming soon to an undisclosed location near you. Or a protest. A political rally. Because really, no one cares about those amendments, not like 2 & 5, and maybe 21 ('cause at least then we'll all be drunk, because that's what you really want -- a bunch of drunk people waving guns while staggering about, who can't be compelled to testify.)

There are worse things than dying. Being burned alive is one of them. Being burned alive over and over again and never being able to escape... Don't talk to me about humane weapons which burn people without burning them till you've gone on a run with me and seen what teenager sisters look, feel, sound and smell like who've been burned to death but are still talking to each other because they just don't fucking know they're already dead.

This box is a torture device. It's morally wrong and an abomination upon the face of the earth.

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College Students of Baghdad

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Children of Baghdad

Photo via Guardian News: Click Photo or here for video

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It's A Tough Watch...But You Should Watch It

James Gandolfini's and HBO's “Alive Day Memories”

Every once in a while, I'm struck with a bout of insomnia. I find refuge in TV, seeming to always catch a showing of the execrable Denzel Washington vehicle “Ricochet”, or one of the “Ginger Snaps” trilogy of films.

I couldn't sleep about a week ago, and found myself flipping around, and landed on HBO, at about 2 a.m., and watched the documentary “Alive Day Memories”, produced by “The Sopranos” James Gandolfini. Getting to sleep afterward, was the least of my problems...that wasn't going to happen. It was where it took my mind for days afterward.

Good...God.

If you have issues with seeing the human body in states of post-trauma disrepair, this program is probably not for you. We walk around all day long, and take for granted what out healthy, intact limbs and appendages enable us to do. When you see these soldiers...and their war-broken bodies—sometimes with a momentary flash to a photo of their moments in triage after being injured in Iraq...it will touch something deep inside you. You may have to look away for a moment. You will grind your teeth. You will thank God that you are relatively healthy, and then your mind will wander to thoughts about these soldiers families and loved ones, and you will start to ask how in the hell these people are coping with the events that have so changed their loved one. So altered them visually, tangibly...and worse than that...intangibly, and within.

The term “Alive Day” refers to the day each of these soldiers was injured/damaged in a war event—be it an IED, a sniper's bullet, a vehicle rollover, or witnessing a person you have come to call friend during the hell of war, have their life snuffed out—“whiff!—while mere inches away from you.

The truncated, gnarled and pockmarked bodies will visually arrest you. But what hit me doubly hard was the damage to the psyche of some of the people Gandolfini interviews on the stark set. Prosthetics you see. Sleeves and pant legs tucked and pinned to neatly cover where missing limbs once were, are on display.

But it's the haunting words of these for the most part, young soldiers that will stay with you and echo coldly in your quiet moments. A couple of those interviewed will at first scan as “the lucky ones” , as their physical damage is somewhat less than that of the more egregiously wounded ones on camera. But you need to hear their words. And look into their eyes. Do that—and you will understand the complexity of the damage a war—particularly this criminally unnecessarily war has wrought. You will worry for these young people, and worry even more about the ones yet to come home.

You will see the shattering effects of this war on their bodies, and on their minds in terms of what Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder looks like when it's playing out in front of you. Gandolfini does a great job, just letting the soldiers speak, and following them around for a bit as we see them live their lives. And he lets you see it there in the raw.

The anguish...the trepidation...the “this is what I will have to live with from here on out” fear is so thick you can palm it. And whether our so-called “candidates” for the presidency get these soldiers out of there quickly or not (last night's “debate” has tempered any optimism I may have had on that hope in a BIG way), these troops will be coming home someday. All 170,000 of them. And after watching “Alive Day Memories”, your concern will go from “Oh, thank God you're back!”, to “How do we fix the damage that has been done to them, and lessen that damage's effect on us as a whole.

There will be tales that lift your spirit...and tales that will make you cry because you just KNOW that for some of these troops...it is going to get a much, much worse.

It isn't family viewing. It's tough. And unflinching. If you have sensitivity issues, again, take a pass.

If you can deal and want to see this eye, and psyche-opening piece of television, here's the upcoming schedule for it.

CLICK TO ENLARGE


Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr, Edwards? You can do something should you be elected, to lessen the number of people who will end up like the soldiers shown in this film. Bodies torn, brains skewed, thanks to one man and his handlers' hubris.

Watch this, and don't tell me—tell them—some more of your “I just don't know when we'll getcha home” platitudes, as they suffer in the sand, on your watch, for nothing.

