Caesar Goodson, Jr (c. 1970- ) is one of the six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray. He was the driver who last year gave Gray what is widely believed to have been a “rough ride” that broke his neck. Gray died a week later, leading to riots.
On June 23rd 2016 Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams cleared him of all charges:
- Second degree depraved heart murder (30 yrs.)
- Manslaughter (involuntary) (10 yrs.)
- Assault/second degree (10 yrs.)
- Manslaughter by vehicle (gross negligence) (10 yrs.)
- Manslaughter by vehicle (criminal negligence) (3 yrs.)
- Misconduct in office
He is the only officer to face a murder charge. Three others face manslaughter charges.
Rough ride: The common belief is that when Gray was put in the back of the police van, Goodson purposely failed to put on Gray’s seat belt. Goodson then took the long way round back to the police station, making many sharp turns and sudden stops. Since Gray’s hands and feet were bound, he could not protect his head or body. The police do this to suspects who try to run, as Gray did.
Judge Williams, though, thought it was just a “mistake”:
“The state had a duty to show the defendant corruptly failed in his duty, not just that he made a mistake.”
“This injury manifested itself internally. … If the doctors are not clear as to what would be happening at this point in time, how would the average person or officer without medical training know?”
Buying into the plausible deniability – oops! – of a rough ride.
Goodson wisely avoided a jury trial. Juries can get “emotional” about police killings. Judges, on the other hand, protect the police.
Over the past ten years nearly 10,000 people have been killed by police in the US – yet only four officers have been found guilty of charges that a higher court did not overturn. Thus “the process”.
Goodson still faces a (secret) administrative review and a possible civil rights trial in federal court.
The mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who had the National Guard on standby, said after the decision came down:
“I am proud that we as a community have come together to move our city forward over the past year. I know that the citizens of Baltimore will continue to respect the judicial process and the ruling of the court.”
(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
The governor, Larry Hogan, said he:
“continues to respect the legal process, as well as the court’s decision.”
But not everyone had faith in “the process”:
The Baltimore NAACP president Tessa Hill-Aston said:
“We have to go back to the drawing board here in Baltimore and Maryland with rules and regulations and laws that affect the police behavior, because it’s clear that they can do action that we feel is not correct, but in the courtroom … is not a criminal act.”
Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson said it is:
“a reminder that the current laws, policies and practices protect police behavior at all costs.”
Citizen Troy Clay said:
“It’s like the law don’t matter to them.”
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- Freddie Gray
- other indicted officers:
- Edward Nero – acquitted last month
- William Porter – mistrial in December. Will be retried in September.
- Baltimore police brutality
- Michael Wood – a retired Baltimore police officer tells all
- The police
- slave patrols
543
Excellent analysis and graphics! It is clear the willful and malicious and deliberate of the police officers resulted in the murder of Freddie Gray.
In Chicago, it is common for the police to take black detainees for a “ride” in the hope of injuring them.
I created a blog post about the Goodson verdict, which will include a link to this post.
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@ Trojan Pam
Thank you.
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@ abagond
You’re welcome.
Your blog post erased all doubt in my mind that the police should have been convicted of a crime. I don’t know how much more of this was can or should take.
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@ Trojan Pam
The police and vigilantes will continue their killing spree against Black people until the costs outweigh the benefits.
It is up to Black people to construct a cost so high that the Establishment feels that free floating violence against us is no longer beneficial.
Sound impossible?
It’s not.
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@ Afrofem
You’re right. However, the price cannot be measured in dollars. It is not about black consumer power because most of us get those dollars by working for white-owned companies.
Paper money has no real value. Money is easily be printed any time the Federal Reserve cranks up the printing presses. Real economic power requires institutional power and the means of production/manufacturing/control of resources. Something we have been deliberately deprived of having.
White supremacy is dedicated to maintaining absolute domination over non-white people, total control over the planet’s resources, and to allay the fears of the white global population who are a rapidly shrinking minority on the planet. They are terrified that the tables will be turned against them — and rightfully so.
