Racist Revenge in Jena - A Politically Motivated Drug Bust

[ensho]

http://counterpunch.com/flaherty05142010.html


At four am on July 9 of last year, more than 150 officers from 10 different agencies gathered in a large barn just outside Jena, Louisiana. The day was the culmination of an investigation that Sheriff Scott Franklin said had been going on for nearly two years. Local media was invited, and a video of the Sheriff speaking to the rowdy gathering would later appear online.

The Sheriff called the mobilization “Operation Third Option,” and he said it was about fighting drugs. However, community members say that Sheriff Franklin’s actions are part of an orchestrated revenge for the local civil rights protests that won freedom for six Black high school students - known internationally as the Jena Six - who had been charged with attempted murder for a school fight.

One thing is clear: the Sheriff spent massive resources; yet officers seized no contraband. Together with District Attorney Reed Walters, Sheriff Franklin has said he is seeking maximum penalties for people charged with small-time offenses. Further, in a parish that is eighty-five percent white, his actions have almost exclusively targeted African Americans.

Downtown Baghdad

According to a report from Alexandria’s Town Talk newspaper, LaSalle Parish Sheriff Scott Franklin prepared the assembled crowd for a violent day. "This is serious business what we're fixing to do," said Sheriff Franklin. "If you think this is a training exercise or if you think these are good old boys from redneck country and we're just going to good-old-boy them into handcuffs, you're wrong. These people have nothing to lose. And they know the stakes are high."

“It's going to be like Baghdad out in this community at five am,” he continued dramatically, explaining that their target was 37-year-old Darren DeWayne Brown, who owns a barbershop – one of the only Black-owned businesses in town – and his “lieutenants,” who Franklin said supplied eighty percent of the narcotics for three parishes. "Let me put it to you this way," declared the Sheriff, "When the man says, 'We don't sell dope today,' dope won't get sold."

-snip-

At the end of the day, a dozen people were arrested on charges that ranged from contempt of court to distribution of marijuana, hydrocodone, or cocaine. Despite catching the accused residents by surprise with early morning raids, in which doors were battered down by SWAT teams while a helicopter hovered overhead and then search teams were brought in to take houses and businesses apart, no drugs or other physical evidence were retrieved.

-snip-

Tasered and Traumatized

Samuel Howard was sleeping in his bed, naked, when police broke down his door at five am. Howard says police tasered him three times, twice in the back and once in his arm, and pointed guns at his three kids. They took him out of his house still naked, and brought him to a baseball field, along with the other arrestees from that day. There he says he spent another hour without any clothes, standing with the other arrestees, until police brought him an orange jailhouse jumper.
-snip-
--------------------------


racists are so much fun

[Fumesucker]

1. Yawn.. Standard operating procedure in the land of the free..

The whole drug war is clearly politically motivated, to find that one small part of it is politically motivated is about as surprising as your toe hurting when you drop an anvil on it.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. That would be racially motivated, not politically motivated.

though the conclusion remains the same.

[Fumesucker]

4. The drug war has been about race since the beginning too..

Nothing different about that.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Wow. This is so...

unexpected.