Posts Tagged ‘SAN FRANCISCO’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 15, 2024 at 1:34 am
Blacks, charging police with brutality and racism, are increasingly strident in demanding an end to both.
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King, a black motorist, was severely beaten by four Los Angeles Police Department officers. Captured on video, the beating came during his arrest after a high speed pursuit for driving while intoxicated.
On April 29, 1992, the jury acquitted the officers of assault. The verdict touched off six days of rioting, resulting in 63 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damage to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses.
On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a black man, was choked to death in Staten Island by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo. His “crime”: Selling single cigarettes without a tax stamp.
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
And on May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a part-time security guard, was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds.
Nationwide rioting erupted, and at least 200 cities imposed curfews. At least 27 states and Washington, D.C., activated over 62,000 National Guard troops in response to the protests.
Then-President Donald Trump, frightened by protests in Washington, D.C., disappeared into the White House bunker. Later, he ordered U.S. Park police to clear nearby Lafayette Park of a peaceful demonstration so he could stage a photo-op at St. John’s Church.
But blacks have not been the only victims of brutality by racist police or vigilantes.
Fifty years ago, whites—not blacks—-were the targets of black men intent on waging a race war.
From October 20, 1973 to April 20, 1974, San Francisco was rocked by a series of random, brutal attacks against whites. The assailant was at first thought to be a lone black gunman.
The toll finally reached 16 murders, five woundings, one rape, and the attempted kidnapping of three children.
The rampage, however, was not limited to San Francisco. Throughout California—from Bakersfield to San Diego—at least 93 other whites were murdered, according to later police investigations.
The killing spree did not end until May 1, 1974, with a surprise raid by heavily-armed San Francisco police.
What follows is an inside account of the “Zebra” death cult, as depicted through the grand jury testimony of the star witness against the killers: Anthony C. Harris.
At 28, Harris was a fifth-dan kung-fu expert who always dressed well and spoke softly. He also had firsthand knowledge of the “Zebra murders.”
Anthony Harris
Born in Long Beach, California, in 1946, Anthony Cornelius Harris got as far as the sixth grade. He clashed often with police and, on January 3, 1969, he was convicted for assaulting a policeman.
He was released from prison in May, 1970, when he won a reversal of his sentence at the California Supreme Court.
But he was once again arrested and convicted, in 1971, of second-degree burglary in Los Angeles. For this, he drew a sentence at San Quentin prison.
And he also met two of the future “Zebra” killers: Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks.
Cooks had been convicted of robbery; Moore had been sent to prison for burglary. Both wanted Harris, a fifth-dan kung-fu expert, to teach them the martial arts.
Cooks wanted to learn kung-fu so he could kill whites “because they had castrated and killed our ancestors and stomped our babies’ heads in.”
While an inmate at San Quentin prison, Harris became a devout member of the Nation of Islam.
At that time, the spiritual leader of the Nation was Elijah Muhammad, who preached a gospel of black separatism and superiority. Muhammad taught that whites were literally the incarnation of evil, a race of “blue-eyed devils.”
Elijah Muhammed
To test the worthiness of His Chosen Black People, proclaimed Muhammad, Allah had allowed their 400-year persecution by these “bleached-out, grafted snakes.”
But that great testing period would soon come to its end. Then would follow the literal, heaven-sent destruction of all whites. At the conclusion of this divine slaughter, Allah would create a paradise earth for His Chosen Black People.
Harris, Moore and Cooks had a conversation in the temporary Muslim temple in the prison–about “killing people and cutting their heads off—just white people,” Harris later testified in court.
After Harris was paroled on October 15, 1973, he drifted into San Francisco. There he made a new friend—Larry Craig Green, who helped him into a job at the Black Self-Help, a Muslim-owned, furniture-moving company in the city.
Yet another new friend he made there was J.C. Simon.
Soon he was reunited with Jessie Cooks, who had been paroled in July. The release of Manuel Moore followed in November—as did his own arrival in San Francisco.
In September or October, 1973, Harris and 12 to 13 other Muslims—including Simon, Cooks and Green—et at J.C. Simon’s San Francisco apartment.
“They asked me,” Harris later testified, “was I able to kill anyone? Did I have my mind together? They wanted me to work in the [Muslim] temple” as a kung-fu instructor.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 9, 2024 at 12:31 am
The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen“ (the German word for “subhumans”) campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.”
These are essentially holding pens for Untermenschen until they can be “navigated” to permanent housing.
But housing is in short supply in San Francisco, and there is no telling how long many of these drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill and/or bums will stay in them. Or what harm they will wreak on the neighborhoods warehousing them.
Since 2015, eight Navigation Centers have been opened throughout San Francisco; six are in operation.
Among the “amenities” they provide:
- Meals
- Privacy
- Space for pets
- Space separate from sleeping areas
- Laundry
- Access to benefits
- Wi-Fi
Hundreds—if not thousands—of their occupants are meth or heroin addicts. Such people commit virtually any crime to support their habit. And their crimes of choice are burglary and robbery.
Thus, pouring large numbers of them into San Francisco neighborhoods via “Navigation Centers” guarantees that countless decent citizens will become targets for desperate criminals.
At a public hearing in January, 2020, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin touted the importance of Navigation Centers—including the one that would soon be established at Post and Hyde Streets.
When a local resident asked, “Is one of these centers located where you live?” Peskin replied: “No.”
In short: The city’s elite make sure their homes are far removed from the plague they so easily inflict on San Francisco residents.
In fact, when they’re not swallowing alcohol or injecting, swallowing or sniffing drugs, many of San Francisco’s “homeless” spend a lot of their time ripping off retail stores.