And there is the emotional, sociopathic element of a collective that DELIGHTS in abusing anyone who is not white. This is not normal behavior and this is something black people need to understand and take very seriously. The historical evidence of such behavior is indisputable.
The kicker is, white supremacy requires the full cooperation of the non-white oppressed masses who apparently do not understand the fundamental rules of warfare,
the first being NOT to put your oppressors on a pedestal or worship them or make your God in their image (sic)
and the second, not to sexually engage with people who benefit from your oppression– and this is where I lose a large percentage of my audience.
(forgive me if I go off on a tangent, but I live and breathe this stuff)
You speak of constructing a cost so high that the establishment is no longer willing to pay it? I wonder what black people are willing to sacrifice — and I’m not even talking about violence — to attain this.
Are we willing to give up any of our creature comforts? Are we willing to break our addiction to white validation and interracial sex, work on eliminating our anti-blackness, and learn how to get along with each other and form cooperative communities? Have we gotten too soft to fight back?
Personally, I would love to see this black people throw the gauntlet down and say “ENOUGH!” and mean it.
I agree it’s not impossible but I don’t know what it will take to bring us to that point in a rational and effective manner.
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@Trojan Pam
I have a reply to your comment in the works.
Next few days….
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When will Black people understand that white people and honorary whites + uncle & auntie toms have been waging war against melinated people for hundreds of years. Terrorism psychological & physical coupled with injustice from the (lol) “justice” system is meant to implant immobilizing fear in melinated people & a sense of hopelessness & despair. Which can create people who accept & expect mistreatment & therefor succumb to dysfunctionality as their accepted condition. This leads to self deprecation & violent behavior against there own kind as the only viable relief of there pent up anger & frustrations. We live in the most sick society on the planet & as Dr. Bobby Wright exposed the oppressor & the oppressed suffer mental illness living in this sick environment. This illness leads to delusional thinking & an inability to think critically & taking these failings as normal human activity. This nation’s demise will be self inflicted & it’s self destruction will not be realized by its citizens nor its leaders. At the height of it’s fall it will be seen internally as the height of it’s supremacy. Such is the tragedy of mental illness & deservedly of those who practice purposeful delusion & illusion as part of their modus operandi.
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@Ra-El-B
“This nation’s demise will be self inflicted & it’s self destruction will not be realized by its citizens nor its leaders.”
Seems like you’re describing Zombies/Vampires! They are the citizens who cannot see/realize the destruction happening all around them.
“At the height of it’s fall it will be seen internally as the height of it’s supremacy.”
That’s just more demonic inability to see the TRUTH for the reality it is!
“Such is the tragedy of mental illness & deservedly of those who practice purposeful delusion & illusion as part of their modus operandi.”
Yes! When one lives by the sword, one dies by the sword.
There will be much comeuppance for the most sick/dysfunctional society on the planet. (Rev 18:4)
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Kiwi the racist moron wrote: “A Black judge helped a Black cop get away with killing a Black man. Are Blacks really the vanguards of human liberation?”
Absolutely. Too racist to see it eh?
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@ Ra-El-B
Well said.
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@Trojan Pam
To me, using violence to end police killings
lynchingis not a viable option for Black people. The Establishment is bristling with military hardware and loves to employ military tactics on civilians, especially Black civilians. Some observers have tried to connect police shootings to the mass imprisonment scourge afflicting our communities. Yet, indiscriminate and unpunished police killings of Black civilians predate the prison-industrial complex by more than a century.History of the Police
It is not until you examine the history of the police that their behavior and who they actually serve becomes clear. Sam Mitrani, writing for the Labor and Working-Class History Association (lawcha.org) site in an article entitled, Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People describes the true purpose of the police:
The police are a creation of (and only answerable to) the business community. According to Mitrani, “businessmen organized themselves to make sure the police were increasingly isolated from democratic control, and established their own hierarchies, systems of governance, and rules of behavior. The police increasingly set themselves off from the population by donning uniforms, establishing their own rules for hiring, promotion, and firing, working to build a unique esprit des corps, and identifying themselves with order. And despite complaints about corruption and inefficiency, they gained more and more support from the ruling class, to the extent that in [1880s] Chicago, for instance, businessmen donated money to buy the police rifles, artillery, Gatling guns, buildings, and money to establish a police pension out of their own pockets.”</em
http://lawcha.org/wordpress/2014/12/29/stop-kidding-police-created-control-working-class-poor-people/
Another writer, David Whitehouse in an article entitled, Origins of the Police, describes the origins of the Charleston, South Carolina police force in the 1820s:
https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the-police/
A Non-Violent Alternative
One possible way to stop police violence against Black people is to affect the bottom lines of their masters — the business community. One group that used this strategy with great success were the Chinese. In 1905, Chinese citizens boycotted American made goods out of their fury over the poor treatment (including massacres and mob violence) of Chinese immigrants to the US. The 1905 boycott spread to all of the major cities in China and cost American manufacturers and merchants $30 to $40 million dollars in lost trade and revenues. That would translate to billions of dollars today’s dollars.
