Handcuffed and shaking in the cold wind
Via G Felis, Sam Levin at the Guardian tells the appalling story of a guy brutally arrested and held for months as a suspected “Black Identity Extremist”:
Rakem Balogun thought he was dreaming when armed agents in tactical gear stormed his apartment. Startled awake by a large crash and officers screaming commands, he soon realized his nightmare was real, and he and his 15-year-old son were forced outside of their Dallas home, wearing only underwear.
Handcuffed and shaking in the cold wind, Balogun thought a misunderstanding must have led the FBI to his door on 12 December 2017. The father of three said he was shocked to later learn that agents investigating “domestic terrorism” had been monitoring him for years and were arresting him that day in part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police.
Arresting him with maximum fuss and terrorization, apparently in the middle of the night – and making him go outside in the cold in his underwear.
Balogun spoke to the Guardian this week in his first interview since he was released from prison after five months locked up and denied bail while US attorneys tried and failed to prosecute him, accusing him of being a threat to law enforcement and an illegal gun owner.
Balogun, who lost his home and more while incarcerated, is believed to be the first person targeted and prosecuted under a secretive US surveillance effort to track so-called “black identity extremists”. In a leaked August 2017 report from the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit, officials claimed that there had been a “resurgence in ideologically motivated, violent criminal activity” stemming from African Americans’ “perceptions of police brutality”.
The counter-terrorism assessment provided minimal data or evidence of threats against police, but discussed a few isolated incidents, notably the case of Micah Johnson who killed five officers in Texas. The report sparked backlash from civil rights groups and some Democrats, who feared the government would use the broad designation to prosecute activists and groups like Black Lives Matter.
A few isolated incidents don’t sound like enough reason to claim there is such a thing as “black identity extremism” let alone that it needs to be investigated let alone that it justifies sending people to jail for months while the FBI tries to come up with some shred of evidence.
Investigators began monitoring Balogun, whose legal name is Christopher Daniels, after he participated in an Austin, Texas, rally in March 2015 protesting against law enforcement, special agent Aaron Keighley testified in court.
The FBI, Keighley said, learned of the protest from a video on Infowars, a far-right site run by the commentator Alex Jones, known for spreading false news and conspiracy theories.
They have got to be kidding. INFOWARS?? They consider that a reliable source??!
Keighley made no mention of Balogun’s specific actions at the rally, but noted the marchers’ anti-police statements, such as “oink oink bang bang” and “the only good pig is a pig that’s dead”. The agent also mentioned Balogun’s Facebook posts calling a murder suspect in a police officer’s death a “hero” and expressing “solidarity” with the man who killed officers in Texas when he posted: “They deserve what they got.”
That’s interesting because when women report getting very explicit threats on social media – “I will rape you to death, I will cut your tits off, I will knock your teeth out with a brick” – the police say it’s just trolling and they can do nothing. Yet a guy says of the police, “They deserve what they got,” and wham he’s jailed for months and loses his job and his house.
Keighley, however, later admitted the FBI had no evidence of Balogun making any specific threats about harming police.
At the time of his Facebook posts, Balogun said he was angry and “venting” about the high-profile cases of police killing innocent black men and women in America, including Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. He was particularly disgusted with the way the media and law enforcement officials portrayed the killings as justified and said that when he wrote those posts “I just mimicked their reactions to our killings.”
Read the whole thing. It’s horrifying.
Apparently the FBI is taking a page from the “I’ll give you something to cry about” school of social engineering.
Hyeah, good point. “You’re against police brutality? I’ll show you police brutality!”
“…whose legal name is Christopher Daniels ”
Tinge of racism here? Why does the report use “Balogun” throughout, if his legal name – i.e., his name – is Daniels? Which name does he normally use?
And…speech is free, but don’t rubbish the police.
When objecting to police gunning down black men gets you imprisoned for five months on bogus charges… speech isn’t free.
When they effectively kidnap you, they’re less “police” than a gang. Or at any rate, whatever “police” is supposed to mean under those circumstances, you damn well should rubbish them. Basic decency calls for calling that out as trash behavior, criminal behavior.
If you shouldn’t do that out of fear, well, I can’t fault the pragmatism but honesty demands recognizing that it’s a police state, not a republic run by and for a free citizenry.
They’d been watching him for years, but they had to snatch him up in the middle of the night and drag him outside in his underwear. I guess just knocking at 9 in the morning isn’t he-man enough for them.
From the perspective of a person of color, living in the US, where one’s probability of incarceration for any type of offense, one’s chance of dying as a result of any contact with law enforcement, and one’s existence is completely circumscribed by institutional racism, the police are rubbish.
It’s all a bit too much like this:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/us/minneapolis-police-shooting-justine-damond.html
Justine Damond was shot, for Chrissake, for after she did the right thing.
“Officer Noor, a member of the area’s large Somali immigrant community, began patrolling the district in southwest Minneapolis 14 months before the shooting. He was the first Somali officer to be stationed in that area, and was seen as a cultural bridge to a community that has at times had tensions with the police.”
Thanks to the abundance of gangs and guns in both the US and Somalia, both societies are coming to resemble each other.
Quite. Whenever in the slightest doubt, shoot first: even if the target turns out to be an innocent bystander, the person who called you for help, someone’s child, or dog or cat, it is best to take no chances. And the NRA would have to agree.
Omar,@7
Given that the US population is heavily armed, the ‘shoot first’ mentality is understandable, if not justifiable.
Recently my neighbors went on vacation for a month and the asked me to look after their house which involved checking the inside of the house and the windows for any sign of intruders. On one occasion someone reported me to the police as a suspicious individual. A patrol car arrived very quickly, however the police didn’t shoot me and their guns stayed in their holsters. They asked the usual questions and were satisfied that I was harmless. Luckily I don’t live in the US.
When is Officer Noor ever going to appear in a court, the delay is disgusting.
RJW:
Perhaps the answer is to ring the police before entering the house, and turn all lights on while you are there. Actually, I took a tip from something I read in the autobiography of the late Malcolm X, who was a housebreaker in his youth. His method was to start by establishing whether or not anyone was home before busting in. He would first knock on the front door, and ask for directions or some fictitious occupant. He said that he never tried to break into a house where the light was on in the bathroom, as that is the one situation where the owner can be in, and at the same time be refusing to answer a knock at the front door. So if a light was on in the bathroom, he moved on down the street a bit.
Accordingly, whenever we go away, we leave both the (low wattage) light and a radio playing softly in the bathroom.
Certainly fooled my wife’s brother. He came round one night when we were away and became a bit concerned.
Omar,
Sound advice. After the incident my neighbor rang the local police and explained the situation.
My point was that unlike the US, the probability of an offender being armed is relatively low, so the police are less trigger happy.