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Free To Be...An A-S-S-H-O-L-E

“IDEA FIGHT!”

I spent much of yesterday at the doctor's office, getting a softball-incurred knee injury looked at (Grade 1/borderline 2 MCL sprain), just off Gramercy Park here in NYC. The weather...was glorious, albeit with a sky in that perfect shade of sapphire blue, and eerily cloudless like 9-11's was. But nonetheless, it was simply a remarkable day out—that time of the year...when the sun's angle is just so—blinding and direct at the peak of the day...brightening all its rays touch, and making everybody look that much younger...and more vital.

Everyone who passed my gimpy ass on the street seemed to look young, and fresh, and full of promise.

In fact, they all were young, and fresh, and full of promise. It took a minute to realize (Tylenol with Codeine will do that) that I was standing in the midst of a multitude of young adults making their way to and from Baruch College about a block away.

I used to hang out at Baruch on Thursday afternoons and evenings in my collegiate years for the parties. Off-the-chain jams. Step shows, Black fraternity throw-downs in the “Oak Room”, All-out debauchery-oozing mega-jams in the main lobby—oh my God! We had a ball! Not just at Baruch, but at F.I.T. a few blocks west, in the “D” building on Friday nights, and then Uptown for the jams at Columbia's parties at “Earl” Hall (a noise often heard in the restrooms there after too much drink) and “The Plex” downstairs pub. My school was a horrific party school, with Deejays “spinning” cassette tapes by Bic lighter-light, and no mixer! So we—my gang of friends and me—hit all the schools—up and down the eastern seaboard. Howard. Boston College. Rutgers. Harvard. Fredonia. You name the school, we hung there awhile—soaking up the college ambience that much more, as we went for quantity partying just as hard as we did for “quality”.

College was on my mind big-time yesterday as I watched the kids—and yes, more than a few of the pretty young girls— hustle on by. I thought of my son, who'll be going off to school next year (which kinda chilled my libidinous co-ed thoughts). And then, I saw a clutch of students moving in an angry wave with signs under their arms. The one in the lead was checking his cell phone and barking “Come on! Come on!” to those behind him—and I realized who they were. They were members of the school's Hillel Jewish organization—in my fog, I'd initially missed their yarmulkes and didn't immediately register the words on their picket signs. They were apparently headed uptown to protest the presence of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Columbia—and moreso in the city proper.

They were movin'.

And you had to get out of their way quick, because they were in a hurry. There was one huge kid, in a dark blue and white striped polo shirt—and stood about six-foot-four, 250 lbs easy. A man-mountain at the edge of the wedge, holding two big signs under a redwood-like arm, and he was not playin'. He was clearing the way with his shoulder. Boomp! Boomp! Boomp!

“What the hell is your problem? Asshole!”, one woman he almost knocked off the curb yelled.

“You see us comin'.”, the burly kid said. “You need to move!”

Boomp! Boomp! Boomp!

I tottered my lamed-up ass out of the way, but barely, as the kid nearly clipped me with one of the big signs he was toting.

The woman he plowed into was still seething as the group swept along.

“Fucking asshole!”, she yelled one more time as she moved across the street.

I laughed to myself because I remember specifically that I never heard that word—“Asshole” used to describe people more than I did in my college years.

The institution was apparently, full of 'em.

Which got me to thinking about college, and collegiate activism, and the whole “dude got tasered at the Kerry speech” thing at the University of Florida that had so many people in an uproar last week. I actually was going to comment on it shortly after it happened, but then...the story deepened as more and more facts came out about it.

It turned out the kid, 21-year old Andrew Meyer was something of an inveterate gadfly. And a proud, nearly professional heckler. He proudly says so in his own words here in an article entitled “I Pissed Off Ken Griffey Jr.”:

I pissed off Ken Griffey, Jr.  Before I explain how, let me repeat that for a second: I pissed off Ken Griffey, Jr.  So here’s what happened:

I went to see the Marlins play the Cincinnati Reds on May 31, 2004, and sat eight rows behind home plate.  My real seat was way up in the upper deck, so I was practically forced to sneak into a better section. Anyway, in the top of the seventh, Sean Casey came up to bat with a man on first and one out.  Before I delve into my tale, let me give some background info.

-----------------------------------

Now, you have to know this about me: I am huge Marlins fan, and a born heckler. My purpose in life is to badger, jeer, and cajole professional athletes. I have angered two other All-Star baseball players, Bobby Abreu and Odalis Perez, on separate occasions. I have booed singers that mess up the national anthem. Heck, I’ll even heckle other hecklers if I don’t care for their stuff. What happened during this particular game was destined to be, the paths of Griffey and I on a collision course.

