California police investigating a violent white nationalist event worked with white supremacists in an effort to identify counter protesters and sought the prosecution of activists with “anti-racist” beliefs, court documents show.
The records, which also showed officers expressing sympathy with white supremacists and trying to protect a neo-Nazi organizer’s identity, were included in a court briefing from three anti-fascist activists who were charged with feloniesafter protesting at a Sacramento rally. The defendants were urging a judge to dismiss their case and accused California police and prosecutors of a “cover-up and collusion with the fascists”.
Defense lawyers said the case at the state capital offers the latest example of US law enforcement appearing to align with neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups while targeting anti-fascist activists and Donald Trump protesters after violent clashes.
“It is shocking and really angering to see the level of collusion and the amount to which the police covered up for the Nazis,” said Yvette Felarca, a Berkeley teacher and anti-fascist organizer charged with assault and rioting after participating in the June 2016 Sacramento rally, where she said she was stabbed and bludgeoned in the head. “The people who were victimized by the Nazis were then victimized by the police and the district attorneys.”
Steve Grippi, chief deputy district attorney prosecuting the case in Sacramento, vehemently denied the claims of bias in an email to the Guardian, alleging that anti-fascist stabbing victims have been uncooperative and noting that his office has filed charges against one member of the Traditionalist Workers Party (TWP), the neo-Nazi group that organized the rally.
Some California Highway Patrol (CHP) investigation records, however, raise questions about the police’s investigative tactics and communication with the TWP.
Felarca’s attorneys obtained numerous examples of CHP officers working directly with the TWP, often treating the white nationalist group as victims and the anti-fascists as suspects.
The TWP is “intimately allied with neo-Nazi and other hardline racist organizations” and “advocates for racially pure nations”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its leaders have praised Trump, and the group claimed to bring more than 100 people to the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, where a counter-protester was killed.
cops in america are legally allowed to take people’s property (including large sums of money) purely because they feel like it. it’s called civil forfeiture and there are literally thousands of cases of pigs taking people’s property. that is looting.
i watched this happen to my roommate after the cops kicked our doors in at 6 AM on a weekday for a no-knock raid that, surprise surprise, didn’t turn out anything. they opened his wallet in front of him, took out about $300 and told him that since they had no record of where it came from on premises, that they’d have to take it from him. they took this man’s rent money right in front of him while he was in cuffs and told him “too bad”.Â
there was also a friend’s car in our drive way that had broken down so they left it over night. the doors were locked and the windows were up, and since the owner wasn’t there, they decided it’d be cool to just bust in all the windows to perform another fruitless search.Â
In Philly it’s been a HUGE and MASSIVE problem with cops taking people’s bank accounts, cars, electronics and pretty much anything worth any amount of money under a law that lets the DA seize property they think is related to a crime. “Related’ is a vague term though. They once forced a women and her grandchildren out of her home to sell it at auction because her son was found by police with $20 worth of weed.
(Depending on the property in question it can go under Civil Property Seizure or Seize and Seal, they’re not the same law but they work the same)
They don’t have to prove it’s related to a crime before or after, and even if the person suspected of the crime is cleared at questioning or acquitted at trial, you have to go through a MONTHS long process of court appearances (you can’t miss one or be late or you lose, no rescheduling) in hopes that they MIGHT get their stuff back. Most don’t.
Most people don’t think it’s worth the expense of days missed at work and a lawyer to get back a couple hundred dollars or whatever else the police stole. The city makes MILLIONS of dollars each year off this, around $6-10 (The DA doesn’t provide figures)
cop: has a wide range of professions to choose from including cake decorator at ralph’s, decides to go with the one where you hunt people down with guns cop: i’m just doing what i’m told. i’m just doing my job. this is out of my hands. there is literally nothing else i can do. this is my profession. i was born a cop
And to piggyback on that post, copaganda shows aren’t meant to make you “love cops.” They’re meant to make you view police as individuals, and not institutions. That’s why every one of these shows, from Law and Order to present, has “bad cops” on the cast. Crooked cops, racist cops, misogynistic cops, asshole cops. They’re presented as the antagonists, in opposition to the “good” gay cops and black cops and single mom cops and dad who does his little girl’s hair cops.Â
If they can convince you to individualize cops into the good ones and the bad ones, even on a subconscious level, that’s half the battle. That gets their foot in the door. Cause now they can put forward the “good cops” to push legislation to increase their budgets. They can get “good cops” to testify to juries. “Good cops” who are gay or black or parents or older siblings would never falsify evidence or brutalize unarmed civilians or lie to protect a coworker, right?
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