DENVER, COLORADO- Native American Paul Castaway was having a schizophrenic episode when his mother called the Denver police for assistance. Castaway held a knife to his own neck as he tried to hold off the officers but they shot him anyway. As DPD cuffed the dying 35-year-old, Castaway spoke for everyone when he asked “what’s wrong with you guys?!”
The COPS-GONE-WILD video of 14-year-old Dajerria Becton getting manhandled by McKinney Texas police officer Eric Casebolt got him in trouble. It’s even meant trouble for the racist woman who started the fight, for the racist who called the cops, for a school principal who defended the officer and for another teacher who defended the racism. I’d love to see repercussions too for the crackers pictured in the video waddling about with impunity as the black teens are being picked out. All that, not because some racist shit went down in McKinney TX, but because someone videotaped it and it went viral.
NOW IMAGINE if the cop had pumped four bullets into the teenager, killing her!
Imagine if he’d fired a total of eighteen bullets and he kept pulling the trigger even after he’d emptied his magazine!
How upsetting would that be to see?
If you could imagine that girl a Latina, in a car full of Latina teens, one January morning in Denver, you’d be picturing the police murder of Jessica Hernandez on January 26, 2015. 
Jessica was unarmed, parked in a vehicle purported to be stolen, with four friends.
If you imagined there might be a video of that too, you wouldn’t be imagining things. Someone did make a video, in defiance of police ordering everyone to put down their phones. By a twist of unhappy fate, the Denver police took that video into evidence. They assure us it shows nothing remarkable. I imagine that might be what authorities in McKinney TX would say about their pool party video if it wasn’t in the public’s possession.
DENVER, COLORADO- Rain kept numbers down at the event yesterday calling for Denver officials to investigate the brutal police murder of Latina teen Jessica Hernandez. Even as the crowd influx never surged beyond steady, over the course of two hours the police force arrayed against Occupy Denver and their allies never wavered from the usual: disproportionate and overwhelming. The DPD is obviously taking no chances with the potential firestorm the teen’s killing could ignite in the Denver community. Excellent. Humbled as we may feel that it takes so few activists to threaten the system, we feed off that fear. Individual police officers can denigrate protesters all they want, obviously the protests have their respect.
African American Freddie Gray died as a result of his spine being severed at his neck. It’s no hyperbole to describe the continuing police murders of young black men as deputized, mob LYNCHINGS. The overwhelming victims of these extrajudicial executions are people of color. As if to underline this point, Baltimore police made this clear in no uncertain medical terms. I’m not a doctor, but what injury could better support the inference that Freddie Gray was lynched?
DENVER, COLO.- The Denver police had really stepped in it this time. At 6:30am on January 26, officers opened fire on a parked car full of unarmed teenage girls, killing Jessie Hernandez with eighteen bullets. This time the most homocidal police force this side of Baltimore used lethal force against a charismatic 17-year-old Latina. Even if officers had confused the queer tom-boy for a male, Jessie wouldn’t pass for a boy over eleven. Jessie’s killing follows a year rocked by public protests against police excessive force in Ferguson and New York City. Victims Mike Brown and Eric Garner were black males with the attendant stigmas. This victim was literally a poster child. If Jessie had a criminal record it was as a juvenile. The official account immediately began to unravel as witnesses came forward. Most notably, after the passengers were released from jail, one of them said the police fired first, before an officer was struck by the vehicle and not afterward as the officers claimed. Yet the public’s revulsion has been measured and dimminishing. What happened? Was the outcry stage-managed? By whom? The aftermath of Jessie’s execution was captured on video, in defiance of officers threatening the bystanders. It’s only been described to reporters but the Denver Post has it.
If the family of Jessie Hernandez decides they don’t want people to protest, do we cease protests? If the family doesn’t want to see the video, do we stop demanding its release? Of course they don’t want to relive the brutality of Jessie’s murder, no one does. But the DPD and the Denver Post must not be allowed to draw the curtain on the teen’s brutal death. The DPD’s actions must be exposed. The family doesn’t own this tragic crime. The responsibility to demonstrate against police brutality doesn’t fall on them, or the Latino community or the queer community. It falls on everyone. The Denver police own Jessie’s murder. They own all eighteen bullets, they own the handcuffing and searching of Jessie’s still-live body, they own the jailing of the four other traumatized teens, and they own all the subsequent lies told to excuse the inexcusable, shooting at a carload of unarmed children. If the public is not given the chance to face the reality of police brutality, we’ll never stop the DPD.
