Minneapolis has

its own 'Freddie Gray'

reckoning

What is it that police officers

fail to understand?

I call it my First Law of Journalism: Cops Lie. It was something I learned in the early days of my 40-year career as a reporter and editor at The Baltimore Sun, first witnessed during three days spent with a police squad in tactical drug enforcement half a century ago. 

That cops make false arrests, write misleading reports, plant evidence and even steal from people they arrest has long been known -- particularly by people of color in urban America. In Baltimore, that misbehavior became public in recent years through criminal acts by the city police department's now-infamous Gun Trace Task Force. To date, a dozen cops have been convicted.

Before that, five years ago, there was Freddie Gray. He was arrested as a drug suspect in West Baltimore's long-troubled Sandtown neighborhood. The only video of the arrest shows the young black man in handcuffs and leg shackles on the ground, and then being carried and pushed into the back of a prisoner van. Somewhere before the van arrived at the area police station, Gray suffered a broken neck. He died in a hospital a week later.

The anger in Baltimore built up during that week, and exploded after Gray's funeral into days of arson, looting and property destruction. The city's top prosecutor, State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, brought criminal charges against six police officers involved in the arrest -- including the driver of the van on the odd count of "depraved-heart murder," in a presumption that Gray, left unrestrained by safety belts in the back of the van, was given a "rough ride."

But there was no definitive evidence, no video of him being injured. And none of the cops was convicted.

In Minneapolis, "Freddie Gray" was a burly black man named George Floyd, 46, who worked as a security guard at a bar -- and there were witnesses as three officers knelt atop his body as he lay face-down and handcuffed in the street next to a parked car. One officer kept a knee pressed on Floyd's neck as he repeatedly cried out, "I can't breathe," and even called out for his mother. A fourth officer stood watching, seeming to do nothing to intervene. Floyd was unconscious when paramedics arrived, and pronounced dead at a hospital.

At least two bystanders had cellphones and recorded video that bore witness through social media to all of Minneapolis and the world of the brutality that marked Floyd's last minutes of life.

And within a day, the rage that had simmered through years of police brutality, malfeasance, insensitivity and even racism across America exploded in Minneapolis. Last night, and into the wee hours today, the local police station -- evacuated and left unprotected -- was burning, while a block-long stretch of looted stores across the street was engulfed in flames.

 A crowd appearing upwards of a thousand strong celebrated in the street, cheering as some people set off fireworks and others hurled wooden boards and flammable debris to fuel the fire rising at the station's lobby entrance.

Fires were also set elsewhere in the city and neighboring St. Paul, and amid that chaos another demonstration some 700 miles away brought a cordon of police officers to protect buildings in the center of Louisville, Ky. Seven people were reported wounded by gunfire during the protest there related to the killing of a black woman, Breonna Taylor, by white police officers in her home two months ago. Television coverage showed a bonfire being stoked in the middle of a street near what appeared to be the courthouse.

Other demonstrations broke out in New York City, Phoenix, Denver, Memphis, and Columbus, Ohio.

Which brings us back to my First Law of Journalism. What, I wondered, would the police have reported about George Floyd's death had there been no video bearing witness. 

According to a New York Times article, the initial statement by the Minneapolis police -- issued before the videos surfaced -- "was short and sanitized. An allegation of forgery. A suspect who 'appeared to be under the influence,' who 'physically resisted officers' and who appeared to be 'suffering medical distress.'"

It took a week for Freddie Gray to die and several subsequent days of the so-called "Baltimore uprising" before prosecutor Mosby announced criminal charges against the six police officers, in what was clearly an effort to calm the city's chaos.

In Minneapolis, the timeline of events is much more compressed -- and perhaps it was surprising that authorities did not quickly lodge an assault charge that would bring at least one of the officers into custody -- the one who had his knee on Floyd's neck -- pending likely indictment by a grand jury. The city did, however, announce the firing of all four of the officers involved in the nightmarish arrest.

