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Revolutionary Notebook

Albuquerque, New Mexico

May 19, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Since January 2010, the Albuquerque Police Department has shot and killed 25 people.

Protests against this spree of state-sponsored violence began in 2010. These protests exploded onto national and international news on March 30 of this year as 1,000 people took the streets of Albuquerque in a combative protest in the face of hundreds of riot police, after the wanton police murder of a homeless 38-year-old mentally ill man, James Boyd, in the foothills of New Mexico's Sandia Mountains.

James Boyd was seeking some solitude (peace and quiet away from the madness of this system that surrounded him) and had set up a mini-camp for himself in the mountains. He wasn't bothering a soul. But the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) didn't like that Boyd had set up a little campsite for himself. They executed him in cold blood in a military-style raid in the foothills.

The police murder of James Boyd was caught on the helmet video camera of one of the murdering cops. Hundreds of thousands of people have seen the horrific and graphic footage on YouTube of the outrageous murder of this homeless man with mental health issues.

The police murder of James Boyd in Albuquerque came after the recent trial of Fullerton, California, cops who were found not guilty after they murdered in cold blood a homeless man, Kelley Thomas. At the time of the exoneration of these Fullerton cops for their savage and heinous fatal beating of Kelley Thomas, I thought this verdict was a "green light" for police departments around the country to murder any homeless person they wanted to. And that's what happened to James Boyd—murdered in cold blood, for no reason at all... other than the fact that this system deploys cops in Albuquerque and everywhere else to murder many hundreds, and thousands, of people across the country as part of their "serve and protect" mission to enforce this system that rules over the masses.

Since Boyd's murder by police on March 16 and the major protests that followed, the APD has shot to death three more people. In the midst of this roiling situation, I had an opportunity to spend a weekend in Albuquerque. I met with movement activists and family members whose loved ones had been killed by the APD, with academics, intellectuals, and everyday people on the street and at events. I brought into this scene, and to these people, the urgent need for revolution in the U.S. to stop these and countless other crimes this system is responsible for, and to introduce as many people as I could to the strategy for revolution and the new theoretical synthesis of communism that's been developed by Bob Avakian. I also brought to people the October Month of Resistance to Stop Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation, and discussed the urgency of this month and of resistance now, leading up to October, and hooked people up with this initiative and the growing national movement to make it happen.

These are some thoughts provoked by my trip.

***

The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

Bob Avakian, BAsics, 1:24

The state of New Mexico, in the Southwest U.S., is among the states with the highest share of poor people and is the state with second worst poverty rate in the country. The poverty rate in Albuquerque—New Mexico's most populated metropolitan area—has increased steadily over the past decade. In other words, such things as childhood hunger, and the reality of many thousands of people of all ages living on the desperate edge with barely enough to eat and survive, are epidemic in the city and the state.

The award-winning American crime-drama television series Breaking Bad—one of the most watched cable television series of all time—is set and filmed in Albuquerque. It's the story of a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed at the beginning of the series with inoperable lung cancer and turns to producing and selling methamphetamine in order to secure his family's financial future before he dies. That the main character, a high school chemistry teacher, becomes a drug kingpin is pure fiction. What is not fiction, however, is the widespread selling and use of meth and heroin in this area of the country. In recent years, New Mexico has ranked at or near the top of states in the U.S. for drug dependence (including nonmedical use of prescription drugs) and drug induced deaths.

Another way to put it is like this: Food, shelter, health care, drug abuse prevention—meeting children's, teenagers', and more generally people's basic necessities—is not a high priority for the powers-that-be in New Mexico and its largest city, Albuquerque.

What is a high priority is using state-sponsored violence via the police, with all their brutality and murder, to enforce the "relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in."

