That’s why the American Rescue Plan provided $350 Billion that
cities, states, and counties can use to hire more police and invest in
proven strategies like community violence interruption—trusted
messengers breaking the cycle of violence and trauma and giving young
people hope.
We should all agree: The answer is not to Defund the police. The
answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need
to protect our communities.
This continues the work of Biden as the U.S. politician who has worked most over five decades to imprison more black and brown people than every single living elected representative. For a racist like Biden, the work to imprison makes him feel tough.
And Biden knows, few elected Democrats will object.
Biden: "We should all agree, the answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them!"
Six weeks into the Trump administration last year, Chris Hedges spoke at an anti-Trump event in Vancouver, British Columbia, March 3, 2017.
Hedges warned about the prospect of militarized federal and local police "terrorizing and deporting" immigrants living in the United States, waging a "race war" against black and brown folks, more racial profiling, random police stops, wanton human rights violations and abandoning the common good.
All of which existed and have been accelerated by Trump in a broad project to make America white.
Said Hedges:
White Europeans who are undocumented are not being targeted. The executive orders of Trump are directed against people of color. They begin from the premise that white Americans are the true victims of neo-liberalism, deindustrialization, and falling living standards. The Trump orders are written not to make America great again. But to make America white.
They are an updated version of the NAZI's Nuremberg laws, the Jim Crow laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Naturalization Act of 1870. They are intended to institutionalize an overt racial hierarchy in the United States, one already far advanced in the miniature police states where people of color live in marginal communities.
In these impoverished enclaves there is no right to trial or due process. Militarized police kill with impunity, and the courts lock people away often for life. Rights are treated as privileges that can instantly be revoked. The poor, especially poor people of color, are exempted from moral consideration. They are attacked as impediments to social cohesion. And these impediments must be eliminated.
Hedges warned about the cruel consequences of insane social movements finding an oasis in the Trump adminstration, welcoming the dispirited and politically alienated.
Sane Americans saw this coming, but too many did nothing.
DeForest Police Chief Daniel Furseth is a racist
cop and noted scum-bag who rose through the
ranks of the DeForest Police Dept where
racism opens doors to white cop careers.
Cop problem surfaces again
Who is the voice of the vile racist on new cop video?
It's the Chief of Police in DeForest, Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin — A group of five young friends out to grab something to eat provoked a reaction in a hidden observer commenting on the folks gathering in a restaurant parking lot, (You Tube video).
The five friends are black, hence worthy of racist vitriol by the bigoted observer who mocked the people with hyperbolic commentary intended as ridiculing black vernacular that served as faux narrative on video and that has been preserved to shine light on racist Wisconsin cops.
The cops are white, hostile, anti-social, criminal and dishonest.
The police are protected by their local governments, and cops use their position allied with small-town bureaucrats to harass, fine, engage in character assassination, and even to kill.
DeForest Police Chief Daniel Furseth is a racist cop who
upon viewing five young black men mocked the group
in some faux black slang with a demeaning, racist and
derogatory narrative of the folks' character because
they were black. Video is linked here, and is posted below.
As described by the former police intern, who goes by the name of Defiant Drone Pilot, racist cop Daniel Furseth was so comfortable emitting racist commentary, Furseth spoke into the cell phone he borrowed to use the then-still-novel video feature, in the apparent and valid belief other DeForest cops shared the values and racist viewpoints towards black folks.
Writes Defiant Drone Pilot in a chronicling of the incident accompanying his YouTube video:
Now you may ask 'how did I get this footage'? Well simple, when I was duped into thinking that the police were really out to help you back in 2007, I was stupid enough to do my internship with DeForest PD (yes, we all make mistakes, don’t judge). Foreskin wanted to borrow my video camera since it was so small and can fit into a pocket and THIS is some of the great footage he captured with it. Is it real? Yes, 100%, this is the actual voice of DeForest Police Chief Daniel Furseth. This is his actual character and some of his actual beliefs that he instills into all his officers, all 100% white males. He even made a comment about what he thought about people of color serving on his department, suffice it to say, it would not happen on his watch.
What’s more is that during my police internship, EVERY DeForest police officer I met showed racist tendencies and beliefs.
WISC-TV reports the racist cop is on paid administrative leave:
Chief Dan Furseth has been on administrative leave since May 23, Village Administrator Steve Fahlgren said.