But early this afternoon, authorities in Minneapolis announced that the kneeling officer, Derek Chauvin, was now under arrest -- charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. "This case has moved with extraordinary speed," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman. "This is by far the fastest we've ever charged a police officer."

There's really nothing new here. We have seen the chaos before, as in the Los Angeles rioting triggered by the recorded police beating of Rodney King more than a generation ago. 

There are multiple factors underlying these incidents, including an erosion of decency in some police officers as they develop a lack of respect and empathy for people as they deal daily with difficult, often tense, encounters. And in response, particularly in minority communities, there is an ever-growing mistrust of law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

In black urban America, they've talked for years about police misconduct.

What some police officers fail to understand now is that technology putting video capability in the hands of nearly every person on the street is showing evidence time after time for that mistrust.

Police could see this coming, having for years tried to prevent people from recording their activities in public view. Courts have ruled consistently that people have the right to record police activity in public, so long as they are not interfering.

And there's another matter some police officers forget -- who they work for.

New Dawn in America

 

 The scene about 3:30 p.m., at the edge of the National Mall.

Inside Day One

of the Trump Resistance

Half a million strong, hear them roar in the Women's March on Washington

 

 WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 2017 -- We are walking slowly near Ground Zero of the Trump years, at the low end of the National Mall directly across First Street from the Capitol. The thick, white plastic flooring put down to protect the grass is decorated with the rainbow of more than a dozen wet, abandoned ponchos.

Nearby, I find a damp invitation: "The honor of your presence is requested at the ceremonies attending the Inauguration of the President and Vice President of the United States." It is the ticket for entry to the "silver" section of the Mall "standing area" and advises, "Please Arrive Early Due to Large Crowds."

It is little more than an hour past dawn on Day 2 of the new administration, and Day 1 of the Resistance.

We had awakened before 6 a.m., to assure parking at the D.C. Metro's suburban Greenbelt station -- the end of the Green Line -- and arrived about 7 a.m. to find half or more of its 3,999 spots already filled. The system had opened two hours early to accommodate the anticipated crowd for the Women's March on Washington. We joined the flow of people passing through the entrance and turnstiles, and were directed past filled passenger cars to the back end of the subway train.

The mood was happy, mostly women aboard and many holding signs for the march that was expected to draw a crowd of 200,000 -- but dwarfed expectations. Our car reached standing room after the first stop en route to the city. We emerged from the Navy Memorial/Archives station to a misty, gray morning that would never see the sun.

Navigating the area on foot was no problem; no map was necessary. We just followed the crowds homing in on the intersection of Third Street and Independence Avenue,  where the rally was to begin at 10 a.m. with speeches and music.

We took evasive action to skirt the crowd and found ourselves on the Mall and facing the grandstand set up outside the Capitol for the Trump-Pence inauguration. It was still decked out in the red, white and blue glory of flags, banners and bunting from the rainy day before.

Rounding the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, we reached the side of the stage set up for the rally about eight bodies back from its perimeter fence. We were nearly two hours early, but the mood was already being set. A woman was exhorting early arrivals to stand with their signs next to a man wearing a giant Trump head and tell him their grievances.

Signs were everywhere to be seen -- some with low-key expressions of defense for women's rights, family planning, immigration, love and understanding, but others crude and pointed in their disdain and anger.

"If I Want the Government in My Vagina, I'll Fuck a Senator," one declared. "Pussies Against Patriarchy," read another. And there were the likes of "Peein & Putin," "Don't think about grabbing my human rights," "Prosecute sexual assault of the Predator-in-Chief," and "Lock Him Up."

From a table behind GiantTrumpHead, women were handing out free "pussyhats" -- the knitted hats with little kitty ears that have become a signature of the female opposition to the new administration. The work of a group effort through The Pussyhat Project, each was packed with the name of and a note from its volunteer maker.