Walgreens drug stores have proven a particular target for these DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums—the four groups that make up 90% of the “homeless” population.
“I feel sorry for the clerks, they are regularly being verbally assaulted,” a regular customer, Sebastian Luke, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
“The clerks say there is nothing they can do. They say Walgreens’ policy is to not get involved. They don’t want anyone getting injured or getting sued, so the guys just keep coming in and taking whatever they want.”
“Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average,” Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso told the Chronicle in October, 2021.
“During this time to help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average in an effort to provide a safe environment.”
As a result, Walgreens has closed at least 11 stores in San Francisco.
One store in the San Francisco area reportedly lost $1,000 a day to theft.
Many shoplifters then sell their stolen goods on the street—often near the store where they stole them.
Under California law, theft under $950 is considered a misdemeanor, but many prosecutors prefer to free those charged rather than holding them in jail.
The maximum sentence they could get: Six months.
Low-income and disabled seniors who depend on these disappearing drug stores for prescriptions are especially at risk.
The city budgeted $1.1 billion for fiscal year 2021-22 on DDMBs. Dividing that amount by about 7,754 DDMBs provides the figure of about $128,925 per DDMB per year.
So what can San Francisco do to effectively combat the plague of DDMBs?
- Launch a “Please Do Not Feed the Bums” publicity campaign—as it has against feeding pigeons. And those caught doing so should be heavily fined.
- Trash cans should be equipped with locked doors, to prevent bums from using them as food dispensers.
- Those living on the street should be given two choices: (1) Go to a local shelter or face arrest and the immediate confiscation of their possessions;
- (2) An “Untermenschen City” should be set up near the city dump. There they can live in their tents and/or sleeping bags while being unable to daily confront or assault others to obtain free money.
- San Francisco’s rent control laws should be strengthened, to prevent future evictions owing to the unchecked greed of landlords. Tenants on fixed incomes should be given special protections against extortionate rent increases.
- Bus drivers should be able to legally refuse passengers who stink of urine/feces, as they present a potential health-hazard to others.
- The owners of restaurants, theaters and grocery stores should likewise be allowed to refuse service on the same basis.
- Those applying for welfare benefits should be required to provide proof of residence. Too many people come to San Francisco because, upon arrival, they can immediately apply for such benefits.
- Set up a special unit to remove “street people” and their possessions from city sidewalks. This could be a division of the Sanitation Department, since its personnel are used to removing filth and debris of all types.
- Forcefully tell alcoholics and drug addicts: “Your anti-social behavior is not welcome here. Take your self-destructive lifestyles elsewhere. We won’t subsidize them.”
- Take the mentally unstable off the street and place them in institutions where their needs can be met.
- Tell those who are just plain bums: “Don’t expect us to support you.”
Only then will San Francisco reclaim its place as America’s most beloved city..
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 8, 2024 at 12:10 am
If you are a firefighter, police officer, paramedic or schoolteacher, and want to live in San Francisco, forget it.
According to Rent Cafe, which provides apartment listings directly from top property managers: “The average [monthly] rent for an apartment in San Francisco is $2,879.” And “the average size for a San Francisco apartment is 739 square feet.”
But there’s hope for you yet—if you’re a Druggie, Drunk, Mental or Bum (DDMBs).
Why?
Because the Mayor of San Francisco—currently London Breed—and Board of Supervisors have deliberately created an Untermenschen-friendly program that actually encourages such people to move to the city.
“Untermenschen,” in German, means “subhuman.”
The short version of this is “Unters.”
A major part of this lies in placing these “guests” in hotels throughout the city. These range from the relatively low-budget Motel 6 to the luxurious Mark Hopkins.
“Guests” receive personal grooming, sanitary and cleaning supplies, three delivered meals, and laundry service for clothes and linens.
The hotels were pressured into accepting the Unters, but they also wanted to recover monies lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The city is paying $200 per night per room, totaling $6,000 a month—nearly double the cost of a private one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco.
But there is a big catch for the hotels: When the “homeless” are placed in subsidized housing, their mental illness, irresponsible addiction to drugs and/or alcohol and/or generally sloth-like habits usually trash those premises.
San Francisco is secretly placing DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums—among the tourists who check into these hotels. It does so by designating them as “emergency front-line workers.”
For most people, this means doctors, nurses and similar professionals.
It doesn’t mean DDMBs, if not outright criminals.
The city has invoked emergency-disaster law to keep this information secret. Officials refuse to notify the public about the dangers within their midst. The list of hotels is withheld from the press and reporters are forbidden to enter the properties.
City and hotel workers are required to sign nondisclosure agreements that forbid them to reveal the dangers they and their legitimate guests are exposed to. Doing so is punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment for up to one year, or both.
Despite this, the truth has been leaking out. Security guards stand outside hotel entrances, alerting anyone who sees them that all is not well. Crime, vagrancy and drug usage/dealing have also increased around the hotels.
In one hotel, Unters receive needle kits and are advised to call the front desk before shooting up. Drug-related deaths have occurred. Containers for safely disposing of needles are placed on every floor. Even so, used syringes are often left where non-addicts can be infected by them.
“There are parties, drug overdoses, deaths, assaults on people, sexual harassment. It’s pandemonium,” City Journal writer Erica Sandberg reported. “This is very bad and it needs to be stopped.
“What they [hotel employees] told about the situation inside goes beyond any scope. They are not just terrified, they are traumatized by what they see. According to their stories, in hotels they found mattresses with feces, blood, hospital bandages on the floor. What people see is so terrible that they go out and say, ‘I don’t want to go back there.'”
