Author
queer-j brad
The Sagon Penn Chapter of CopWatch Conference, focusing on Police Brutality, was held on October 22 at the Hot Monkey Love Cafe in San Diego. Audio and transcribed excerpts from the second panel "Harassment of Young People."
Harassment of Young People
Facilitator: Ayehsa Newell
Panelists: Alma, Enrique, Justino and Carly
Audio Duration: 1 hr 6 min
Alma Felan (0:55)
"I booked five political bands, punk rock bands... One of the bands put out a flyer with Osama bin Laden and Bush having [sex]... I got a phone call from the police department... [They said] 'I advise you that what you are doing, doesn't look good for your business, it doesn't look good for your community. What you need to do is to cancel the show that you are advertising on your window and make sure you don't have those shows any more because we can put a red flag on your business'... [I replied] 'I'm a family business and I honestly don't like my daughters to see that but I'm not going to cancel the show... Don't you have kids? That's what they do when they want to be heard, and so what we have to do is to hear them'... If I cancel the show, it will look like I am afraid of them, and I am not afraid of anyone. We did the show. Two cops were across the street... They never had the courage to cross the street and walk in here. What this means is if you come together, they will be more afraid of you then you are of them. So unity means power, so we have to stay united."
( http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/107675.shtml )
Enrique de la Cruz (13:56)
"We grew up in Logan Heights. It wasn't easy, because we one the one hand had to deal with the situation of being poor, but on the other hand we had to deal with the cops harassing us on morrow park, right there, they'd be like coming up to us, like we know you've got drugs, we know you have liquor somewhere. It kind of started showing me the need of people to know their rights, the need to be organized, organized to the point where if the cops came and people knew their rights, that you could tell the cops 'you know what, hell no, you're not coming to talk to me, you're not coming over here. Because once these people started knowing their rights, one of my cousins actually started walking around with the bill of rights and other know your rights police pamphlets in the back of his pocket. He started passing them around to other young people. When they started doing that the cops got a little wary. They got a little tougher because they wanted to harass them, they wanted to intimidate them.
But at the same time they knew they just couldn't mess with them for anything, for any reason. They knew that they were going to be harassed even more because of that but they were still doing it... That's what they're telling us with these police institutions. They're saying that we need in order for us not to kill each other. We need them to in order for us to be safe in our own streets. What we need is for us to get organized and to learn from each other. Each person can teach somebody else something."
Ayesha Newell (18:02)
"I want to talk about CopWatch and what we do here in san Diego. We are working on a film project focusing on women and mothers and their struggles with having their children murdered by the police in the street.s And the struggle with trying to get representation and trying to get justice when things like this happen to you, They explode in your life and make you want to do something. We also advocate for folks to to file complaints against police officers, make a record of it. Know your rights. We have copies of police complaint forms around, so you will know to get the name and the badge number of that officer who is harassing you or harassing your friends and document that, because the more complaints against them they have in their file... [The files] aren't open to the public, we cant just go look at that and say, oh this guy is just an ass, he needs to not have his job, we can't do that. But that day us coming. We have to make it a record. We have to let other people know that's it going on. When that officer comes before a court and that judge looks in that officer's file and there is a pile of complaints, something's going to happen. It's not going to happen overnight, but little by little we have to document it."
Justino Jiménez (20:07)
"It seems to me that in these neighborhoods, ghetto or urban or whatever you want to call it, the way you present yourself makes you a target. Anytime you walk down the street wearing baggy clothes, wearing a beanie, looking basically like I look today, you are a sitting duck target for any type of police harassment. In certain communities in san diego, they have gang task forces. What they do is random gang sweeps, that means the police have a right to stop any two or more people for any reason, because that constitutes a gang. I myself have been caught up in many gang sweeps, and basically it is legal harassment. The police have a right to shake you down and to try to find something on you, even if you are just walking down the street minding your own business... One of my personal friends was a victim of police brutality. In the neighborhood everybody looked up to him because he was good at sports, he was really good at education... One night he was at a party... The cops raided this party... He decided to walk out the back door of the kitchen... Without any type of warning the cop pulled out his gun and shot my friend six times in his back, killing him on the spot... His family is scared to death of the police... It's a class issue, it's a class struggle. Because everything I am talking about right now is happening on a daily basis in most if not all poor and working class communities. You want to talk to someone out of Del Mar Heights or out of Encinitas, this stuff isn't going on... We have to go back to our communities and to unify the people who think they have nothing in common. These are people from all walks of life, we're talking about working class people, we're talking about old, young, black, white, latin@ all having the same problems, all being harassed by the police for nothing. For nothing!"
Carly (32:48)
"Sometime along the way I stepped into a category of privilege that at 16 I had no access to... I was immediately drawn to activism through photography, in wanting to be able to help give voice to what i saw while running down the streets. In the end, I think that what i have become is a collector of stories and hopefully am giving justice to the perspectives of people i have met along the way and carrying their experiences in the same way that you carry the memories of your friends. so that isn't lost in how crazy this world can be... Regardless of whether I was working with queer youth or transgender youth or youth of color or youth coming from incredibly poverty stricken communities, the one thread that tied them together, aside from being youth, was how fucked up the society treated them, and those with the most power being the police, being the state... I see the young people in all of these marches, the young people in all of these rallies come in full of passion, full of fire. They are the ones who are willing to be more creative in the tactics that they use, the ones who are more spontaneous in coming to these events... You can't change anything by sticking to the formula, sticking to the plan, you have to do what feels right in the moment, to fuck things up, to change it, As a documentary photographer, I find myself always at the line where the police meet the people... Coming to marches where there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people, like the ones organized by the San Diego Coalition for Peace and Justice, where there is seemingly this cooperation with the police... the police are still in there, whether undercover or not, I find them more often than not targeting, following, harassing, working to aggravate the younger people in the crowd, whether they have their masks on are not, it is the younger people in the crowd who are targeted, not necessarily because they are the loudest, not necessarily because they are the ones trying to speak, but because there is that assumption that the youth are doing wrong.... Being fiery, being passionate, I find the younger people on the outskirts, often leading the way on these marches. Of course the police, the bicycle brigades use that space to aggravate the crowd, aggravate the young people in order to get enough to arrest them or to harass them further... To young people, be the fucking media, be your own media... When there is documentation, when all the eyewitnesses are willing to come forward and stand together, their cases are shot... To those of us who are no longer in that category of youth, we have that privilege of deciding there is a moment at these protests or rallies to either step away from all those crazy little youth running around creating trouble or step in and support that passion."
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