 Bonnie managed to get a hat before they ran out, the demand far exceeding supply. (The maker, Danna Myers Hook in Reno, Nev., included on her enclosed note a women's issue she cares about, saying, "I want my girls to know they are not alone! We all need community!")

But thousands of people had brought their own pussyhats and made up a bobbing wave of varying tones of pink in the sea of people.

From our vantage point near the stage, we could barely see the arriving dignitaries, but recognized activist-feminist writer and Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem as she walked up the stage ramp, a red scarf around her neck.

We had no idea then of the magnitude of the still-arriving crowd. But we could hear them roar -- a shout that would begin somewhere in the mass of humanity and spread like the wave of hands across a stadium.

Unable to see the front of the stage or clearly hear the opening speakers, we wedged our way for about 10 minutes to get through the packed crowd behind us back toward the lower end of the Mall.

It was about 10:30 a.m. The Mall was filling up. For most of the people, the stage show had become irrelevant. The Women's March had become about the people themselves, and they grew in numbers beyond comprehension.

Best-guess estimates numbered it at half a million. There was no way to tell. By early afternoon it had filled most of the Mall's plastic-covered center, stretching half a mile back from First Street toward the Washington Monument, whose upper third was invisible in the low gray sky.

We walked, admiring the signs, for two hours. Some people carried babies; a girl about 3 years old carried, with parental assistance, an "Equality" sign. There was a dog wearing a vest bearing the message, "Even I don't grab pussy." (Its people assured us the dog also was not a crotch-sniffer.)

We paused for half an hour to sit on a floor, unwind and warm up a little inside the National Gallery of Art. Many sought indoor toilets there, since the outside facilities (including those from a company called Don's Johns, whose name was covered up on some because of the similarity to that of President Donald John Trump) had not been cleaned or emptied. Close to a hundred people stood waiting. And a line at least of a tenth of a mile long snaked through the lobby of people trying to pass through security and leave the building.

Word spread from those following news accounts online that the formal march had been canceled because of the enormity of the turnout, but it was supplanted by spontaneous actions as uncountable thousands objecting to the nation's 45th president moved slowly along the Mall and its perimeter thoroughfares of Constitution and Independence avenues toward the giant white obelisk memorializing the nation's first. It was a surreal scene encompassing 228 years of American history, for good or ill.

At times, the flow stopped and people, pressed pretty much against each other, were unable to move because the crowd was so densely packed. Eventually, we reached the end of the Mall near the Washington Monument grounds, and tried to walk up 15th Street from Madison Drive. Ahead of us, we could see a throng appearing just as thick for blocks ahead.

 

We took evasive action, walking against the flow of yet another mass of humanity on Constitution Avenue and then up 12th Street where we encountered another surreal scene -- outside the Old Post Office recently reopened as the Trump International Hotel.

A security fence between the sidewalk's edge and a side entrance had been adorned with several hundred signs left by marchers -- much like flowers for the dead at a war memorial, but as derision rather than tribute. For all the hostility and disdain those signs expressed, there was at least one that stood out with remarkable humor at the end of the barrier: "I Heard There Would be Wine."

On the front side of the hotel, marchers filled Pennsylvania Avenue close to 20 abreast and stretching beyond sight -- many "flipping the bird" with upraised middle finger as they passed the building. Two men sporting souvenir Trump inauguration T-shirts bearing his picture stood outside the fence watching the marchers, while Trump security guards and District of Columbia police officers observed from its inside.

Grandstands that had been set up for the inaugural parade, and shown during the televised spectacle to be less than full, were partly taken up by wearied marchers.

The flow of people on the main routes was still mostly toward the White House, but we never got there. We had already logged six miles and most of nine hours on our feet. We could only hope there were more waves of "the roar" -- so loud that the new occupants of "the people's house" would hear them.

It was after 4 p.m., and the sun still had not graced the day.