DENVER, COLO.- Saturday’s “Every 5th” Anonymous march didn’t get two blocks along the 16th Street Mall before Denver police officers advanced into the compact procession to extract what looked to be targeted activists. Said one Anon: “One minute we were chanting ‘FUCK THE POLICE’ and the next they were fucking themselves! Our demonstration AGAINST police brutality was in solidarity with the New Mexico action #OpAlbuquerque, but became a demonstration OF police brutality. Thank you DPD!” Hundreds of downtown shoppers were drawn to the shit show, to see four dozen masked protesters menaced by a paramilitary force three times the size, ostensibly for jaywalking.
Local news outlets reported that the marchers were diverted from the pedestrian mall when their path was blocked by a dense row of police. Officers made five quick arrests, spraying pepper spray into the faces of marchers who weren’t accommodating their unprovoked, seemingly arbitrary snatch and grab maneuver.
A few minutes later, with tension waning, the DPD made an odd sixth arrest, tackling an unrelated passerby who suddenly bolted from between their ranks. Whether opportune or calculated, the officers piled on this small man which provoked the crowd to close in on the action and boo. This resembled an attempt to incite obstruction, to provide a pretext for a police escalation, because the little man’s curious entrance coincided with a squad of riot cops already dismounting from the sideboards of their SUVs, 
in formation to march but without a situtation to warrant it. Let’s also add that the mystery arrestee was cop-shaped and was led off in a different direction than the other detainees.
There was plenty of shouting “FUCK THE DPD” but protesters didn’t take the bait, hardly resembling the riotous mob the DPD pretended them to be. Instead Denver citizens were treated to a front row DPD command performance of “SHOW ME WHAT A POLICE STATE LOOKS LIKE.”
For me, the FTP message resonates on more levels than the delightfully juvenile. The DPD show of force makes a regular cameo at every political demonstration. Often the military equipment is kept around the corner, but the oppressive presence is made felt. After DPD brutally squashed the Occupy demonstrations of 2011, even activists are deterred from joining protests in large numbers because of the eminent threat of police violence. The ever present police escorts which tail protest marches also taint demonstrators with the implication that their legal assembly verges on illegality. No matter what your issue, the police are going to stand in your way.
Though unpopular with the nonviolence zealots who consider it more effective to be non-confrontational, the FTP theme has become universal across activist disciplines, even with those one might presume were uninitiated. Obviously police violence extends well beyond the curtailment of civil liberties. Earlier on Saturday a group of Colorado Springs Anons stood before the CSPD HQ with a sign than read only “FTP”. It was complemented with posters that tempered the message for the city’s more conservative population, such as “Free the Prisons” and “Failed the People”. Yet countless passing motorists responded by rolling down their windows and pumping their fists shouting “Fuck the Police!”
More photos from Denver Anon and photog Stuart Sipkin.
Here’s the official 4/5 press release, reproduced from Pastebin:
Anonymous Police Brutality Protest/#Every5th/@AnarchoAnon
MEDIA ALERT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: [email protected] / @AnarchoAnon
Denver 4/5—Police in Denver violently attacked a protest march against police brutality on the Downtown 16th street mall a few minutes after it began at 5:30 pm. 6 arrests took place, with police violently tackling individuals in the crowd and spraying pepper spray at protesters and bystanders. A witness said that several of those arrested were passers-by who were not involved in the protest. This protest, called by the informal net-based group known as “Anonymous,” was part of the “Every 5th” event series, in which protesters have gathered downtown on the 5th of every month to protest various issues since November 5, 2013. This particular march was planned in solidarity with protests over a recent police murder of a homeless man in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with an eye to similar ongoing police brutality issues in Denver.