News 3 approached Furseth at his home Friday morning, but he declined to speak with News 3, saying he was 'busy.'
Of course Furseth was busy. He needs to plan where he is going to spend his retirement after he resigns and Furseth gets his generous pension package for years served as a racist cop.
'Ok, we is out on our dates,' Furseth is heard saying. 'We got the (bitches), we gonna get them, and we gonna give them food. I got my cane, I’ve gots (sic) my suit,' Furseth said. 'Oh baby … Ok boys, let’s go in. This is the (fanciest) restaurant we ever been to and it’s called the Steak ‘N Shake.'
'Unbelievable,' Furseth continues, dropping the accent. ...
City Administrator Fahlgren said Furseth agreed to be placed on paid leave May 23, and an independent investigation has since been launched by a Boulder, Colorado firm.
'Basically, we felt – and he agreed – that him being on leave would make sense," Fahlgren said.
The investigation is looking into Furseth specifically, according to Fahlgren, and whether a culture of racism is pervasive within his department.
Whitewashing Racism
Wisconsin police are a destructive force, a continual threat to society, and yet as a public affairs issue in this campaign season, Wisconsin's cop problem gets little play.
Whether folks live in Madison, Fitchburg, Stoughton or DeForest, the constant is police departments are staffed with dishonorable people. [Note: I caught Fitchburg PD trying to plant evidence in our yard in
Feb. 2017 at about 1:00 a.m in an apparent corrupt and defamatory attempt to link me to a car
accident blocks away. This after I blew the whistle on Fitchburg's continual voter obstruction against blacks and young people in alder
dist one the Summer before.].
---
The reaction from DeForest Village Administrator Steve Fahlgren (white) is telling.
Fahlgren does not condemn the open racism, the hate, and the malice of Police Chief Daniel Furset. No outrage. No shock.
The village hired someone to look into 'other potential social media racial misconduct,' Village Administrator Fahlgren said.
'We don't want our department to have a bad reputation,' Fahlgren said.
Reputation and damage control are the objectives here, not the institutional racism of the DeForest Police Dept.
On a personal note, as a 54-year resident of Wisconsin, I can report racist and malignant police are as authentically and pervasively Wisconsin as cold weather in February.
This is what the stupid, ignorant, and imbecilic Village of DeForest elects to be their “Top Cop.” This is the racist Chief of Police Daniel Furseth, who is much like the rest of DeForest, poorly educated, socially intolerant, and completely incompetent when it comes to federal law (you know the one that trumps state and local law when it’s in conflict with it). Only a redneck and backassward community like DeForest would want someone like this as a Chief to keep the black man out.
Now you may ask “how did I get this footage”? Well simple, when I was duped into thinking that the police were really out to help you back in 2007, I was stupid enough to do my internship with DeForest PD (yes, we all make mistakes, don’t judge). Foreskin wanted to borrow my video camera since it was so small and can fit into a pocket and THIS is some of the great footage he captured with it. Is it real? Yes, 100%, this is the actual voice of DeForest Police Chief Daniel Furseth. This is his actual character and some of his actual beliefs that he instills into all his officers, all 100% white males. He even made a comment about what he thought about people of color serving on his department, suffice it to say, it would not happen on his watch.
What’s more is that during my police internship, EVERY DeForest police officer I met showed racist tendencies and beliefs. I did have to “bait” them to elicit these tendencies “Borat style” but I was genuinely interested in what kind of person the “community” authorizes to take away someone’s freedom at their discretion, and it horrified me to the bone. Aside racism there was also an immense culture of corruption at DeForest PD. As a juvenile I was subject to an unlawful arrest based on planted evidence and false police reports by DeForest Police Officer Diana O’neill. And when I brought about my grievance to Dan Furseth during my internship, he basically told me something to the effect of “you were a little shit so you deserved it”. Well Dan, you and your department deserve to be exposed! Because tolerating corruption is in my opinion the same as committing it.
Here is some “food for thought” to contemplate as you watch this ... .
What if DeForest PD was to get caught up shooting an unarmed black man? Would the surfacing of this video mean anything? Would it mean nothing at all since he is just expressing his right to free speech? Does he have free speech rights being a peace officer? He told me he does not during the internship.
