Transcript of the Press Conference of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation, October 18, 2000, at the ACLU of Southern California

Rev. Richard Byrd (Meri Ka Ra), October 22nd Coalition:

Our purpose for being here is to call attention to the October 22nd national rally: 60 cities across the nation where citizens are rallying against police brutality, repression and the criminalization of a generation. We're here as a coalition because we care about the families. We gather together as a coalition in order to give voice to the families and their concerns because their voice has been unheard: their members having been murdered and brutalized by the police department without any answers to their plight. So we formed as an organization to give voice to that, to give them an opportunity to speak their voice, to speak their outrage. And for us to gather together to support them in their efforts. We give thanks to the ACLU, for giving us this space, and for being on the front line with us in this struggle for freedom for our people.

Dan Tokaji, Staff Attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California:

We are here today to call for a National Day of Protest on October 22 against police abuse. If one thinks seriously about police abuse and what needs to be done to stop it, we can start in no better place than in our own back yard. The hallmark of a police state is a government in which the police make the rules, the police are in charge, and everyone else, from the mayor to the city council to people, are afraid of the police. Well, if that is the definition of a police state then we in this city are perilously close to that.

For much too long, the Los Angeles Police Department has operated behind a blue wall of silence, answerable to no one and accountable to no one. The mayor, city council, our so-called police commission, are afraid to challenge the power of the LAPD. What's the result of that? Well, the result of that is the LAPD scandal that exploded out of Rampart, in which the constitutional rights of hundreds of people were violated. The result of that is the rampant abuses of police authority during and before the Democratic National Convention as the result of which the ACLU had to go into court and got two court orders against LAPD violations of the First Amendment. And the result of that was the sorry scene outside of Staples Center on August 14 in which the Los Angeles Police Department staged an orchestrated police riot, shooting at unarmed civilians, members of the media, peaceful protestors and legal observers, injuring many.

When I asked Chief Parks a few weeks ago at a town hall meeting what, in light of the DNC, the Los Angeles Police Department intended to do differently, his answer was 'Nothing'. What that means is that people expressing their constitutional rights in the future can expect more of the same from the LAPD. And for those who think that the consent decree to which the LAPD agreed is going to be a magic bullet, I'm sad to tell you that you are wrong. It's going to take a lot more than a consent decree to force the Los Angeles Police Department to stop its abusive practices

The Los Angeles Police Department likes to project the image to the public that it's problems are just a few bad apples. The reality is that the tree is poisoned to its very core. And we will not rest until every poisoned branch of that tree is chopped off.

Brian Smith, brother of Danny Ray Smith, murdered in LA's "Twin Towers" jail, and a member of the Stolen Lives Project:

My brother was physically beaten and killed two years ago, August 1, 1998, in Twin Towers county jail, by three Sheriffs and custody assistants. I'm here on behalf of family members who's going through the same thing I'm going through day in and day out. I'm here on behalf of families whose loved ones have been brutally killed from different parts of the country, from Riverside, to Claremont, here locally in LA with the Rampart Division and also the Sheriffs Department. I'm here today speaking on behalf of a national movement that has gone across the country to stem this problem that's plaguing our communities. It's really a plague. My brother was killed so viciously it really astonished our family. We weren't notified until three days later. It's really insane when stuff like that occurs, and you can't get information about your loved ones being brutalized.

So from this point on I made a vow to speak out against police brutality. I made a vow to speak out against the Sheriffs. I made a vow to speak out against the atrocities of police brutality that's occurring day in and day out in our communities. And we cannot get any answers because the state legislation permits the police' names from being exposed when their loved ones are brutally killed. Immediately there's a cover-up.

We want to break through those barriers. We want to break down the double standard. With the movement of October 22, this can be done and it will be done.

Jim Lafferty, National Lawyers Guild:

The anti-police abuse and police brutality demonstration set for this Sunday, October 22, in Los Angeles, provides a wonderful opportunity for people to condemn the way the LAPD and the city ran roughshod over the Constitution both before and during the political protests at the recent Democratic National Convention. During the Convention, downtown Los Angeles looked like a Third World country under martial law. Thousands of police in full riot gear, with batons and automatic weapons lined the streets. Freeways were blocked by the Highway Patrol, and 3000 armed National Guardsmen stood by to intervene. You would have thought an invading army was poised at our borders.

Certainly the LAPD wasted no time in employing their repressive measures. As Dan has already alluded to, on the opening night of the Convention they illegally terminated a lawful and peaceful assembly of over 10,000 people, gave them 15 minutes to leave an area it was not physically possible to vacate in such a short period of time, and then proceeded to trample them with horses, drench them with pepper spray and shoot men, women and children in the back as they were leaving with rubber bullets, even, as I said, they were attempting to comply with the LAPD's illegal dispersal order.

But police efforts to silence dissent weren't confined to their actions on the opening night of the convention. Throughout the week, they cordoned off every lawful march with hundreds of police officers, thereby making it impossible for people to join a march in progress, or leave a march when they wanted to. They routinely pushed people off of sidewalks and struck them with their billy clubs. And they stopped and searched hundreds of young people, simply because they suspected they were anarchists. Why? Because they were wearing black. And sadly the same city officials who whipped up a climate of fear and repression prior to the convention wasted no time after the convention in applauding the LAPD for a 'job well done'.

