Mumia Abu-Jamal
Von: "MUMIA ABU-JAMAL" <>
Betreff: !*
Lindorff Article on
Cops Taping Mumia Supporters
Datum: Freitag, 19. November 2010 21:43
From: Freedom Archives
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No News is Not Good News: If Cops Tape Protests and Journalists and No One
Reports It, Is It Intimidation?
Created 11/19/2010 - 10:20
by: Dave Lindorff
Is it news when police photograph and videotape demonstrations?
Apparently for American editors and reporters, making that news judgement
depends on where the demonstration occurs and what nationality the police are.
When a hundred artists gathered outside a Beijing courtroom in mid-November to
protest the jailing of artist Wu Yuren, who had earlier been beaten by police
and jailed because he had gone to a police station to file a complaint against a
landlord, the New York Times ran an article by reporter Andrew Jacobs which
pointedly noted that police officers had videotaped the crowd, and then quoted a
demonstrator, artist Dou Bu, as saying, „I was scared to come out here today,
but you have to face your fears.‰
But a week earlier, when several hundred backers of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black
journalist on Pennsylvania‚s death row for the killing of a police officer,
demonstrated in front of a Third Circuit federal court building in Philadelphia,
where a three-judge panel was rehearing an argument on his sentence, and local
police not only videotaped the officially sanctioned rally, but also
aggressively photographed and taped a group of journalists waiting to be allowed
into the courtroom early, there was no mention of their action in any media,
local or national.
In Philadelphia, and in cities across the country, it has become routine for
police departments to openly and surreptitiously videotape participants in
demonstrations, and to assemble files on demonstrators, even when the events are
entirely peaceful and without incident, and when the rallies or marches have
been issued city permits.
Philadelphia Police officials insist that the photographing and videotaping of
protests is legal and is not intended to intimidate dissent. Lt. Raymond Evers,
who heads the Philadelphia Police public affairs unit, says the purpose of such
photographic records is „crowd control and training.‰ He claims the department
wants a record so that if any violence occurs, police can show what happened,
and how police responded, and also so that any perpetrators or malefactors can
be identified later.
That doesn‚t explain what happened at the Abu-Jamal hearing, however. On Nov. 9,
some 12 journalists who had come to the Federal Courthouse on 6th Street, just
two blocks from the old Independence Hall where the Constitution and Declaration
of Independence were signed, to cover an appellate court panel hearing reviewing
a federal district judge‚s 2001 ruling that lifted Abu-Jamal‚s death sentence,
found themselves surrounded by Philadelphia Police who began photographing and
videotaping them at close range. The reporters, who had been credential-checked
and then herded by US Marshals down a kind of „cattle chute‰ constructed of
temporary metal barriers, to a holding point in front of the court building‚s
main entrance, were unable to avoid being repeatedly photographed.
Many, including journalists from abroad, expressed shock and dismay at the
police actions. „Is this how they treat the press here in America?‰ asked one
reporter from Agence France Presse.
Linn Washington, a local journalist with the Philadelphia Tribune, America‚s
oldest African-American newspaper (and a member of the ThisCantBeHappening! news
collective), who was singled out for photographing and videotaping by police
cameramen as he walked down the chute alone to join the other journalists, said,
„It was absolutely a process designed to intimidate us.‰
Journalists who asked the police pointing the cameras, and accompanying officers
in civilian clothes from the department‚s civil affairs office, for an
explanation for their actions, and for information concerning what would be done
with the resulting photographs and video records, were met with a stony silence.
It is likely that their images may end up intelligence files held in Washington,
DC.
A couple of years ago, at an anti-war rally in front of the municipal building
across the street from Philadelphia‚s City Hall, I spotted an unidentified and
unmarked police videographer standing alongside legitimate TV cameramen
recording speakers at the permitted event, and also panning the assembled crowd.
Noting that he had no identifying TV station placard on his camera as the other
cameras had, I asked him what station he was with. When he ignored me, I asked a
couple more times, at which point he aggressively and silently turned his big
videocamera directly on me. At that point, I identified him to rally attendees
as a police officer. He and an associate I hadn‚t noticed earlier immediately
hurried off to a nearby Police Department van and left the scene.
When I later called the police department to ask about the taping, I was told
that it was routine to tape demonstrations, and that because the Philadelphia
Police are part of the federal Anti-Terrorism Joint Strike Force, copies of such
tapes would be provided to the federal Department of Homeland Security.
In other words, in America, participating in a First Amendment-protected
activity--protesting at a rally that has been granted a city permit--can get
your image added to some terrorism file in Washington, DC.
Is that also what happens to the images of reporters who are simply performing
their First Amendment role of reporting on a court hearing?
No doubt.
But is this news in the American corporate media?
Apparently not.
If police tape demonstrators or journalists at a political event, it‚s only news
if it occurs somewhere like China.
Source URL: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/306
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