And while you are at it, think about aerial cameras (AKA "drones") being used to capture LEO's (police officers) committing civil rights/civil liberties violations against people of color. Think about how upset the LEO's would be that they cannot shoot your camera-of-truth out of the sky (under federal law it is actually an act of terrorism since a UAV is an aircraft). They cannot confiscate it out of your hand and smash it, kind of hard when it's hovering 100+ ft above you. They cannot (physically) get ahold of it and delete the incriminating footage. The truth is - the Law Enforcement Officers are scared to death of aerial cameras! Keep posted to see what great lengths they go to in order to silence the Defiant Drone Pilot for posting this truthful video.
There are mid-term elections this year. Every candidate for public office should be addressing the vile, pervasive and invidious Wisconsin cop problem.
Video of racist cop is below:
It is the intention of this site, Mal Contends, to continue as a vehicle of reporting, analysis and commentary of Wisconsin police misconduct.
Undated family handout picture of Freddie Gray,
murdered by Baltimore Police (Baltimore Sun)
"Felony running" arrest of black man in Baltimore ends with near-severed spinal chord and death as noted by attorney Mary Koch, part of legal team representing the Freddie Gray family. I want know why"people think somehow it's not okay for a young man to run ... ." (Lawrence O'Donnell Show)
Baltimore — City officials suspended six police officers Monday as they investigate the death of a 25-year-old man who suffered a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody.
Freddie Gray had been hospitalized since his April 12 arrest and, according to his attorney, was in a coma when he died Sunday. On Monday, the mayor and police commissioner publicly pleaded for calm and promised a full accounting — an effort to keep Baltimore from becoming the latest flash point in disintegrating relations between police and communities across the country. (Hermann and Bui, Washington Post) ...
"It ain’t about being mad," Adrian Muldrow, vice president of the Baltimore City chapter of the NAACP, yelled to fire up the crowd. "It is about asking for
Baltimore? This is Madison, Wisconsin, with
an enlightened police force that Chief Mike
Koval described as "cordial" last week. In the
shot above just a bit more force and this
non-violent young protester could be the
recipient of police-inflicted fractured vertebrae.
Quite sure that would be good for a few
chuckles from Madison's finest.
Photo: Reproduced from video by Leslie Amsterdam at SSWIDTMS.
justice."
The first thing Madison can learn from Baltimore and the Freddie Gray murder pertains to police: Madison police should do their killing of our citizenry behind closed doors with no on-lookers with cell phones.
Madison police officer Matt Kenny knows this lesson well, which is why—in part—we can expect no charges in Kenny's killing the unarmed Tony Robinson with five shots. (Ferguson, AP, The Grio)
I would reiterate that the greater Madison community cannot with any justice blame Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne when Ozanne clears killer Kenny in the coming weeks.
Ozanne can not fabricate evidence, and the evidence his office has by statute was gathered by the Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation led by an appointee of Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, former district attorney of Waukesha County (R-White People). (Mal Contends)[Schimel was in the news again a couple of weeks ago for voting for an order banning the use of the words "climate change" in the offices of a Wisconsin state agency charged with state land management to the applause of a Scott Walker spokeswoman. (Roston, Bloomberg)]
As for the minority public anywhere, when you see the police: Take cover, run, and get near a trusted adult with a cell phone video. Mark Godsey posts other tips yesterday for innocent people to protect themselves from the police.
Godsey breaks down the non-legal, informal advice into six sections:
I. Have a Lawyer You Can Call
II. Don’t Talk to the Police
III. The Plea Bargain
IV. Be Ready for Trial
V. Shaken Baby/Child Abuse (Abusive Head Trauma) [This requires special attention and treatment.]
VI. If You Are Wrongfully Convicted
As well, know the police have little to do with justice, though many police like to dispense their version of justice with deadly consequences, corrupt the judicial system, and for minor offenses determine a conviction. If you are harassed, consider yourself lucky. You were not killed.
In Tulsa, policing and killing blacks has become the new sport of wealthy campaign donors. (Love, The Grio)
That's the status of America, on a trajectory that ought to frighten every citizen.
Police lie on their reports, on the stand in the courtroom, and in dealings with the public. And police kill.
