Author Archives: twothreemany

Tell the City Council: Stop police terrorism!

Join JAB at the City Council Budget Hearing, 5:30 pm, Thursday, May 23 to demand better priorities.

Oakland Police Dept. Budget Dominates the City Budget, Leaving Little for Social Programs to Stop Violence and Increase Safety –

  • The proposed budget advocates for 4 police academies over the next 2 years, increasing the number of officers and increasing OPD’s funds (which already monopolize 42% of the city’s budget) overall.

  • The starting Salary for Police is $69,000 and $98,000. Most cops make well over $120,000 in salary.

  • According to KTVU, The City of Oakland has paid out $57 million from 2001 to 2011 to victims of Oakland Police Abuse: the LARGEST amount of any city in California. They use our hard earned dollars to soak up the blood from their beatings and murders.

OPD is Racist and Unaccountable  –

           Even Ex-Police Commissioner, Federal Monitor Thomas Frazier Admits This:

  • Federal monitor Thomas Frazier’s review of OPD’s use of force incidents found a racist pattern. To quote a May 1st report,  “The total racial breakdown for the 61 use  of force events reviewed is as follows: Black, 70%; Hispanic, 22%; White, 3%; Asian, 2%; and Other, 3%.”

  • Thomas Frazier’s report continues: “We were unable to find the pointing of a firearm necessary or justified in 29 instances of the 158 instances we assessed, due to the absence of any indication that the officer(s) or others faced imminent threat of harm. In addition, several events lacked justification for the initial detention that led to the pointing of the firearms.”

  • Frazier found that the cops who aren’t abusive cover for those who are, even when their abuses are unjustified: “And yet In all cases, the supervisory review found the officers’ use of force appropriate, objectively reasonable for a legitimate law enforcement purpose, and in compliance with OPD policy.”

  • The East Bay express reports that Federal Monitor Frazier wants to reopen several cases where cops covered up their brutality, especially around serial killers such as Patrick Gonzalez. But since the rot goes so deep, why stop at Gonzalez?

Justice for Alan Blueford!

  • We are a coalition fighting for justice for one of the many murdered people, 18 year old Skyline High school senior Alan Blueford. He was shot pleading for his life on the night of May 6th, 2012.

  • Our demand is that the city fire and charge Officer Miguel Masso with the murder of Alan Blueford.

  • Alan was racially-profiled;  there was no reason for him to be stopped, much like the other incidents in the Frazier report.

  • Alan ran for two blocks and posed no threat to Officer Miguel Masso.

  • According to the Oakland police’s OWN report, multiple witnesses said Alan’s last words were “I didn’t do anything”.

  • Officer Miguel Masso shot himself in the foot and then claimed there was a gun battle where he was “shot in the chest.”

  • Police Chief Howard Jordan said that Alan Blueford was taken to the hospital, but after checking with the hospital we learned this was a lie as well.

  • Just like the Oakland Riders scandal where the police planted evidence, and just like in the case of Oscar Grant, the police have lied through their teeth, covered for each other and dragged their feet every step of the way. As Thomas Frazier says, “OPD’s internal affairs division is broken, supervisors cover for abusive and racist police, we need an independent investigation.”


Quan wants more academies for more police. But we don’t want to waste money training highly paid assassins and their silent accomplices. We say not a dollar more till they stop killing our children.

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We Remember & Honor Alan Dwayne Blueford

Candlelight vigil for Alan, May 5On the one year anniversary of Alan’s murder by OPD Officer Miguel Masso, we will honor Alan with a candlelight vigil. We will start at Sunnyside Park and walk to the site where he was murdered, at the 9200 block of Birch St. Candles will be provided.

Rest in power, Alan!

(Please park at Sunnyside Park, not on Birch St.)

Justice for Kayla Moore!

The Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition stands in solidarity with the
family of Kayla Moore, who died in the custody of the Berkeley Police
on February 13th, 2013. The Blueford family and their friends know
what it is like to be kept in the dark as to what happened to a loved
one.