City officials provide far more than free room and board to DDMBs.
The Department of Public Health (DPH) runs the COVID-19 Alternative Housing Program. And it works in two stages:
Stage 1: Move the “homeless” into the city’s hotels—at city expense.
Stage 2: Provide them with not only free food and shelter but free alcohol, cannabis, and cigarettes.
According to a May 11, 2020 story in City Journal.org:
“The program’s primary purpose is to keep homeless people, the majority of whom are addicts, out of harm’s way during the pandemic. By getting their substance of choice delivered, the thinking goes, the guests may be more apt to remain in their government-funded rooms.
“Another purpose of the program is to protect the public against the spread of coronavirus. The city doesn’t want homeless people who should be staying in their rooms roaming the neighborhood in search of the substances, potentially infecting others.”
But the agency doesn’t require that its addict “guests” remain quarantined. It merely asks that they do so.
After news about these deliveries leaked on social media, DPH claimed that “rumors that guests of San Francisco’s alternative housing program are receiving taxpayer-funded deliveries of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco are false.”
Except that the reports weren’t false.
The program is funded by private philanthropists. Nevertheless:
- DPH administers and oversees the program.
- It’s staffed by city workers, including doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers and security personnel.
- The department manages, stores and distributes the substances.
- Employee time is involved.
Thus, the program is financed by taxpayers, even if an outside group provides some of the funding.
The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen“ campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.” These are essentially holding pens for Unters—until they can be “navigated” to permanent housing.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 7, 2024 at 12:10 am
On November 3, 2021, National Public Radio’s website carried the following headline: “San Francisco’s new rapid response teams race to save lives as ODs dramatically rise.”
From the story:
“‘Fentanyl is a game-changer,’ Dr. Hillary Kunins, the city’s director of behavioral and mental health services, says of the opioid that’s 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. ‘It requires a new way of thinking and resourcing.’ It also, she says, ‘requires people to learn to work across disciplines and sometimes across organizations.'”
And what is the ultimate result of repeatedly saving drug-abusers from their own self-destructive behavior?
In his 2021 bestseller, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, author Michael Shellenberger provides the answer.
According to its dust jacket:
“Progressives claimed they knew how to solve homelessness, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, progressives made those problems worse.
“Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing, and alternatives to jail and prison.
“But as homeless encampments spread, and overdose deaths skyrocketed, Shellenberger decided to take a closer look at the problem. What he discovered shocked him. The problems had grown worse not despite but because of progressive policies.”
In a June 1, 2022 interview with The Spectator World, Shellenberger blamed liberal ideology for this epidemic:
“The first thing is that they don’t enforce laws. They don’t enforce laws against people that they consider victims, which includes addicts and the mentally ill. And if you don’t enforce laws it turns out people don’t follow them and you don’t have functioning civilization.
Michael Shellenberger
Michael Shellenberger, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
“The second is that they have pursued a radical de-incarceration, de-policing and decriminalization agenda, which has removed penalties for many laws, including shoplifting $950 worth of goods, or possessing three grams of fentanyl and meth, enough to produce paranoid psychosis. And they’ve pursued a so-called housing first anti-shelter policy.
“So they’ve defunded the shelters. The governor himself has established that housing should be a right. That anybody who comes to San Francisco or Los Angeles should have their own apartment unit in those cities. That is the state policy. It is so ridiculous. It is shocking to even say that that is what the policy is, but that is what it is.
“What we need is pretty straightforward. We need to enforce laws. We need a shelter-first housing-earned policy and you need statewide psychiatric and addiction care like they have in every civilized country.
“We’re reviving people from overdose six, nine, twelve times and then sending them right back onto the streets to smoke more fentanyl. It’s bonkers.
“Fifty percent to 75 percent of all fires put out by the San Francisco and Los Angeles fire departments are in homeless encampments. My own research, and the research of others, shows that most of these are arson fires, people just getting back at each other.”
And how did the city’s mayor, London Breed, respond to the closing of Whole Foods Market? With a public statement that was pure boilerplate:
“Public safety is Mayor Breed’s top priority and vital to the City’s work around restoring our economy and making our residents and workers feel safe.
“Over the last several months, the San Francisco Police Department and the Mayor’s Office have been working collaboratively with Whole Foods’ leadership to address public safety issues at their 8th and Market location.
“We will continue to engage with them about the future use of the site. The Police will continue aggressively enforcing against open-air drug dealing, maximizing police response to urgent calls for assistance, partnering with retailers to address theft in their stores, and enforcing new street vending regulations to disrupt the sale of stolen goods.”
In short: Blah-blah-blah.
Nowhere in that statement is there any mention that from 2020 to July, 2022, San Francisco had a District Attorney—Chesa Boudin—who saw criminals as victims and sought any reason to excuse them for their crimes.
Nor is there any mention that the current D.A.—Brooke Jenkins—remains stymied by the realities that, under California law:
- Theft under $950 is considered a misdemeanor.
- As a result, many prosecutors prefer to free those charged rather than holding them in jail.
- The maximum sentence offenders can get is six months.
- This has led to massive shoplifting sprees at drugstores and merchandise discount stores like Target.
Also left unsaid:
- Firefighters, police officers and schoolteachers are unable to afford the extortionate rents charged by San Francisco landlords.
- But city officials have thrown out the welcome mat for DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums.
- Many DDMBs refuse to enter the city’s available shelters. Some claim these places are dangerous—understandably so, since they’re peopled with drug addicts, alcoholics, psychotics and outright bums.
- Another reason why many of these shelters go unused: They don’t allow their “guests” to drink up or drug up.