Updated - "Last week I was in Madison, Wisconsin, where I was informed of the killing of Tony Robinson by a police officer. Robinson was high on mushrooms. The police were summoned after he chased a car. The police killed him. A month earlier, I'd been thinking a lot about Anthony Hill, who was mentally ill. One day last month, Hill stripped off his clothes and started jumping off of his balcony. The police were called. They killed him. I can't see the image of Tamir Rice aimlessly kicking snow outside the Cleveland projects and think of how little we invest in occupying the minds of children. A bored Tamir Rice decided to occupy his time with a airsoft gun. He was killed."
So notes Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic in a piece in mid-April, commenting on the already 100s of killings by police in 2015. [Update: New day, new police killing: See Sherman, Kaltenbach and Campbell, the Baltimore Sun with video: "What we know is that while in police custody for committing no crime — for which they had no justification for making the arrest except he was a black man running — his spine was virtually severed, 80 percent severed, in the neck area," attorney Murphy said. He called Freddie Gray's injuries "catastrophic."] Cops broke a 25-year-old man's spine virtually into two, he was killed.
Madison police chief Mike Koval ought to consider what police killing is the next time Koval opens his mouth.
Asks Coates: "[I]n this time of heightened concern around the policing, a more essential question might be, 'Were we justified in sending them?' At some point, Americans decided that the best answer to every social ill lay in the power of the criminal-justice system. Vexing social problems—homelessness, drug use, the inability to support one's children, mental illness—are presently solved by sending in men and women who specialize in inspiring fear and ensuring compliance. Fear and compliance have their place, but it can't be every place."
I would not look to police for answers. As an institution, police tend to be anti-intellectual, careerist and authoritarian in their psychology. And duplicitous and tribal.
This is because police departments are self-selecting, attracting someone capable and inclined to kill people.
This does NOT appear be lost on the folks who knew Tony Robinson.
Madison Police - "Professional, Cordial, and
Respectful," says Koval. Knees on the head on
this young man's head show respect? If this
is professional, cordial and respectful, one
must question the police standards in this
regard. Perhaps shooting Tony Robinson
to death in March is cordial.
Madison Police hit the PR circuit hard yesterday.
Police Chief Mike Koval now says the police violence captured on video shows no police violence, and anyone who says differently loses his/her "credibility." (Savidge, Wisconsin State Journal)
At right is a shot from the video by Leslie Amsterdam of the Madison Police acting "very professionally, cordially and respectfully," as described by Koval, with protestors at a peaceful demonstration on Tuesday.
It would appear Koval and the cops are subject matter experts on what constitutes peace and violence.
And perhaps Tony Robinson really wasn't really shot to death. Right.
"Preliminary autopsy results released [in mid-March] show Tony Robinson was shot multiple times by a Madison police officer.
Robinson, 19, died from firearm-related trauma to the head, torso and right upper extremity, according to the Dane County medical examiner's office. The exact number of gunshot wounds was not released, though friends and family have said he was shot five times in the chest."
(Luthern, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)
Shot Five times. Wonder why police held that fact back.
Clear now is why Tony Robinson's family said they have lost faith in the "investigation" last week. (Schneider, The Capital Times)
Anyone expecting candor from Koval and the Madison Police will be disappointed very soon.
This is what criminal law experts and law enforcement reformists call bullshit.
The State Journal ran a video this morning omitting nearly five minutes of another video featured on the YGB Ferguson To Madison site (Facebook) as Madison police up its propaganda efforts as the decision on whether to prosecute the killer cop approaches.
The culmination of a national day of action against police brutality was met, some might say ironically, with a further escalation of police violence when peaceful protesters were arrested on East Washington Avenue in front of East High School. If you pay attention to who they target first, you can see how the police set this up. What comes after is just people reacting to unprovoked police violence and then getting arrested. #Justice4Tony #BlackLivesMatter
Posted by YGB Ferguson To Madison on Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Between 6:30 and 7:30 pm on Tuesday April 14th, Madison Police officers at the intersection of East Washington and 4th Street arrested more than ten peaceful protestors.
Roughly 35 people, mostly youth remained in the intersection after a day-long protest, for which residents shut down East Washington for several hours to demand justice for Tony Robinson and as a part of a national action against police violence and mass incarceration.