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“WALK CASEY TO GET TO GRIFFEY!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “WALK CASEY TO GET TO GRIFFEY!”

I now not only had the attention of my entire section, but Griffey himself turned an eye in my direction, and began to stare. I was on my feet, and he spotted me immediately. I was nowhere near done with this.

“WE WANT GRIFFEY!” I screamed, deliriously. “WE WANT GRIFFEY!” There was no question about it now. Griffey was staring me down, angry.  Instantly I realized what I had done. I had twisted the lion’s tail, awakened a sleeping giant, rousted the dragon from his lair.

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Ball one. I began to squirm in my seat. Ball two. When the umpire called that second ball, I knew down in my gut everything that would happen next.  Casey walked on four pitches. Griffey walked to the plate, still glaring in my direction. The pitcher winds, delivers --- Strike one. 
“That’s right Griffey! You’re nothing!” I yell. Griffey knocks the next one out of the park. As he rounds third, he points right into the stands behind home plate, right at me.

Let us all join in with that angry, plowed-through lady crossing the Lexington Avenue. Say it with her, now: “Asshole!”

Then I come to find out that Kerry, in trying to defuse the situation with the kid over-running his question time, actually deferred to Meyer, thinking that just letting him have his say would eventually lessen the tension in the room and cool things out.

As Charlie Murphy said of Rick James learning his lesson, “Wrong! Wrong!”

And then I saw the entire video of the incident, where Meyer clearly was set on a path of being as annoying as possible, pissing off everybody around him, and then, pretty much dicking around with the police when it was clear that they too were out of control.

I ingested these facts, and filtering them through my own experiences at teach-ins, rallies, Q & As, and then, dealing with Five-O, I came to the following conclusions.

One: Part of the greatness of America is its freedoms. Of speech. To dissent. And...the freedom to be an asshole, which Meyer evidently exercises with the zeal of a scrawny kid in the basement mirror with a brand new “Bullworker”. He is undoubtedly an asshole, and has every God-given right to be one. Unfortunately, when you exercise that right, for it to be effective it has to impact someone else—people outside of just you. And a side effect of that impact is that it causes people, like that lady knocked into the gutter, to dislike you, and yes...often look the other way when someone decides to kick your annoying ass. Which is what happened to Andrew Meyer that day at Florida State. I've seen knuckleheads like him engender so much ill-will in an assembled crowd that the crowd itself has been moved to beat down the offender.

I remember being at a Q & A on Blacks in Journalism in the 80's at The Cooper Union art college. The panelists were Black talk radio host Bob Law, a female Black conservative apologist named Applewaite, (who Law kept intentionally malaproping as Applewhite) and a journalistic idol of mine, the great Jimmy Breslin. It was a pretty spirited affair, but it got crazy when one hard-case nut took over the mic. He asked one question. Then two. Then three. Before you know it, it was six or so questions, each one more breathlessly asked than the last, and twice as crazy each time. There was a line of people behind him waiting to speak and they and the crowd began to boo the boor, who would not. Let. Go. Of. The. Mic.

Breslin, sensing the tension, stood up and implored “Let him finish. Let him finish! Fella's got an opinion just like the rest a' you. Let him get it off his chest.” But dear Jimmy clearly didn't realize he was dealing with a professional, inveterate nutbar, who went on for a couple more minutes pontificating, and then invoked in one fell swoop while screaming, black helicopters, the meaning of the all-seeing eye on the dollar bill, and...the Illuminati. As the crowd now wrestled with the gadfly for the mic, Breslin stood up again, thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and said while sighing, “And now buddy...you are on your own”. With that a few people grabbed the mic stand, and a few grabbed ol' Gregor Kookypants, separated the two, and hustled the dude up the aisle, and outta there like the Klan-lovin' pol at the end of “O Brother, Where art Thou?”

Was it uncool to do? Yes, it was. Was he asking important questions? Some were. Some weren't. But he was certainly unmaking friends with every second-hogging, crazyfuck word. Was he being an asshole? Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. And once people tab you as an asshole, you move yourself into dangerous territory in terms of getting the benefit of the doubt from people when the shit goes against you. It ain't fair...but it is human nature.

And speaking of human nature...