It has been more than two months since Kayla’s death, and the
Coroner’s report, completed within days of a death, has not been
released. It was two and half months before Oakland Police released
their ‘hold’ on the Coroner’s report in the death of Alan Blueford,
and even then the Blueford family had to pay $300 in blood money to
see the report.

It has been more than two months since Kayla’s death, and no police
report has been issued, despite the fact that all the officers
involved are back on duty. It was five months before Oakland handed
over a redacted police report to the Blueford family.

All families have a right to know what happened to their loved ones
without having the police cover up their lies and misconduct by
witholding information, as was the case with Alan Blueford and now is
the case with Kayla Moore.

The Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition stands with the Moore family and
Berkeley Copwatch in demanding that the Berkeley Police Department and
the City of Berkeley turn over all relevant information on the death
of Kayla Moore to the Moore family and to the people.

Community BBQ at Arroyo Park

Saturday, April 13, 1-5pm

Olive St. & Ritchie St., Oakland, CA

The Justice 4 Alan Blueford coalition is hosting a community BBQ in Arroyo Park on Saturday, April 13th. We hope you’ll come out with friends and family to eat from the best offset smoker in town, play, and connect as we build the strength of our community.

Expect delicious home-cooked food, great music, powerful speakers, kid-friendly activities, a nurse’s station – all donated to this community event in honor of Alan Blueford, a Skyline High School student who was murdered by OPD Officer Miguel Masso almost one year ago on May 6th, 2012.

Justice for Kimani Gray – Murdered by the NYPD

5pm Thursday 3/21 – Oscar Grant Plaza

From Oakland to NYC... End Police Brutality!

This Thursday, March 21, join the Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition and other members of the community as we hold a rally to express solidarity with the family of Kimani “Kiki” Gray, a 16-year-old murdered by the NYPD in Brooklyn. We recognize the rage in the community as this killing closely resembles so many other killings by police in Oakland, including the murder of Alan Blueford, but out of respect for Kimani’s family, we ask that this specific event not be a place for window smashing. We know that it is the police who generally bring physical violence and need no provocation, but we ask that participants come not with the intent to provoke that response but rather with their own expressions of solidarity for Kimani’s friends and family as well as the dozens of people who have been arrested in Brooklyn for protesting his killing.

Just before midnight on Saturday, March 9th, Kimani Gray was returning home from a baby shower. Two undercover police officers in an unmarked vehicle thought the group of young men Kimani was standing with looked “suspicious” (by which they mean Black) and jumped out with guns drawn. Although the officers claim that Kimani pointed a gun at them, witnesses have said there was nothing in his hands, and preliminary reports have shown that Kimani was shot in the back and side. Eerily reminiscent of Alan Blueford’s own last words, Kimani begged the officers not to shoot him, and after he had been shot cried out “Please don’t let me die!” The officers threatened to shoot him again and let him bleed to death on the sidewalk.

Much like Miguel Masso who killed Alan, the two officers who shot Kimani have a long history of violence. These police, Sgt. Mourad Mourad and Officer Jovaniel Cordova, have previously cost the city of NY (meaning the taxpayers) $215,000 for abuses ranging from illegal stops to shoving a man’s face into a puddle to punching someone they stopped in the face to pulling off a suspect’s pants and underwear. Both officers had previously been involved in shootings (something we see here in Oakland as well with most shootings).

According to a lawyer for some of the people who sued Mourad and Cordova, “In each case, Mourad and Cordova attempted to cover up their misconduct by falsifying and fabricating evidence,” and all but one of the arrests were dismissed.

As usual, the Police have published their lies about what happened, inventing witnesses who no one else seems able to find (much as they did in Alan’s case), and as usual, the media has simply reprinted the lies straight from NYPD’s mouth as if they are truth.