“The Albuquerque Police Department has come under federal scrutiny for being involved in 37 shootings since 2010, 23 of them fatal.” (Democracy Now)
One participant said: “There were about 50 of us at the march. We peacefully marched from Civic Center Park to the 16th st mall, our usual march route. As soon as we turned off the mall, police officers violently tackled individuals, swung clubs at others, and sprayed clouds of pepper spray at the crowd. They then formed a line and took out rubber bullet guns, and continued to try to antagonize the crowd. The crowd grew larger as pedestrians became alarmed by the aggressive behavior of the Denver Police Department. There were also numerous military-style vehicles present with SWAT officers riding on the outside. This seems to be a deliberately intimidating response in which DPD is trying to send a strong message to the citizens of their city that the police will not tolerate people speaking out against police brutality. Despite the police violence, our march continued successfully for several hours, snaking through city streets, denouncing police brutality with chants and fliers. This sort of behavior by the police really only serves to promote our protest, and as we saw today, it actually encourages people to join us.”
UPDATE:
All 6 who were wrongfully arrested have plead not guilty and have been released on bond/PR and reported back the following:
Police kept insisting the protestors’ water bottles in their backpacks were “molotov cocktails” even after smelling the water. Repeatedly.
They were taken to what appeared to be a mass arrest area that had been set up in advance. There was a table piled with sandwiches and frosted cupcakes. When asked by one of the protesters if the cupcakes had been made especially for the occasion. A cop responded “Yes, there are cupcakes. And they aren’t for you!”
One Denver Sheriff was heard bragging in the jail to another sheriff about how he had just said to one of the cuffed arrestees “I can beat the shit out of you and won’t even lose my job. Nothing will happen to me.”
Multiple photos of direct police interaction during the protest were deleted off of one of the arrestee’s cameras.
When one bystander tried to ask a question about the protest, he was called homophobic and sexist slurs by the police as he was being arrested.
Regardless of arguments about reforming the police versus abolishing them altogether one thing the protesters are in agreement about is that DPD acts like a gang of terrorists who aren’t accountable in any way to the people they purport to “Protect and Serve.
Archived livestream footage clips from march: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/anarcho-anon
Twitter handles with details from the event: @anarchoanon @standupdenver @mcsole @occupydenver @internerve
The Oakland transit police murder a man in cold blood in front of multiple witnesses and then try to confiscate all the videos of their crime, but they miss one. That one got away on the subway with the film. BART shooting captured on video As you can see by this newspaper article, the police are trying to figure how best to get away with their murder with an excuse, and the press is always willing to cooperate with these cover ups of cop crimes. Oakland Police Cop Watch has the video here…
New Footage of Oakland Man Murdered By BART Cop
Here we go again! Yet another police murder by taser and the cover up has already begun. The police say they tasered Jermaine Ward while he was uncuffed, while his companion who was also arrested, says that he was handcuffed already. Can you tell who is telling the truth here?
Possible cause of the original stop by police? Jermaine, who is Black, had a White girlfriend in the car with him. Florida Cops Taser and Kill a Man The police say the handcuffed man was resisting arrest and not following orders.
Did they taser him because he refused to spit out the weed he was trying to swallow? Did the tasering cause him to later choke to death? Did the police officer even care that he was putting a man in danger of losing his life over an inconsequentiality?
With the taser, the police can become cop, judge, and executioner in a heart beat. Why does the Police State love electricity so much, I wonder?
Police State America abroad; Police State America at home.
Pity those that are mentally ill, for they must fear for their lives from those supposedly sworn to protect them. The current police weapon of choice, or course, is now the taser.
The police continue to pretend that the taser is a non-lethal weapon just as the government continues to pretend that it doesn’t brutally torture prisoners. And most all of us pretend that we live in a society ruled by the goodness of Law and Justice. Video of police killing another mentally ill person.
When will we be able to get this nasty weapon away from the police? This weapon allows the police to get lazy, as seen on the film of this murder, and lazy police kill people without any consequence to them at all.
The police have always gotten away with murder, but at least police murder was once considered illegal. Police murder with tasers is now not illegal and is a way to force people into a Russian Roulette game played with their lives, while being totally in the hands of an uncaring police force.