While the boycott did not achieve its stated objectives, it did have one major impact. According to Iris Chang’s 2003 book, The Chinese In America, (pages 142 to 144) anti-Chinese harassment, anti-Chinese mob violence and inflammatory media attacks fell dramatically.
Anti-Chinese attitudes didn’t change and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 remained in effect until 1943, but violent behavior such as lynching became unacceptable. The Chinese Boycott of 1905 imposed a real financial cost that the US business class was not willing to pay and they muzzled working class Whites.
That one action, over a century ago, produced lasting results. It is one reason why Chinese Americans and other Asian American groups can count on one hand recent victims of state violence or mob violence. The boycott was a master stroke——it bloodied the noses of major White players (such as merchants, publishers and politicians) in the US and gave them a lesson they have not forgotten for decades.
Read this comment from another thread for more information:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/the-asian-supremacy-argument/#comment-316058
Essential Ingredients
Any action would have to start with a clear and unequivocal set of demands, that go far beyond “stop killing us.” In 1857, Frederick Douglass gave a speech in which he stated,
To be truly effective, a boycott and divestment movement against American corporate goods would have to be international in scope. Possible international allies would include other groups that face similar challenges with police abuse and vigilante violence: African descent people in the Americas, especially African Brazilians, African Canadians and African Columbians.
Other groups that might work with African Americans include, Afro-Caribbeans in the UK, Black French, Black South Africans, the Dalits of India and the Roma of Europe. There would need to be a thorough education program for Black community members and any international allies.
That education would be vital. A lot of people are not aware of the deep connections between the business community and the police. They tend to think of the police as civil servants like fire fighters and teachers. They don’t realize that the police are accountable to no one in this country, except the business community. Politicians at all levels know this because they serve the same masters.
I have no doubt that such a tactic will encounter fierce retaliation. Likely responses would include:
➣Heated media propaganda and demonization
➣Harassment and increased violence from police and vigilantes
➣False charges against anyone perceived as a leader
➣Retaliatory laws and court decisions against groups that stand in solidarity
The Role of Community
Trojan Pam, in your comment you said:
That is where vision comes in. A vision of what is possible instead of what we are willing to put up with should be part of the education that activists in any boycott and divestment movement would have to share with other Black people.
The educational process would also have to include alternatives to the current system. A lot of Black people and others depend on the police out of habit, fear, propaganda and coercion. It never occurs to many people that the only true alternative to the current state of affairs is community.
With community, Black folk can build cadres of trained restorative justice mediators who can help diffuse disputes between couples, neighbors, family members and friends. How many times have we read or heard of Black people being shot or tasered to death by police who were called in to help calm an overwrought relative or just in response to a faulty heart attack monitor? Specially trained mediators from the neighborhood on the scene would prevent unnecessary police involvement in Black people’s affairs and save lives.
With community, Black people can once again understand the value of sacrifice, the value of cooperation and the value a common vision. The Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama walked and carpooled for 381 days in their historic 1955-1956 bus boycott. They had both community and a vision.