Two: Another part of America's—actually the world's— greatness, is the way we are not limited by station in terms of behavior. Anyone... can be an asshole. Including cops. And the cops who tazed Meyer were assholes. Maybe the worst kind—namely authoritarian assholes. Occupations that place people in hierarchal positions over the bulk of the populace tend to attract those types. And because of that, when you get an guy acting like Meyers in a place where you have authoritarian assholes nearby, well...it's a cocktail for taze-saster. Give John Kerry credit—he was the most sane person there, trying to de-fuse things by letting the kid expend his wind. But, like Breslin, he didn't realize he was dealing with a 200,000 BTU blower jacked into a high-tension line.

Asshole met assholes when the cops and Meyer collided—and in that battle, the assholes with tasers almost invariably trumps the “proud, nearly professional heckler“ asshole with a big mouth and bigger attitude. His idiotic, tweaking “Dont taze me bro'!” appeal to the cops was a stupid-ass move—especially in light of how anyone with common sense knows how Five-O plays when you fuck around with 'em like that. And his spastic physical resistance? Well...that's just making the authoritarian with a weapon's job that much easier, isn't it? Jesse and Sara make that point clear in these prescient posts from a month before “bro got tazed”. The initial dudgeon over this “injustice” on both sides of the aisle was tempered as soon as the facts began to get out, but that still leaves us with one undeniable fact to chew over.

The cops were waaaaaaaaaay, waaaaaaaaaaay out of line, and there wasn't a Goddamned thing John Kerry could do about it at the time, beyond what his job is—to be statesmanlike.

Oh yes, and that the “victim” here is now known to get off on fucking with powerful forces he thinks will never call him on his antics. He gleefully cited how he had “twisted the lion's tail”...without noting that to do so, you have to reach into the lion's cage to do it.

Considering that nothing good was gonna come of this divine, and destructive confluence of assholery on campus, he's lucky he didn't draw back a nub.

As for the “Po-Po”, my father used to say, “Give an idiot a hammer, and everything becomes a nail.” These idiots should never be given anything more lethal to carry than squeaky, clown hammers as they've proven themselves to clearly be undisciplined public menaces.

I think back to one of those crazy Baruch parties. Just off the Goddamn chain. It made Delta House keggers look like a DAR tea social. Debauchery? Hell yes. I should know. I had a girl sitting on my shoulders facing me as I balanced her there while...“dancing”. A janitor or someone who didn't get his bottle of Crown Royal as a secondary perk from the party throwers had called Five-O on us. And someone from downstairs relayed the message. “Po-Po” was in the house.

I slipped the girl off my shoulders. My buddy “L” put his shirt back on—and found the shirt for the toplesss girl he was dancing with, tugging it on her quickly. Weed was chucked into punch. Clothes tugged back on. The girls go-go-ing in their lingerie atop the huge marble mantle hopped down, and back into their Calvin Kleins.

Five-O came in to find...nothing. Just people standing around barely moving as the music was turned down low.

And then, just after the lead officer asked “What had been going on here?”, and “We got a complaint that you people were going berserk!”, you could hear a pin drop, save for the music—which was The Sugarhill Gang's “Rapper's Delight”. The officer yelled “So, there was nothing going on here? Nothing at all?”

To which the reply was the line in the song still playing in the background.

“Well there's a time to break, and a time to chill—to act civilized, or act real ill.”

And about thirty people just burst out laughing at once.

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Democracy While Black

Reverend Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus and Institute for Policy Studies discusses his arrest, made by Capital Police outside of a House of Representatives hearing room before the testimony of Gen. Petraeus.


Rev. Yearwood being arrested


Leader of the Hip Hop Caucus attacked, arrested, and hospitalized trying to attend Petraeus hearing. "I will not be arrested today."


Q: “Do you understand where you are?”
A: Peacefully standing in line to attend a Congressional Hearing.

Exception to every rule: DWB.

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Breaking: Explosions Rip Mexican Gas Pipelines

photo: Luis Monroy/AP

Sabotage Strongly Suspected

Over 15,000 people have been evacuated as explosions tore apart six natural gas pipelines operated by Mexico's Pemex state oil monopoly early this morning.

Natural gas futures jumped more than 20 cents, but later settled to 5.5 cents at $5.56 per 1,000 cubic feet.

LA Times

No injuries directly related to the explosions were reported, but the blasts forced Pemex to immediately shut down at least four pipelines and federal authorities to close two major roads in the area.

Today's blasts occurred exactly two months after a leftist guerrilla group, the Popular Revolutionary Army, known by its Spanish initials EPR, took responsibility for carrying out bombings of Pemex pipelines in the south-central state of Queretaro.

