Rise Up October Exposes Terror and Murder by Prison Guards and Police in San Jose, California
October 5, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
October 1—Santa Clara County Jail, where three recent deaths have occurred as a result of brutal attacks by police and prison guards.
From a reader:
On Thursday, October 1, a small crew from SMIN (Stop Mass Incarceration Network) held a press conference in front of the Santa Clara County Jail, which has recently been in the news after the death of a mentally ill young inmate, Michael Tyree. It has recently come to light that there were discussions recorded between the guards who beat Tyree sadistically saying they love “twisting up” inmates in this particular unit where there are no cameras.
In addition to Tyree’s death, there were two other recent deaths: one involving a brutal cell extraction of an unnamed man and a suspicious death of a woman inmate at the same pig station. AND, if this wasn’t enough, charges were dropped just the day before against the cops who killed Phillip Watkins, a young Black man who was distressed and holding a folding knife, while relatives shouted for the cops not to shoot. Authorities called it “suicide by cop” and abruptly swept the murder under the rug.
The SMIN representative exposed these blatant racist acts, mirrored nationwide by the huge stolen lives banner draped directly in front of the pig station. He pointed out the “codified racism” implicit anytime the cops are let go by claiming they “fear for their lives.” And he called for people to end this genocide and stop police terror in the “capital of America”—New York City—on October 24 in a massive march and demonstration for Rise Up October.
The press then turned their cameras on another SMIN member who had once been locked up (for traffic violations) in the same jail. In fact, he’d been beaten just like countless others. He explained to the press that the cops in there KNOW the places where they cannot be recorded; and these are the beating grounds. One other member of the community joined the crew on the spot and held the banner, as we got out palm cards and Revolution papers (this issue appropriately had on the back page BAsics 2:16 where Bob Avakian talks about the police murder of Tyisha Miller). The press conference was covered by four major TV stations in just a few hours notice.
Editor’s note: Tyisha Miller was a 19-year-old African-American woman shot dead by Riverside, California police in 1998. Miller had been passed out in her car, resulting from a seizure, when police claimed that she suddenly awoke and had a gun; they fired 23 times at her, hitting her at least 12 times, and murdering her. Bob Avakian addressed this:
If you can’t handle this situation differently than this, then get the fuck out of the way. Not only out of the way of this situation, but get off the earth. Get out of the way of the masses of people. Because, you know, we could have handled this situation any number of ways that would have resulted in a much better outcome. And frankly, if we had state power and we were faced with a similar situation, we would sooner have one of our own people’s police killed than go wantonly murder one of the masses. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re actually trying to be a servant of the people. You go there and you put your own life on the line, rather than just wantonly murder one of the people. Fuck all this “serve and protect” bullshit! If they were there to serve and protect, they would have found any way but the way they did it to handle this scene. They could have and would have found a solution that was much better than this. This is the way the proletariat, when it’s been in power has handled—and would again handle—this kind of thing, valuing the lives of the masses of people. As opposed to the bourgeoisie in power, where the role of their police is to terrorize the masses, including wantonly murdering them, murdering them without provocation, without necessity, because exactly the more arbitrary the terror is, the more broadly it affects the masses. And that’s one of the reasons why they like to engage in, and have as one of their main functions to engage in, wanton and arbitrary terror against the masses of people.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 2:16
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