Black people have been battered by over the past thirty years with mass imprisonment, drug epidemics, mortgage swindles, poisoned water supplies and a rollback of civil rights. Starting and persevering with a boycott and divestment movement will be incredibly difficult, but I still think it is the best chance Black people have to effect real and lasting change in our relationship with the police and their masters.
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The sad part is the rest of the world seeing being a 3rd class citizen or not even of the united states as an improvement.
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Kiwi, you moron, being victimized by the powers that be, regardless of their race, religious, etc., since at least the 15th century and refusing to submit, does. By the way, have you finally resolved your Asian women problem? I ask because the white boys are making a beeline toward them.
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@Afrofem
This article touches upon some of the same history and issues of the piece you posted.
https://againsthestate.liberty.me/the-authoritarian-origins-of-policing-in-america/
The Authoritarian Origins of Policing in America.
Quoted in part.
“This means two crucial things: one could only be arrested for committing a crime that had a victim, and one could only be detained after the crime had already occurred. This ensures that everyone is always innocent until proven guilty, and that the principles of self-ownership and personal liberty are well protected from the enforcement arm of the state.”
“However, this all changed in 1838, when Boston became the first city in America to establish a full time police force. By the 1880s all major American cities had municipal police forces. Dr. Potter explains what these departments have in common: “These “modern police” organizations shared similar characteristics: (1) they were publicly supported and bureaucratic in form; (2) police officers were full-time employees, not community volunteers or case-by-case fee retainers; (3) departments had permanent and fixed rules and procedures, and employment as a police officers was continuous; (4) police departments were accountable to a central governmental authority (Lundman 1980).”
“However, law enforcement followed a different path in the South. Dr. Potter explains this as well:
“In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing “Jim Crow” segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.”
“Clearly, law enforcement in the South did not arise from any sort of honorable “desire to protect the populace.” These facts beg the question: why 1838? Why were the mid-1800’s a breeding ground for the creation of municipal police forces? Although a massive crime wave would seem to be the only logical explanation, this is not the case. There was no pandemic threat of overwhelming crime. So, why did police departments all spring up around the same time? Dr. Potter’s answer displays the authoritarian roots of the modern police state:”
“More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to “disorder.” What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions. These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime-specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the “collective good” (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state.”
“Thus, the truth arises: modern police forces are a result of extremely effective crony capitalism and the authoritarian desires of the political elites.”
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@michaeljonbarker
Thanks for the link. Two items stood out in the article:
1. “Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules.”
Two elements in modern policing of African American communities with strong historical ties are “organized terror” and “summary [in]justice” as control tactics. Both Dr. Potter and the author, Trey Goff, fail to provide one crucial historical context for those harsh control tactics in the South. Namely, the threat of slave revolts. Africans and their descendants never ceased resisting their captivity. There were numerous slave revolts in the South throughout the 1700s and into the early 1800s. The high water mark for slave rebellions came not in the US, but in Haiti. The successful Haitian Revolution of 1804 sent shock waves of fear throughout the Americas.
http://www.blackpast.org/gah/haitian-revolution-1791-1804
Black resistance to slavery and oppression is one reason Black people are hated and feared in the present day. We are one of the few groups that (properly led) could upend the current system. That is one reason why even White American travelers overseas will constantly badmouth Black Americans as “trouble makers”. That fear is always present.
2. “Even though America only consists of 5% of the world population, we have almost 25% of the world’s prison population. We have 725 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, which is the highest in the world. The world average is 145 per 100,000 citizens. Nearly 2.2 million Americans are behind bars. The racial disparities within our system are even more appalling. Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population. Five times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites.”
Those numbers are outrageous. 725 prisoners per 100,000 citizen in the US versus 145 prisoners per 100,000 citizens on average globally tells you a lot about US society: control, punishment and greed. Those who think it has no ripple effect on the rest of society are blind to the ways that America resembles an open air prison more and more each year.
The drug numbers speak for themselves.
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@ Afrofem
Which goes to show that the War on Drugs has nothing to do with drugs. If it were, Whites would, if anything, be locked up at a higher rate.
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@Abagond
True.
Yet, drive by trolls frequently list “drugs” as social and moral failing of Black folk. What a wide gulf between perception and reality.