 ***

On January 13, 2010, Kenneth Ellis III, an Iraq war veteran, was shot in the neck and killed by one bullet from an AR-15 rifle fired by an APD detective. Ellis suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since coming back from Iraq. He was apparently suicidal, as he was holding a gun to his own head when he was shot. He'd just been kicked out of an in-patient PTSD program at the Albuquerque Veterans Administration hospital for missing an appointment. He tried to get back into the program and was told there was no room. The cop who murdered Ellis said Ellis "made a twitch" and that's why he shot him. Jurors in a wrongful-death suit against the APD said the cop acted "willfully, wantonly or recklessly" and awarded the Ellis family $10.3 million, one of the largest judgments ever leveled against the city.

Since the murder of Kenneth Ellis III in 2010, 24 more people have been shot and killed by the APD (and at least 14 others have been shot and survived).

Jacob Mitschelen was shot in the back by Detective Byron "Trey" Economidy on February 9, 2011. Economidy shot Mitschelen with a .45-caliber Kimber handgun, a "personal firearm"—APD policy has been that APD officers can carry and use personal firearms on the job. Economidy had also been involved in the incident that led to the police murder of Kenneth Ellis. Economidy had listed on his Facebook page that his job as an APD policeman was "human waste disposal," revealing the sick, depraved, and exterminationist worldview of the police.

Alan Gomez was 22 and unarmed when he was shot and killed by APD Officer Sean Wallace. The shooting was Wallace's third while on the APD. There was a domestic disturbance and cops were dispatched to a woman's home. After 45 minutes with the police on the scene, Gomez came outside with a so-called "unidentified object"—actually a plastic spoon. Wallace shot Gomez with a rifle when, the police claimed, Gomez turned around and started walking back into the house. But the autopsy report showed that despite police claims that Gomez was walking back into the house at the time he was shot, the bullet had actually struck Gomez in the chest.

During this murder spree over the past four years, not only have 25 people been killed by the APD and at least 14 others shot and wounded, many, many others have been savagely attacked and beaten by the APD, including some beatings that have been videotaped and exposed through social media to the public.

***

These last four years have not only seen 25 people shot to death by the APD, they have also been punctuated by exposures of awards—bounties—of $500 or more given to police officers by the police union "to get out of town and decompress" after "the stress" of being involved in a shooting.

These payments not only reward the cops for killing people, but conveniently get them out of town to concoct stories to cover up their killings and outright murders before any interviews are done. In defending these bounty awards for killing people and sidestepping any interviews when they kill people, the president of the Albuquerque Police Officers Association said that by giving cops money immediately after killing people, "we simply give them some means of obtaining this critical time to gather their thoughts and emotions after a stressful incident."

It is not coincidental that this spree of police killings in Albuquerque has happened during a time of rising fascist movements in the United States. These modern U.S. fascist movements have their origins several decades ago, but have been especially whipped up since 9/11 and in conjunction with sharpening contention at the top of the U.S. power structure, including the last five-and-a-half years of Obama's presidency.

If anyone has any doubts about whether fascists, with genocidal ideology, permeate the APD (and other police departments in the U.S.), consider these revelations about the Albuquerque police department: In addition to the Facebook post above where a killer cop describes his occupation as "human waste removal," other cops in the APD openly use social media (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace) to attack Muslims and brag about pistol whipping people.

The former police union president, Pete Dwyer, had these postings on his old MySpace page: "Some people are only alive because killing them is illegal," and Dwyer listed his occupation as "oxygen thief removal technician." His Twitter posts include images depicting a Nazi swastika flag merged with an Obama campaign logo. He was defended on the basis of his and other police officers' "right to free speech."

In 2012, it was revealed by the Albuquerque Journal that the "elite" APD Special Investigation Division and Gang Unit used a hangman's noose as its symbol. At first, when this was revealed, the commander of the unit said he was not a "knot expert" and "The simple way I look at it that it's a rope... I don't read into it a hangman's noose. I don't know a lot about knots." This commander also defended the hangman's noose symbol by saying similar police units across the country use similar imagery to identify themselves. Finally some truth from these pigs!

Stop to consider this: a hangman's noose is a well-known knot most often associated for its use in hanging (or lynching) a person. "Lynching" has been, in the U.S., a most popular form for racist KKK types and vigilante groups to use in murdering people. Again, it's not coincidental that today's fascists evoke methods for torturing and murdering innocent people that have deep roots in the "Old West" and the "Deep South."