The JAB Coalition does not accept these lies, we do not accept the racial profiling and stop and frisk policies that led to the two police jumping out on Kimani, and we do not accept the continued slaughter of young men of color with the platitude that police were just doing their job. If the job of the police is to provoke a response and then kill a teenager, then we do not need them to keep doing that job. Far from keeping the community safer, the police only bring more violence and more loss of life, and the people have had enough.

In solidarity with the people of East Flatbush, who night after night this week have come out to demand justice and to demand the truth, the JAB Coalition calls on the community to show our support for their cause as well as to continue our own calls for justice and truth. Officers like Mourad and Cordova, and officers like Miguel Masso must be fired, and they must be prosecuted for murder. No badge or uniform gives them the right to kill with impunity.

Invite your friends.

Justice for Kimani Gray!
Justice for Alan Blueford!
Justice for all victims of police violence!

Rally to DEMAND PROSECUTION of Oakland Police Officer MIGUEL MASSO!

TUESDAY, MARCH 5th @ 3pm
Alameda County DA’s Office (Corner of 12th & Oak St.)

The Justice 4 Alan Blueford Coalition & Many in the Oakland Community Call Upon California Attorney General, Kamala Harris, and the Alameda DA’s office to:

1. PRESS CHARGES AGAINST OPD OFFICER MIGUEL MASSO FOR THE MURDER OF ALAN BLUEFORD due to the flawed and biased investigation carried out by Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley which intentionally ignored clear evidence of a homicide and cover-up by the Oakland Police Department.

2. REOPEN ALL CASES OF OFFICER-INVOLVED KILLINGS FROM THE RIDERS CASE IN 2003 TO THE PRESENT, due to the pattern of flawed and biased investigations which has shown an unprincipled relationship, lacking objectivity, between the D.A.’s office and the Oakland Police Department, which continues to lead to Oakland Police Officers being unjustly cleared and immune from criminal charges for brutality and murder.

3. CREATE A STRATEGY AND POLICY TO END THE CRIMINALIZATION OF THE BLACK AND BROWN COMMUNITIES, stop the militarized Oakland Police Department from terrorizing Black and Brown Communities, and allow the Black and Brown Communities of Oakland to exercise their right to political, social, and economic Self-Determination.

We demand answers!
We demand the truth!
We demand Justice for Alan Blueford!

NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!

(Invite your friends and allies on Facebook.)

Powerful video from December 18’s ‘Celebrating Alan Blueford & Resisting Police Brutality’

 

Watch the full video from JAB’s December 18 event on Youtube:

  1. Adam and Jeralynn Blueford
  2. Tribute video for Alan, Clarence Thomas of ILWU
  3. SEIU 1021 leaders & members
  4. Trish Gorham of OEA, Tim Killings of the BSU, slides of Alan
  5. Oscar Grant family, Angela Davis intro
  6. Angela Davis
  7. Angela Davis conclusion, Cephus Johnson, Rosemary Duenez
  8. Rosemary Duenez, Ramarley Graham’s parents, C.D. Witherspoon
  9. C.D. Witherspoon, Fred Hampton Jr.

Protest the Hiring of William Bratton!

On Tuesday, January 22nd, join the JAB Coalition and allies and come on back out to City Hall as the full City Council weighs what to do now that the Public Safety Committee has recommended moving forward on the Wasserman/Bratton consultancy proposal. Bratton is the former head of the NYPD and LAPD and a leading advocate of stop-and-frisk, “zero tolerance” policing, and other policies that mean racial profiling and harassment. In addition, the 22nd will be the 2 year anniversary of the murder of Raheim Brown by OUSD police officers Barhim Bhatt and Jonathan Bellusa. Please join us to come together for a rally to honor the lives of all of Oakland’s sons and daughters murdered by the police. The City Council meeting will begin at 5:30 pm and the rally will start at 5:00 pm at Oscar Grant (Ogawa) Plaza.