The latest wrinkle in San Francisco’s “be kind to Untermenschen“ campaign is the creation of “Navigation Centers.” These are essentially holding pens for DDMBs—until they can be “navigated” to permanent housing.
This is a triumph of misleading language over reality, since there is little available housing in San Francisco to “navigate” them to.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on February 6, 2024 at 12:10 am
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit forced San Francisco’s Mayor and Board of Supervisors to do what, for years, they had refused to do: Clear the city’s streets of DDMBs—Druggies, Drunks, Mentals and Bums.
APEC was established in 1989 to promote trade between the United States and Asian-Pacific nations.
From November 11-17, 2023, world and economic leaders were expected to descend on San Francisco. Among those expected to attend: President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“APEC will be a major moment that will live in our City’s rich history. We will show the world San Francisco’s unique ability to create a world-class experience where people continue to want to live, work, and visit,” said San Francisco Mayor London Breed in a news release.
And that meant San Francisco had to counter the “Doom Loop” image it has acquired since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020.
This meant removing homeless camps that had become major health hazards, driving away tourists and infuriating local businesses. These, in turn, had spawned widespread drug abuse, public defecation, filth and rampant theft in the surrounding areas.
During the week before the summit, the city cleared many camps from seven intersections around the Tenderloin, the most affected part of San Francisco. Key intersections near the APEC site—the Moscone Center in the South of Market area—became tent-free for the first time in months.
A typical street scene
The city also established a “security zone” area around the Moscone Center that only admitted APEC attendees and people who lived in the area.
This, of course, led many tax-paying San Francisco residents to demand: “Why does it take the appearance of self-important big-shots to persuade city leaders to make San Francisco a safe and desirable place to live and work?”
A massive casualty of the irresponsibility of “city leaders” had come on April 10, 2023: One of the largest supermarkets in downtown San Francisco—the Whole Foods Market at Eighth and Market streets—announced it would shut down at the close of business that day.
The store, operated by Amazon, had been operating slightly more than a year. It had become the repeated victim of wholesale thefts courtesy of the city’s DDMBs.
The Politically Correct name for these people is “unhoused.” The accurate name for them is summed up in a German word: “Untermenschen”—“subhumans.”
Given the Politically Correct climate of San Francisco, the closing of the Whole Foods store was almost guaranteed to happen.
At its opening, on March 10, 2022, the store operated from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. By October, it opened at 9 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m.
“It’s to better serve our customers, and it’s more or less because of the area and security issues,” said the store’s manager. “There’s just high theft and people being hostile.”
In November, the store enforced new rules for customers after syringes and crack pipes were found in the restroom. The bathroom was now open only to customers who showed security guards a receipt. Customers were then given a QR code for entry.
It was no coincidence that the bathrooms were often used by drug-abusers—the store was close to the Tenderloin Center, a safe drug-use site.
Crack cocaine
Argv0, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikipedia Commons
Another reason for the change in bathroom policy: Thieves would fill up suitcases with merchandise before going into the restroom.
And who is ultimately responsible for such outrages?
San Francisco’s topmost officials—the Mayor, Board of Supervisors, District Attorney and chief of the San Francisco Police Department. Together, they have formed an “Untermenschen”-friendly alliance.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted a massive loss in foot traffic in downtown San Francisco as employees fled high rises to work remotely from home. Many small businesses—especially restaurants—shuttered.
Compounding this disaster has been an increasing influx of hardcore alcoholics, hardcore drug addicts, psychotically mentally ill and parasitical bums. Sidewalks are littered with huge tents, used hypodermic syringes and needles, empty beer cans and wine bottles, human feces and pools of urine.
The local and national press have predicted a “Doom Loop” facing San Francisco, as the city’s tourism rate sharply declines and City Hall officials currently project a nearly $800 million deficit in San Francisco’s budget.
Tech giants such as Meta and IBM have abandoned San Francisco for events in cities such as Denver and Orlando, Florida.
In September, 2023, Silicon Valley tech giant Alphabet announced that it would move its high-profile Google Cloud Next conference to Las Vegas in 2024.
But this has not prevented city officials from calling for increased efforts to comfort those very parasites who threaten not only their own lives but those of law-abiding San Franciscans and the city’s tourism industry.
On November 3, 2021, National Public Radio’s website carried the following headline: “San Francisco’s new rapid response teams race to save lives as ODs dramatically rise.”
From the story:
“Faced with a stunning rise in drug overdose deaths the last few years, the vast majority tied to fentanyl, San Francisco has launched mobile teams made up of paramedics and nurses.
“The new Street Overdose Response Teams (SORT), a collaboration between the city’s health and fire departments, aim to deliver a broad range of support and care directly following an overdose.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 12, 2023 at 12:10 am
On August 23, 2021, Jacob S. Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was shot and seriously injured by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The shooting occurred as officers attempted to arrest him. Blake was tasered as he scuffled with police. When he opened the driver’s door to his SUV and leaned in, Officer Rusten Sheskey fired seven shots, striking him four times in the back.
Blake is now paralyzed from the waist down, and may never walk again.
Protests followed.
Kenosha County declared a state of emergency overnight on August 24 after police vehicles were damaged, a dump truck set on fire, and the local courthouse vandalized. Police urged 24-hour businesses to close owing to armed robberies and shots being fired. Up to 200 members of the Wisconsin National Guard were deployed to maintain public safety.
At the time of the shooting, Blake faced a criminal complaint charging him with third-degree sexual assault in connection with domestic abuse on July 6.
The officers had come to arrest Blake for violating a restraining order stemming from that complaint. A 911 call on August 23 alerted them that Blake was at the home of his alleged victim.