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The “war on drugs” from the horse’s mouth: http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/
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I read two articles today about how opioid use among working class Whites ballooned in the this country over the past several decades.
The first article, by Lambert Strether, describes the ways in which top 20 percenters (“the looting professional class”) worked to create and expand the opioid epidemic and deaths by overdose. These top 20 percenters include these professions:
◎CEOs
◎Marketing executives
◎Database developers
◎Marketing collateral designers
◎The sales force
◎Middle managers of all kinds.
◎Doctors
This little gem stuck out among the sentences:
Full article here:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/credentialism-and-corruption-the-opioid-epidemic-and-the-looting-professional-class.html
◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎◎
The second article dealt with black market opioids. It has the familiar “Black Face on the Drug Problem” orientation; Black drug dealer, gang member, rampant crime. The difference is the victims were working class Whites. There is also a great deal of detail about how corrupt pharmacists and physicians were part of this vast criminal network:
http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-oxycontin-everett/
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I read two articles today about how opioid use among working class Whites ballooned in the this country over the past several decades.
This why they are trying to change the laws because there is an epidemic of heroin and opioid use in the middle and upper classes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/us/heroin-war-on-drugs-parents.html
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@Herneith
Thanks for the link.
It’s hard not to be bitter at this hypocrisy. This passage stood out:
Baloney! They all perceived the old “lock them up and throw away the key” policy to be working when it was primarily Black people who were impaled on the sharp end of the law. It worked okay when Black communities were drained of young men and women, when Black children were dragged into the hellish foster care system and when SWAT teams kicked in doors at 4am on “no-knock” raids in Black folks homes.
I still remember the case of Kemba Smith. In 1994, Smith was sentenced to nearly 25 years in prison basically for being an abusive drug dealers girlfriend.
There was not treatment or compassion for her. Were the laws working then?
http://www.sentencingproject.org/stories/kemba-smith/
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@ Afrofem
Hypocrisy is an understatement.
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I have no sympathy for these opioid addicts. Karmas a beyotch.
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Kiwi, I’m no more outraged by this acquittal than I was by the bs sentence of Peter Liang or any other miscarriage of justice inflicted on Blacks, on a regular basis, since the 16th century.
How was the electroshock treatment? I can’t tell if it helped you at all, you still sound batshit insane. It must be working, somewhat, since you come here less often to display your madness.
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“The reason you’re not outraged about either is because in both instances, the killer walked free in large part due to the help of a Black man.”
So, you knew Peter Liang was a “killer” but you and your fellow “Asians” wanted him acquitted all the same? Thanks for confirming the racist thinking I suspected was behind the whole Peter Liang, scapegoat, nonsense.
“Because the powers that be were Black and they’re bound to victimize people regardless of race, you couldn’t care less.”
NONSENSE. The black judge in Baltimore and the black DA in Brooklyn knew they could get away with the outrages they committed because Blacks have been the victims of officialdom since the 16th century. They would have been more circumspect if the victim had been white. The fact that you agree with that assessment tells me that the electroshock therapy, is kind of, working for you.
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@gro jo
Shows what sick and evil minds Kiwi and her yellow Liang supporters have for supporting a killer.
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“The Black judge and the Black DA did what they did because Blacks want to get away with the same ish that Whites get away with all the time, for the same reason you saw nothing wrong with the acquittals of OJ Simpson and Joel Lee’s murderer.”
The glove didn’t fit. They must acquit. You disagree because, like grandpa Harry Lee, you want to string up all the ni**ers.
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@Kiwi
Yes you are. And BTW, I don’t care who or what a Legion is, let alone what it believes. So if you want to throw accusations, catch me in an actual lie, instead of referencing an idiot as your source.
And since you’re once again having trouble remembering what you said in defense of Liang and his yellow supporters, go back and read your own racist comments on the Peter Liang post. They’re still there for everyone to see.
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@Kiwi
LOL. The difference is that you have no evidence to back up your accusations, but you’ve defended LIE-ang and his yellow protesters and shown how racist you are numerous times. We haven’t forgotten!
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