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On the heels of three nights of protests over the police slaying of 16 year old Kimani Gray, the NYPD has turned the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn into a State of Exception, claiming emergency powers to suspend the constitutional guarantees of the citizenry.The people regularly targeted by police harassment and violence, overwhelmingly the city’s poor and minority populations, have taken to the streets to speak out against the NYPD’s draconian tactics. The police have in turn responded with even further harsh measures by suppressing the right of the people to voice dissatisfaction with that very same police force.Cops kettled protesters at Wednesday night’s candlelight vigil, resulting in 46 arrests. Police even arrested Kimani Gray’s distraught sister, Mahnefeh.The NYPD euphemistically calls the public spaces in which the Constitutional rights of the people are suspended “frozen zones.”Allison Kilkenny wrote about the NYPD’s so-called “frozen zones” in December 2011:“The ‘frozen zone’ is an arbitrary, official police business-sounding title that has absolutely zero legal merit. It’s something the NYPD made up, just as the ‘First Amendment zone’ is something [Los Angeles Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa made up to suppress media coverage of the Occupy raids.”According to FIERCE, the “frozen zone” in East Flatbush is being used to prevent media from covering the protests and arrests. Meanwhile, people inside the “frozen zone” can be subjected to arrest merely by exercising their constitutional rights.“It basically means the area is under temporary martial law,” writes FIERCE. “The last times the NYPD declared a Frozen Zone was on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and during the beginning of OWS.”An arbitrary dictate that arrests protest and free speech, set forth by the institution that is itself the target of the protests, creates a potentially dangerous precedent of placing the NYPD beyond reproach.Occupy Austin reposted this poignant summary of events by Jen Roesch as they were unfolding in Brooklyn last night:“East Flatbush, Brooklyn is under martial law as the NYPD declares it a ‘frozen zone’. Media are being monitored and kept from moving and reporting freely. Dozens of arrests and much brutality. Kimani was shot in the back seven times; a witness is sure he was unarmed; multiple reports are coming out that the police had been waging a campaign of harassment against the young man (including taunting him about a friend who had died in a car accident and threatening to shoot him when he tried to leave). This is just blocks from where Shantel Davis was shot, dragged from her car and left to bleed to death in the street last summer. After that shooting, police went to all the surrounding delis and confiscated their surveillance videos. Residents in the neighborhood live in a state of terror. Heartbreaking, enraging, the stuff that riots are made of. This city is at a breaking point.”Kimani Gray’s parents are scheduled to hold a press conference this evening to address the March 9 police slaying of their young son.
I swear they don't care about us, wait down the road in a couple of years suburban Amerikkka will see how they should've been against this in Amerikkka. #prisonersofwar#blackinamerikkka#ripkimani
I swear they don't care about us, wait down the road in a couple of years suburban Amerikkka will see how they should've been against this in Amerikkka. #prisonersofwar#blackinamerikkka#ripkimani
Mrs Gray denied reports that her son was a member of the Bloods street gang, but conceded that he was not 'everybody's angel' and had been in trouble with the law in the past. 'But he's my angel, and he's my baby,' she said.
Hmmm. I have seen nothing of this reported on any TV or radio news. Seems to me, this is rather serious stuff. I know if the cops tried something like that here, there would be serious problems. There is, absolutely, NO way they would even consider it.
"Frozen zones"? This incident with the kid has raised some questions about police procedures. With 7 rounds, of 11the fired, in the kids back, this seems appropriate. LE shootings have been, increasingly, slapdash, over the last 20 years. Since the adoption of "wondernines" and the more recent hi cap 40s as standard police issue.
Training with firearms, at POST, and municipal academies, has focused on laying down what amounts to, suppresive fire, when weapons are fired. Spray and pray. Don't stop shooting till a suspect stops moving. Its getting, has been, out of hand.
Police are showing no regard to the fact they are LAW ENFORCEMENT, and are acting like soldiers on a battlefield. Judge, jury and executioners, handing out preemptive sentences before an arrest is even made. Trial by wondernine.
Far to much latitude has been granted police in use of both lethal and non lethal force. Three mags full of 9mm has replaced handcuffs, and the ubiquitous TAZER has replaced being able to talk to people and defuse situations. It's very hard for citizens to view cops as allies these days. Since cops are viewing all citizens as the enemy, out of hand, it's tough to have any faith that they are supposed to be there to help.
The blue line is now a steel curtain.
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