A sample restraining order
The restraining order stemmed from a criminal complaint, which accused Blake of breaking into the home of a woman he knew and sexually assaulting her in May. The victim told police she was asleep when Blake broke in at 6 a.m. and said, “I want my shit.”
After Blake left, she realized her keys were missing and “immediately called 911,” the complaint said.
An arrest warrant was issued on July 7.
On August 9, 2014, a similar police/media incident had occurred.
Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by a white police officer named Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.
Brown’s 22-year-old friend, Dorian Johnson claimed that Wilson shot him in the back. Wilson claimed he shot Brown after the latter charged at him.
An FBI investigation found that there was no evidence that Brown had his hands up in surrender or said “don’t shoot” before he was shot. It also found that Brown was struck six times, all in the front of his body.
The shooting ignited nationwide protests.
Yet many of the media “covering” the story refused to note that, shortly before his shooting, a video camera taped Brown robbing a grocery store and manhandling its owner.
Michael Brown (left) roughing up a store owner
Had this been more widely noted, “Saint Michael” would have been seen as a mere thug who learned that assaulting an armed cop wasn’t the same as attacking an unarmed store owner.
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a former black security guard, was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Death of George Floyd
Across the nation, cities were convulsed by protests—including those in the San Francisco Bay Area. Among these: Oakland, San Jose, Emeryville, Walnut Creek and San Francisco itself.
On May 30, an initially peaceful protest march exploded into looting shortly before 9 p.m. as looters broke off and began smashing shop windows and ransacking stores in Union Square and on Market Street.
Among the stores looted: A Sak’s Off-Fifth Avenue, an Old Navy clothing store, a Cartier Boutique and a Coach store. Looters especially targeted CVS and Walgreens drugstores. Liquor stores and a BevMo were also hit.
“Thirty businesses were looted or destroyed,” said David Perry, from the Union Square Business Improvement District.
Undoubtedly many of victims of those looters and arsonists had been horrified by the Floyd killing. But many of them undoubtedly lost sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement as they surveyed the wreckage of their stores.
Store owners were infuriated at having to replace stock that had been stolen or destroyed. And employees resented having to clean up the wreckage. Some stores no doubt were forced to close, leaving their former employees suddenly jobless.
And President Donald Trump quickly moved to capitalize on that resentment. His brand of “divide and rule” politics had brought him to the White House in 2016. And he was determined to play on white fears of further black crime to win a second term.
White fears of black crime are reflected in the crime rate statistics for New York City.
While Blacks make up 14.2% of New York City’s population, they comprise:
- 57.8% of its murder and non-negligent manslaughter arrests;
- 40.5% of its rape arrests;
- 38.2% of its known other felony sex crime arrests;
- 65.5% of its robbery arrests;
- 52.3% of its felonious assault arrests;
- 50.9% of its grand larceny arrests;
- 67.1% of its shooting arrests;
- 50.7% of its drug felony arrests;
- 42.2% of its drug misdemeanor arrests;
- 46.2% of its felony stolen property arrests;
- 52.9% of its misdemeanor stolen property arrests;
- 58.6% of its violent crime suspects;
- 59.8% of its juvenile crime complaint arrests.
This is admittedly unfair to those blacks who are law-abiding citizens. But the fear factor will continue until crime rates among blacks start falling dramatically.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on October 11, 2023 at 12:10 am
On May 16, 2022, a white supremacist shot and murdered 10 people and wounded three others at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Eleven victims were black; two were white.
The mass shooting once again ignited calls for gun control and a national dialogue on race.
Undoubtedly the motivation for the killings was race. But the sensationalistic publicity given this crime obscured a brutal truth ignored by liberals—and blacks:
Blacks kill far more blacks than whites do. And blacks are responsible for a disproportionate portion of crimes.
In 1993, this was publicly acknowledged by no less than Jesse Jackson, the famous civil rights activist, Baptist minister and former disciple of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
Blacks make up 14.2% of the American population in 2023, according to the Pew Research Center.
But they committed 52% of homicides between 1980 and 2008, according to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Only 45% of whites were offenders in such cases.
Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and to be the victims.
In 2008 blacks were seven times more likely than whites to commit homicide. And they were six times more likely than whites to be homicide victims.
According to the FBI, blacks were responsible for 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, in 2013.
From 2011 to 2013, 38.5% of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black.
In 1971, Robert Daley, a reporter for the New York Times, became a deputy police commissioner for the New York Police Department (NYPD).
In that capacity, he saw the NYPD from the highest levels to the lowest—from the ornate, awe-inspiring office of Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy to the gritty, sometimes blood-soaked streets of New York.
He spent one year on the job before resigning—later admitting that when he agreed to take the job, he got more than he bargained for.
For the NYPD, 1972 proved to be a tumultuous year. Among those challenges faced were the murders of several police officers, committed by members of the militant Black Liberation Army.
Two of those murdered officers were Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini. Jones was black, Piagentini white; both were partners. Both were shot in the back without a chance to defend themselves.
Writing about these murders in a bestselling 1973 book—Target Blue: An Insider’s View of the N.Y.P.D.—Daley noted:
- Jones and Piagentini were the sixth and seventh policemen—of ten—murdered in 1971.
- About 18 men were involved in these murders. All were black.
- The city’s politicians knew this—and so did Commissioner Murphy. None dared say so publicly.
“But the fact remained,” wrote Daley, “that approximately 65% of the city’s arrested murderers, muggers, armed robbers, proved to be black men; about 15% were of Hispanic origin; and about 20% were white [my Italics].”