The APD's hangman's noose, which celebrates (and objectively calls for) the lynching of people (a lynching history that includes thousands upon thousands of Black people)—taking such an image up as its identifying symbol—should tell you all you need to know about the APD and about police departments everywhere in the U.S., and all you need to know about America, both its sick, demented, and murderous history and the genocidal dynamic of the present-day "New Jim Crow."

All this really does provide yet another profound illustration of the true nature of the police and the fact that those who rule this country, and use the police as their front-line enforcers, truly have forfeited any right to determine the direction of society, and the system they enforce must be overturned at the soonest possible time in a real revolution, and nothing less.

***

The protests to stop APD police brutality and murder started in 2010 with a small but determined group of families and others demanding justice outside police headquarters and at city council meetings. With the murder of James Boyd on March 16, the outrage and protests took a leap. Hundreds of people from all walks of life had had enough and on March 30 hit the streets in a tenacious protest that lasted over 10 hours, in the face of Albuquerque riot cops who used tear gas to try to break up the protest.

The fact that the murder of a mentally ill homeless man was the result of a military-style execution by police further outraged people. It is a known fact that APD Police Chief Gordon Eden has consciously sought the recruitment of U.S. armed forces personnel into the APD. Watch the murder of James Boyd in the Sandia foothills on YouTube and you will see a militarized execution team from the APD. The March 30 protests in Albuquerque confronted a militarized police force with armored personnel carriers and trucks of the APD in "full camo," riot-clad police shooting tear gas, mounted units, snipers etc.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has been sent in to try to cool things out, to demobilize people, and to delude people into thinking the federal government will put a stop to these murders. The DOJ investigation has confirmed the Albuquerque police "execute" people. This we already knew! Now, the DOJ is working on a consent decree with the mayor and police chief for "new recommendations"—the same mayor and police chief who are overseeing these "executions" of people by police.

And what's happened since the DOJ report in April? More police killings: Alfred Redwine, Mary Hawkes, and Armand Martin, one right after the other.

On Monday, May 5, protesters served a "People's Arrest Warrant" on Albuquerque Police Chief Gordon Eden and turned upside down an Albuquerque City Council session. At this session, families of those killed by the APD exposed the intensifying police murder spree in Albuquerque and drove the city council from the chambers. The city council scurried away as the people's warrant was being read. Protesters then took over the chairs of the city councilors and held a People's Assembly "after years of their requests falling on unresponsive ears," as the families put it.

The families of victims of APD police murders, along with community members, served the arrest warrant on Eden for "accessory to the murder of James Boyd, Alfred Redwine, Mary Hawkes, and Armand Martin" and charged the police chief with "harboring fugitives" and "crimes against humanity." This action has garnered national and international media attention.

Mike Gomez, father of Alan Gomez who was shot and killed by the APD in 2011, said, "The citizens of Albuquerque want justice. We have spoken for years and the city council has always been unresponsive. We, the people, are sick and tired of the mayor not listening to us. Tonight, we took over city council and held the People's Council. We are prepared to continue until APD stops killing people like my son. My son did not deserve to die; he was unarmed and shot in cold blood. No one deserves to die like my son did." Mary Jobe, whose fiancé, Daniel Tillison, was shot and killed by the APD, said: "City Council finally heard our voices and that we are tired of APD killing our loved ones like my fiancé who was unarmed. We are not quitting, we are in the fight... this is just the beginning." Nora Anaya, whose nephew, George Levi Tachias, was killed by the APD, stated, "We took a stand to make sure that they know that we want change today, not tomorrow. We are done waiting...."

***

New protest actions are planned for this month and next month in Albuquerque. Revolutionaries need to be in the mix in Albuquerque at key junctures and so do many others who want to see these police murders stopped. The October Month of Resistance to Stop Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation must be vaulted forward through resistance and struggle in this next period, leading into October.

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