by Jack Lee
For years, the MLK Association of Santa Clara has marked Martin Luther King Junior Day with a Freedom Train ride through Silicon Valley. This year will be no different, except that the NAACP won’t be aboard. They announced that they will be boycotting the event because this year the San Jose Police Officer’s Association is being listed as a chief sponsor.
The NAACP has long claimed that the SJPD regularly violates the rights of minorities in San Jose. “You cannot buy civil rights. You have to work at it,” said Chapter President Jethro Moore II, referring to the POA’s donation of $5,000 to the event. This has not deterred POA President George Beattie, who insists that the group will continue to sponsor local events, regardless of the controversy that ensures.
Police have repeatedly been taken to court over police brutality charges, but the charges have seldom held up. More often it was the plaintiffs who were found guilty of brutality. . . against the police. In the typical case police charged the plaintiff/s with resisting arrest and/or interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty. The only defense to this charge is accuse the cops of some misdeed.
The refusal of citizens to back off or obey lawful orders for officer safety usually results in officers attempting to physically restrain them and when this happens, a hand touches a shoulder or there is a push on the chest, there is at least 50-50 chance of an all out battle to follow, ask any cop if this is not true. When a fight starts it inevitably ends quickly with the police breaking out the taser or their baton. The angry citizens have now been knocked around by police and charged with a crime. They do not want to go to jail and they want revenge on the cops. If they are a minority its way too easy to play the race card and sue police for police brutality!
Nuisance suits involving brutality often get the guilty party a few thousand dollars to go away. Anybody with any street smarts knows this is an easy way to make a few bucks if you can get an attorney to do it for free.
The ACLU and NAACP are pre-conditioned to assume the complete innocence of those who were arrested and the absolute guilt of police. Time after time this is big news and cops are convicted in the press, but when their cases get to court and all the facts come out, the ACLU and NAACP lose, but the damage has been done to the police. This makes a wonderful setup for the next police brutality suit. Eventually people think where there is so much smoke, there must be a fire somewhere. That’s when another O.J. jury steps in and convicts the cops without any reasonable evidence and at the same time they let the guilty go free. It’s just a matter of odds this should happen too. Sooner or later the police pay…guilt has nothing to do with it.
And here is the controversy. For example in the allegation of police brutality against Hispanics in a recent op-ed piece in the Merc, outgoing POA head Roberto Lopez argues that most arrests of Latinos result from alcohol abuse: “Cultural factors, not police practices, are the major driver for Latino arrests for public intoxication,” he writes, defending himself against accusations of racism and stating that he is Latino, so how could he be racist against Latino’s? “In particular,” he goes on to write, “Mexican-American men are more vulnerable to binge drinking and other forms of alcohol abuse than males of other ethnic backgrounds–even other Latino groups like Cubans and Central Americans. Officers everywhere would agree with him too, I sure would!
When one of these minority groups charges the police with brutality or racism they do their best to whip up public to extort government into some sort of concessions or they try to get money out of them. But, when they fail and their clients are found to have started it and got exactly what they had coming, they fall silent and just wait for the next incident to start stirring it up again. The cops can’t win this war…so it just keeps going and keeps racial tension high for a secret agenda few would ever really understand.