The overall racial breakdown of the city was approximately:
- Whites 63%
- Blacks 20%
- Hispanics 17%
Stated another way: Blacks, who made up 20% of the city’s population, were responsible for 65% of the city’s major crimes.
Or, as Daley himself put it: “So the dangerous precincts, any cop would tell you, were the black precincts.”
That was 50 years ago.
In 2018, the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice found:
- Blacks were disproportionately represented among homicide victims and offenders.
- Whites committed 8% of the reported murders of blacks.
- Whites murdered other whites in 80.7% of the cases.
- Blacks were responsible for 15.5% of white murders.
- Blacks were responsible for 88.9% of the murders of blacks.
- Half of all robbery offenders were black.
- Blacks were responsible for a third of aggravated assaults.
- More than a fifth of blacks were responsible for simple assaults.
- Blacks made up 22% of those arrested for rape or sexual assault.
Now, consider the following statistics released by the NYPD for “Crime and Enforcement Activity in New York City” in 2022:
Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter Victims
Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter Suspects
Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter Arrestees
Rape Victims
Rape Suspects
Rape Arrestees
NYPD Headquarters at One Police Plaza
Other Felony Sex Crimes Victims
Other Felony Sex Crime Suspects
Other Felony Sex Crime Arrestees
Robbery Victims
Robbery Suspects
Robbery Arrestees
NYPD officers
Nick.Allen, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Misdemeanor Assault Victims
Misdemeanor Assault Suspects
Misdemeanor Assault Arrestees
Felonious Assault Victims
Felonious Assault Suspects
Felonious Assault Arrestees
Grand Larceny Victims
Grand Larceny Suspects
Grand Larceny Arrestees
Firearm Arrest Population
Shooting Victims
Shooting Suspects
Shooting Arrestees
Drug Felony Arrest Population
Drug Misdemeanor Arrestees
Misdemeanor Sex Crime Victims
Misdemeanor Sex Crime Suspects
Misdemeanor Sex Crime Arrestees
Misdemeanor Stolen Property Arrest Population
Felony Stolen Property Arrest Population
Petit Larceny Victims
Petit Larceny Suspects
Petit Larceny Arrestees
Misdemeanor Criminal Mischief Victims
Misdemeanor Criminal Mischief Suspects
Misdemeanor Criminal Mischief Arrestees
Reported Crime Complaint Juvenile Victims
Juvenile Crime Complaint Suspects
Juvenile Arrest Population
Violent Crime
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 25, 2023 at 12:10 am
Two stories—one fictitious, the other historical.
Story #1: In the 1961 historical epic, “El Cid,” Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, known as “The Lord,” besieges the Spanish city of Valencia, which has been captured by the Moors.
Months have passed. The city’s population is starving and without hope.
Then, one day, El Cid (Charlton Heston) calls out over the city’s walls: “Soldiers and citizens of Valencia! We are not your enemy! Ben Yusof [the powerful emir who plans to conquer Spain with an invading army] is your enemy!
“Join us! We bring you peace! We bring you freedom! We bring you bread!”
Suddenly El Cid’s Spanish catapults spring into action—loaded not with stones but loaves of bread. The loaves land in the city’s streets, where starving citizens and soldiers greedily devour them.
Then those citizens attack the bodyguards of the well-fed emir ruling Valencia—and throw the emir himself from a high wall.
The army of El Cid marches peacefully into the city.
Story #2: In Book Three, Chapter 22 of his classic masterwork, The Discourses, Niccolo Machiavelli offers the following: “An Act of Humanity Prevailed More With the Falacians Than All the Power of Rome.”
Marcus Furius Camillus, a Roman general, was besieging the city of the Faliscians, and had surrounded it. A teacher charged with the education of the children of some of the noblest families of that city decided to ingratiate himself with Camillus by leading those children into the Roman camp.
Presenting them to Camillus the teacher said to him, “By means of these children as hostages, you will be able to compel the city to surrender.”
Camillus not only declined the offer but went one step further. He ordered the teacher stripped and his hands tied behind his back. Then Camillus had a rod put into the hands of each of the children and directed them to whip the teacher all the way back to the city.
Upon learning this, the citizens of Faliscia were so much touched by the humanity and integrity of Camillus, that they surrendered the place to him without any further defense.
Summing up the meaning of this, Machiavelli writes: “This example shows that an act of humanity and benevolence will at all times have more influence over the minds of men than violence and ferocity. It also proves that provinces and cities which no armies…could conquer, have yielded to an act of humanity, benevolence, chastity or generosity.
“…History also shows us how much the people desire to find such virtues in great men, and how much they are extolled by historians and biographers of princes….Amongst these, Xenophon takes great pains to show how many victories, how much honor and fame, Cyrus gained by his humanity and affability, and by his not having exhibited a single instance of pride, cruelty or luxuriousness, nor of any of the other vices that are apt to stain the lives of men.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
These stories—the first the product of a movie screenwriter’s imagination, the second recorded by a master political scientist and historian—remain highly relevant today.
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a black unemployed restaurant security guard, was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Chauvin kept his knee on the right side of Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
Cities across the United States erupted in mass protests over Floyd’s death—and police killings of black victims generally. Most of these demonstrations proved peaceful.
But cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City saw stores looted, vandalized and/or burned. In response, President Donald Trump called for harsh policing, telling governors in a nationwide conference call that they must “dominate” protesters or be seen as “weak.”
To drive home his point, Trump ordered police and National Guard troops to violently remove peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square, which borders St. John’s Church near the White House.
The purpose of the removal: To allow Trump to have a photo opportunity outside the church.