Therefore I think it's up to us, the people of Los Angeles, to take to the streets on Sunday, October 22nd to condemn the LAPD for its shameful and repressive efforts to silence political dissent, as well as for its well-deserved reputation as one of this nation's most brutal and corrupt police departments. It's up to us to let the world know that we're not going to be silenced, that we will not abandon our right to speak out against injustice, even in the face of jack-booted efforts by the LAPD. It's up to us to remind the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles that the streets of this city belong to the people and not to a pack of brutal cops cowardly hiding behind their riot gear and rubber bullets.

Rev. Byrd:

Let me call your attention again to the Stolen Lives book, documenting over 2000 cases of individuals whose lives have been taken by the police department, where there has been little or no justice. Also to inform us at this particular time that the beginning of the book has been recently translated into Spanish, and will be published in November, so it will be available to a wider audience.

Now the truth is, Black and brown people are the majority of the people who have been murdered by the police. But we are not the only ones. The 'majority community', if you will, are also being murdered. We want to call forth now Greg Jordan, father of John Jordan, who was murdered by the police in September of 1999, in Long Beach.

Greg Jordan, father of John Jordan:

I want to thank Stolen Lives for giving me the opportunity for me to be here. Thank God for them. This is how we draw our strength. We draw our strength from the other families. Otherwise, we're out there left alone with the suffering, and no questions answered. It's been over a year and the Long Beach Police Department tells me it's 'still under investigation'. It doesn't take a year to figure out why they put a bullet in my son's back, why they put a bullet in my son's head. It doesn't take a year for that. Their famous phrase was, 'He went for his waistband.' Well, there was never a weapon found, there never will be a weapon found, because there was no weapon. That is the case. Until this day, the family still suffers deeply because of the loss of my son. It's hard to come here. It's hard to look at that picture of him in his coffin. It's hard, but I do it because if we don't do it together, nothing will happen. Somebody has to make a stand. And together we can make a stand. Alone we won't make nothing.

Victor Narro, Workers Rights Project, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (CHIRLA):

Los Angeles is a city of immigrants. We have more than 200 languages spoken in this city. Many immigrants in this city, especially in this area here, in the Rampart area, are immigrants who fled political persecution, who fled death squads. They fled military officials in their countries. So they come here with a fear of people in uniforms, of distrust of people in uniforms. And this is one of the reasons why Special Order 40 was enacted in the 1970s as the result of a court settlement with the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles. This Special Order 40 puts restrictions on police officers not to deal with immigration issues: not to detain anybody because of their immigration status, not to question people because of their immigration status. Not to even ask any questions of any immigrant relating to their immigration status.

What's coming out of the Rampart scandal is more and more evidence that there's been a systematic abuse of Special Order 40. We have 160 documented cases of immigrants who were deported. These were witnesses to some of the abuse by these police officers, the CRASH unit officers here in Rampart. It's already too late to save these people. They've already been deported. Most of them cannot be found.

Most of the people who were murdered by the police officers were immigrants. We call on all immigrants to come together this Sunday. It's an important day. People do not have to fear LAPD any longer. There's a coalition here, and they're working very hard to bring about true police reform. We cannot count on the leadership of the city of Los Angeles. The leadership's going to have to come from the community. This Sunday could be the beginning of the mobilization of the community to bring about true police reform.

Heriberto Saldaña, brother of Juan Manuel Saldaña, 19-year-old murdered by Rampart CRASH unit cops July 21, 1996:

My name is Heriberto Saldaña, brother of Juan Manuel Saldaña, who four years ago, in 1996, was murdered by the Rampart police for no apparent reason. Their excuse was that he had a gun. His fingerprints weren't on the gun that they planted on him. I'm just here to let you guys know what they took away from me and my family. He was my father figure. I grew up without a father, but he was there for me. Everything I've done, I've done it for him and my mother. We miss his smile, and his jokes. It's cruel what they did, and they're at their homes, sitting down, not worrying about a thing while we suffer. We didn't know what happened to him. We still haven't gotten a call from them - no apologies, not to even let us know that he passed away. We found out through a friend. They never contacted us. In their own words, they had 'no obligation to contact us because he was an adult'.

I'm just here because I want justice for my brother's killers. He didn't deserve to die. God was not calling out his name. Rampart was. They had a target on him because he had a bald head and he was a gang member. That does not mean that you go out there and kill everybody who has a bald. I just want justice for my brother. He was 19 years old.

Rev. Burnell Butler, uncle of Tyisha Miller:

I'm glad that there are people in Los Angeles, people in America that still carry on the revolution of 1776. Taxation without representation is tyranny; police brutality is tyranny. I'm here because Tyisha Miller was shot unjustly. It was without cause. She was shot and it was not a justifiable shooting. And now two years later the federal government is dragging its feet in the investigation.

The police department is corrupt, in many areas, not just in Los Angeles, but in many cities and many towns throughout America. We do need to continue the revolution of 1776. The police administration as a whole needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. We'll be out there on October 22nd, and as many October 22nd's as it takes until justice comes to California and to the United States.