Only the people -- the "We" of the Constitution Donald Trump had sworn a day earlier to protect and defend -- had graced this day here and in cities across America, to say nothing of those who marched in cities across the planet, in numbers both remarkable and unexpected.

It has been close to half a century in America, back to the Vietnam War era, since so strong an expression of political dissent had been heard.

We are awakened. And another sun has risen, from within.

 Wearing a pink pussyhat and Nasty Woman shirt, a woman waves from a 10th-floor balcony overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue.

photo credits:  Top photo at the edge of the mall by David M. Ettlin; all others by his wife, march companion and art director, Bonnie J. Schupp.

Some notable captions: That's me posing with Big Head Trump, and with Bonnie in her selfie modeling her pussyhat. After the march and retrieving our car in Greenbelt, we drove back into the District of Columbia to visit our friend, the Rev. Darlene Kelley, pastor of the Clinton Street United Methodist Church in Kingston, N.Y., and prized student when Bonnie taught junior high English in Baltimore around 1970. Darlene, with five women friends from her bartending days in New York City, came to D.C. for the weekend to take part in the march. Bonnie gave her the pussyhat. We have since made email contact with its maker, Danna, who said she participated in the "sister march" in Reno and that it had about 10,000 participants.

On the Road Again: Sprechen zie English?

(Photo by Bonnie Schupp)

Germans young and old

take to the streets

in anti-nuclear protest

No matter where we go, Bonnie and I seem to find adventures purely by chance -- and that seems to be the case for our latest road trip, this time in Germany.

Barely recovered from jet lag after a Thursday/Friday overnight flight to Berlin, we've been to a massive anti-nuclear demonstration Saturday afternoon at the base of the Brandenburg Gate, followed by the final night of an international fireworks competition at the historic Olympic Stadium where the black American track star Jesse Owens won gold in the face of Hitler's growing Nazi might.

A crowd clearly numbering in the tens of thousands, including a parade of theme-decorated tractors and trucks, stretched as far as the eye could see westward from the old border crossing of the Cold War era's divided Berlin. Opponents of nuclear energy included young and old, in a turnout showing free expression is robust in the German capital.

The demonstration came three weeks before national elections, and though the Green party is very much a minority, the activists were voicing strong opposition to incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel who is viewed as pro-nuclear and a threat to delay or block Germany's planned closure of atomic energy plants by 2020.

Many of the tractors and demonstrators came from the area of Gorleben in eastern Germany, the site of a nuclear waste dump. Among the many colorful posters and banners waved and displayed, my favorite was a simple yellow sign declaring: Gorleben ist überall.

The translation, provided by our German friends and hosts Beate and Ellen: "Gorleben is everywhere."

Nearby, two seeming teenagers stood and waved large signs atop a giant trojan horse clearly symbolic of the dangers foreseen from atomic plants and nuclear waste.

Our friends told us how once a year, a train hauling nuclear travels across Germany in a trip slowed by protesters who sit on the tracks until carried away by the police.

Peaceful protest, too, is alive and well here.

Media accounts put the number of protesters in the range of 50,000, and the tractors at about 400 -- enough to produce a bit of traffic chaos. But we got there by the Underground subway -- our first journey using the local mass transit.

I stopped at a tourist information shop near the Brandenburg gate and asked if there was a map of the transit system in English.

"Why would you want one?" asked a young man working at the counter. "All the stops and signs are in German."

Duh!

But he offered a subway map with larger letters, making the German easier to read for my 2.5-magnification-assisted eyes.

After returning to our friends' apartment for dinner, we ventured out to Olympic Stadium about a mile away and stood in the occasional light drizzle and breezy chill to watch the aerial part of the fireworks show (and the glow and flashes from ground displays inside).

Some of the bursts were unlike any we've seen in Baltimore. It would have been nice if international fireworks competitions had scouts from the States to check out the latest in big bang shows.

Check back later for more of Bonnie's photos, and our continuing venture into another country where, frankly, my lack of foreign language skills makes every day a little unpredictable.