“I imposed a curfew at 7pm,” tweeted Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. “A full 25 minutes before the curfew & w/o provocation, federal police used munitions on peaceful protestors in front of the White House, an act that will make the job of @DCPoliceDept officers more difficult. Shameful!”
Contrast that with the example of Sheriff Christopher Swanson of Genesee County, Michigan.
Sheriff Christopher Swanson
Confronting a mass of aroused demonstrators in Flint Township on May 30, Swanson responded: “We want to be with you all for real.”
So Swanson took his helmet off. His deputies laid their batons down.
“I want to make this a parade, not a protest. So, you tell us what you need to do.”
“Walk with us!” the protesters shouted.
“Let’s walk, let’s walk,” said Swanson.
Cheering and applause resounded.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Swanson said as he and the cheering crowd proceeded. “Where do you want to walk? We’ll walk all night.”
And Swanson and his fellow officers walked in sympathy with the protesters.
No rioting followed.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 25, 2023 at 12:11 am
…Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature…. If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time…we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.
—-Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses
Niccolo Machiavelli
As of 2022, seven states—California, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and the District of Columbia—offer tenant protections via residential rent control.
Only 34 out of 482 cities in California have strong tenant protections.
And only 15 cities in California have rent controls on landlords’ greed: Alameda, Berkeley, Beverly Hills, East Palo Alto, Hayward, Los Angeles, Los Gatos, Mountain View, Oakland, Palm Springs, Richmond. San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood.
In California, 17% of the population lives in apartments—more than 6.7 million people or 2.1 million more than New York.
Nationwide, almost 39 million people in the United States—nearly one in eight—live in apartments.
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
And yet, there is little enthusiasm among these millions of people to protect themselves against predatory landlords.
Still, even in those cities where rent boards and building inspection agencies exist, landlords continue to victimize tenants every day.
Take San Francisco, for example.
To hear slumlords tell it, San Francisco is a “renters’ paradise,” where obnoxious, lazy, rent-evading tenants constantly take advantage of hard-working, put-upon landlords.
Don’t believe it.
A recent case shows the absolute necessity for reining in predatory landlords before they can inflict serious financial and emotional damage on tenants.
In September, 2021, Frank and Carol Thomas (not their real names) moved into a one-bedroom San Francisco apartment for $1,000 a month.
Frank had been manager of the apartment complex for 10 years. Now he simply wanted to be a tenant.
Meanwhile, Carol suffered three close personal losses:
- Her father died in January, in Knoxville, Tennessee;
- Her best friend died in June.
- Her aunt died in July.
Then, in August, Frank left for Tennessee to explore possible business opportunities there. It was while visiting Nashville that he suffered a heart attack and died.
This required Carol to travel to Nashville to:
- Arrange for Frank’s cremation;
- Obtain the release of his personal effects—including the release of his car, which had been impounded
She also had to spend time in Knoxville to:
- Arrange for the disposal of her father’s remains;
- Attend to his piano business;
- Attend to his estate, including arranging for the sale of his house.
Since she couldn’t afford commuting between California and Tennessee, Carol stayed at her deceased father’s house in Knoxville while making all these arrangements.
Weeks later, she returned to her San Francisco apartment.
In April, 2022, Carol received a notice from the property management company responsible for the premises.
It stated that Carol Thomas was last seen in her apartment in November, 2021 and currently lived at her family home in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The notice also stated that her rent would rise from $1,000 per month to $1,695 per month. 
Fortunately, Carol had a friend who had worked as a reporter and legal investigator. He was able to draft a response to her landlord’s rent demand.
It opened: “There is a moral dimension to this case that must not be overlooked.”
First, it extolled Frank Thomas’ 10 years as building manager for the property management company now trying to raise Carol’s rent.
Then it pointed out: “During the time Carol was gone, she paid her rent in full and on time. Had she not, We Screw Tenants [not the company’s real name] would now be demanding her eviction.
“What We Screw Tenants is trying to do is to literally profit from the death of this man and the grief of this woman.
“This is utterly despicable. Morally, it’s on a par with robbing corpses and selling fentanyl to schoolchildren.
“If We Screw Tenants is willing to try to extort monies from the widow of its former building manager, it will do the same the next time a tenant is required to leave one of its buildings for weeks.
“As compensation for this deplorable behavior, We Screw Tenants should provide Ms. Thomas with a moratorium on rent increases for at least ten years.”
Carol, who was in her early 60s, showed the suggested response to a case officer of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.
The officer then contacted We Screw Tenants and said he would be filing a complaint for elder abuse against the company.
The company immediately promised to drop its demand for a $695 raise in rent—if Carol agreed to forego any legal action.
Carol has not yet decided if she wants to pursue a lawsuit.
But she was able to fend off a predatory property management company—only because San Francisco has:
- Rent control laws limiting landlords’ greed; and
- A Human Rights Commission dedicated to protecting citizens against discrimination.
Other tenants—throughout California and the nation—usually don’t prove so fortunate.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 13, 2023 at 12:10 am
City agencies need to see landlords for what they truly are—as, at best, potential predators, if not actual ones. And to act aggressively on that knowledge.
As Niccolo Machiavelli warned:
“All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.
“If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.”
Niccolo Machiavelli
The power of slumlords calls to mind the scene in 1987’s The Untouchables, where Sean Connery’s veteran cop tells Eliot Ness: “Everybody knows where the liquor is. It’s just a question of: Who wants to cross Capone?”
Many tenants have lived with rotting floors, bedbugs, nonworking toilets, mice/rats, chipping lead-based paint and other outrages for not simply months but years.