Though no group has yet claimed credit for today's explosions, political analysts here said they were probably the work of the ERP or a similar group and were a protest against President Felipe Calderon and his policies. Calderon, who is traveling in India, was quick to condemn the explosions as being caused by deliberate acts of violence.

"In the democratic Mexico of today there is no place for these criminal acts," Calderon said in a statement in New Delhi. "Those that attack against the security of Mexico under whatever pretext attack against democracy and against Mexico."

But today's explosions underscored the difficulty the federal government is having in protecting a pipeline system that stretches across multiple states and through many remote areas.

There also is continuing rancor over last year's presidential election, in which Calderon defeated former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose supporters claimed widespread voter fraud.

José Antonio Crespo, a political analyst, said the attacks on Pemex reflected the growing "radicalization" of Mexico's far left-wing groups, who believe they have been systematically shut out of institutional political power by the Fox and Calderon administrations, and have turned to increasingly violent forms of protest to make themselves heard.

"This is a direct consequence of what Calderon received as an inheritance of the election, in which he was chosen in a doubtful manner," from his leftist opponents' perspective, Crespo said.

"The government of Felipe Calderon has not done the necessary thing of sending a message to the left of using the institutional path, that yes it can participate in politics, with the possibility of being listened to. But Calderon has sent the opposite message."

The United States only imports a tiny fraction of our natural gas from Mexico -- 0.3% of total imports in 2006.

This explosion won't hurt us directly. It provides us with the opportunity to learn.

What becomes quickly apparent is a distributed system of gas pipe lines running across (what is effectively) hostile territory following a disputed election, can be shut down against an occupying army at will, indefinitely, and with minimal casualties. Even when the citizens are not armed with RPGs and IEDs.

The strategic implications should be obvious.

To anyone capable of learning.

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Depraved Indifference

NYPD Cops Out of Control

Cops in New York do what they want.

The NY Civil Liberties Union released a harshly critical study, Mission Failure, which says even the vaunted Civilian Complain Review Board rolls over and spreads them for the cops.

NYCLU

"I've seen the CCRB’s failure firsthand and up close. Civilian oversight is a formality at best," said Sheena Otto, a one-time veteran investigator at the CCRB. "We can do better, and the City certainly deserves better."

Joining members of the NYCLU staff at a news conference announcing the release of the report were Otto; representatives of Make the Road by Walking, a community advocacy organization in Brooklyn; and officials with three police organizations: the Guardians Association, the National Latino Officers Association and 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. All were highly critical of the CCRB’s failings and of the police department’s role in undermining the civilian oversight agency."

As an officer, when you walk into the average Black or Latino community, there is always animosity toward the police. The CCRB does nothing to address that," said Charles Billups, chair of the Grand Council of Guardians. "These communities are suffering from unnecessary police hostility, and the CCRB is just looking the other way."

"When a cop abuses his authority and disrespects or injures a civilian, it diminishes respect for all cops," added Marq Claxton, a founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care. "The CCRB is not working. As a result, the people of this city have lost confidence in and respect for the police."

Newsday

The city's Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is empowered to investigate allegations of police misconduct, fully investigates fewer than 50 percent of complaints and finds police at fault in 5.2 out of every 100 cases, according to the report titled "Mission Failure: Civilian Review of Policing in New York City."

That is far below the 10 to 13 percent average found at similar boards across the United States, the report says.

"We know the department frustrates those complainants. They make it very hard to file [a complaint] and frequently toss them out," said the report's author, civil liberties union staff member Robert A. Perry.

"Even when cops are found guilty ... the punishment is shockingly lenient."

According to the report, allegations of undue force by officers are up 117 percent in the last six years, and abuse-of-authority complaints are up almost 200 percent.

But the number of cases in which officers face serious consequences for such violations is down dramatically. In 2000, 34.2 percent of officers found guilty were punished with loss of vacation time or a suspension; in 2006, that punishment was meted out only 5.2 percent of the time.

Verbal warnings from supervisors, however, have risen from 23 percent in 2000 to 73.8 percent last year.

In several dramatic examples given in the report, officers who had beaten, strip-searched, pepper-sprayed and falsely arrested innocent people were given verbal admonishments by supervisors. Those officers also could have faced criminal and civil suits. The officers were not named in the report.

"These cases summarize serious acts for which you or I would face serious criminal violations and possible incarceration," Perry said.

"It's absolutely clear that the punishment the PD hands down has been dramatically reduced