As the young people continued to sit in the intersection, 30-40 officers approached the group from the west, spanning both sides of East Washington. The officers approached the youth telling them they had 5 minutes to leave before they would be arrested. While the youth deliberated as to whether they would take arrests, the police ambushed the group. Officers arrested three people initially, Jivonte Lee Davis, Mary Jo Walters and another protestor. They subsequently approached Leslie Amsterdam (Peterson), a member of the media, who was recording the arrests. They told her to move, and when she revealed herself as a member of the media, they destroyed her camera and forcibly arrested her. The remaining youth then decided that since they could not be in the street without being arrested, they would march legally in the crosswalks across East Washington during the light changes.
After roughly an hour, they were caught in the median during a light change. Two adults, Adeyemi Balogun and Brandi Grayson attempted to protect the youth from the police. “They grabbed Brandi and dragged her, so I grabbed her,” reported Balogun. “Then they jumped on me. They came up behind me and grabbed my neck. Then another cop grabbed me and they had me wrapped up. They just kept saying ‘stop resisting, stop resisting!’ But I wasn’t doing anything.”
Grayson was violently thrown to the ground and then drug along the ground before she was arrested. Balogun along with approximately six more people, including youth, were arrested at that time. Marnie Schroeder, another arrested person described the scene: “He [CJ Terrell] wasn’t talking, wasn’t doing anything and they slammed him to the ground. They had their knee on his neck and his face in the dirt. I tried to put my hand under his face to protect it, but then they arrested me.”
Community members are outraged but unsurprised by this gross display of state power by MPD. “This is a clear example of the state violence we have been talking about for months,” said Grayson. “They brutalized me, and they arrested our babies who were mourning and protesting against the police violence that led to the murder of their friend, Tony Robinson.” For more information, visit www.facebook.com/fergusontomadison or ygbcoalition.org.
Update: Madison Police Chief Mike Koval is attempting to "distance the [Tony Robinson investigation] outcome from the national narrative" of white cops killing unarmed young, black men. (Godar, The Capital Times).
One expects better from Koval who is playing public relations and CYA politics in outright denying the problem. For a reality-based assessment, I recommend the Young, Gifted and Black, From Ferguson to Madison site. (Facebook)
---
March was a very good month for killer cops: they racked up at least 111 bodies, the majority of them unarmed Black and brown men. "Any genuine movement for criminal justice ‘reform’ must aim to abolish the Mass Black Incarceration State, root and branch, by removing the ‘occupation’ army from Black areas and replacing it with a force of Black people’s own choosing."
- Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report
Scott Olsen - a Marine who served in Iraq - was attacked by
the Oakland Police after attending an Occupy Oakland event
Scott Olsen, 24, served in the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines before leaving the military last year after a tour in Iraq. He was viciously attacked by the Oakland police last night and is suffering from a skull fracture and swelling of the brain.
Olsen and his girlfriend live near San Francisco, and his parents live in Wisconsin and are flying out to see their son recovering in a San Francisco hospital, reports the journal,Current.
This poor guy [Olsen] was right behind me when he was hit in the head with a police projectile. He went down hard and did not get up. The bright light in the second shot in the video is from a flash-bang grenade that went off a few feet from us. He was eventually taken to Highland hospital.
Lee Rayburn, one of the most engaging radio hosts in America - The Mic, 92.1 FM (Madison, Wisconsin) - talked to an acquaintance some months back who told him that a U.S. government agency was involved in deputizing businesses' principals in a secret program to be activated in the event of a national emergency.
Rayburn has an ear for a good story; and the source seemed credible, so he mentioned the bare facts on his morning radio show broadcast out of Madison.
Rayburn said he wondered about the facts and treated the matter with due skepticism; but he was disturbed by one aspect: The civilian shoot-to-kill with immunity element of the program. Smells like ... fascism.
Turns out Rayburn is on to something. The program is called InfraGard.
Rayburn also mentioned the story to Matt Rothschild, editor of Madison's The Progressive Magazine.
After a lengthy investigation and rigorous fact checking, Rothschild authored a piece entitled: The FBI Deputizes Business, the March cover story.
Writes Rothschild:
Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law. InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.
During a period in American history unsurpassed in secrecy, political vindictiveness, corruption and erosion of civil liberties, I recommend giving Rothschild's piece a good read.
.jpg)