This holds true across the United States. But it also holds true in San Francisco—the “renters’ paradise” where the District Attorney’s Office hasn’t prosecuted a slumlord in decades.
Part Two of this series presented a series of badly-needed, long-overdue reforms for the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (DBI). This is the agency charged to ensuring safe housing conditions for San Francisco residents.
Renters across the country should demand similar protections.
This concluding part will cover the remainder of those needed reforms.
- Landlords should be required to bring all the units in a building up to existing building codes, and not just those in need of immediate repair.
- Landlords should be legally required to hire a certified-expert contractor to perform building repairs. To save money—that they can well afford to spend—-many landlords insist on making such repairs despite their not being trained or experienced in doing so. They thereby risk the health and/or safety of their tenants.
- DBI should not view itself as a “mediation” agency between landlords and tenants. Most landlords hate DBI and will always do so. They believe they should be allowed to treat their tenants like serfs, if not slaves, raise extortionate rents anytime they desire, and maintain their buildings in whatever state they wish.
- Above all, DBI must stop viewing itself as a regulatory agency and start seeing itself as a law enforcement one. The FBI doesn’t ask criminals to comply with the law. It applies whatever amount of pressure is needed to force their compliance. William Tecumseh Sherman, speaking of the rebellious Southern states, said it best: “They cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.”
- The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office should create a special unit to investigate and prosecute slumlords. Prosecutors should offer rewards to citizens who provide tips on major outrages by the city’s slumlords.
- Install Rent Control protections for tenants on fixed incomes. San Francisco is notorious for having the highest rents in the nation. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment runs $3,000 a month. Even those in the vaunted high-tech industry spend most of their income on rent.
- For tenants on fixed incomes—seniors, disabled, students—the predatory greed of landlords amounts to a staged-in eviction notice. Social Security recipients often don’t get a cost-of-living increase if there hasn’t been a rise in gasoline prices. But many of them don’t own cars—while the price of everything else—such as groceries—has sharply risen.
- Allowing landlords to jack up rents to the fullest extent possible every year will eventually drive out all tenants who are not multimillionaires. In fact, an unknown portion of this City’s homeless population doubtless stems from the ability of landlords to gradually raise rents above tenants’ ability to afford them.
- In 1979, San Franciscans passed a Rent Control law to protect tenants against predatory rent hikes and unfair evictions. As a result, a landlord can only raise a tenant’s rent a certain percentage every year. This is set by the set by the Rent Stabilization and Arbitration Board, more popularly known as the “Rent Board.”
- But there is a gaping hole in the law: Once a tenant moves out, the landlord can jack up the rent as high as he wants. This is why the average rent in San Francisco is priced beyond most middle-class wage-earners.
- In addition, landlords are allowed to charge tenants yearly fees to maintain the existence of the Rent Board. This is both unfair and insulting, since the Board was created to protect tenants from predatory landlords. Most tenants have far less money to pay such fees than do landlords, who are free to raise rents every year. And landlords—unlike tenants—can and do write off Rent Board fees on their taxes every year.
As Robert F. Kennedy wrote: “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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WHEN BLACKS SLAUGHTERED WHITES: PART ONE (OF FIVE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 15, 2024 at 1:34 amBlacks, charging police with brutality and racism, are increasingly strident in demanding an end to both.
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King, a black motorist, was severely beaten by four Los Angeles Police Department officers. Captured on video, the beating came during his arrest after a high speed pursuit for driving while intoxicated.
On April 29, 1992, the jury acquitted the officers of assault. The verdict touched off six days of rioting, resulting in 63 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damage to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses.
On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a black man, was choked to death in Staten Island by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo. His “crime”: Selling single cigarettes without a tax stamp.
On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
And on May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a part-time security guard, was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds.
Nationwide rioting erupted, and at least 200 cities imposed curfews. At least 27 states and Washington, D.C., activated over 62,000 National Guard troops in response to the protests.
Then-President Donald Trump, frightened by protests in Washington, D.C., disappeared into the White House bunker. Later, he ordered U.S. Park police to clear nearby Lafayette Park of a peaceful demonstration so he could stage a photo-op at St. John’s Church.
But blacks have not been the only victims of brutality by racist police or vigilantes.
Fifty years ago, whites—not blacks—-were the targets of black men intent on waging a race war.
From October 20, 1973 to April 20, 1974, San Francisco was rocked by a series of random, brutal attacks against whites. The assailant was at first thought to be a lone black gunman.
The toll finally reached 16 murders, five woundings, one rape, and the attempted kidnapping of three children.
The rampage, however, was not limited to San Francisco. Throughout California—from Bakersfield to San Diego—at least 93 other whites were murdered, according to later police investigations.
The killing spree did not end until May 1, 1974, with a surprise raid by heavily-armed San Francisco police.
What follows is an inside account of the “Zebra” death cult, as depicted through the grand jury testimony of the star witness against the killers: Anthony C. Harris.
At 28, Harris was a fifth-dan kung-fu expert who always dressed well and spoke softly. He also had firsthand knowledge of the “Zebra murders.”
Anthony Harris
Born in Long Beach, California, in 1946, Anthony Cornelius Harris got as far as the sixth grade. He clashed often with police and, on January 3, 1969, he was convicted for assaulting a policeman.
He was released from prison in May, 1970, when he won a reversal of his sentence at the California Supreme Court.
But he was once again arrested and convicted, in 1971, of second-degree burglary in Los Angeles. For this, he drew a sentence at San Quentin prison.
And he also met two of the future “Zebra” killers: Manuel Moore and Jessie Lee Cooks.
Cooks had been convicted of robbery; Moore had been sent to prison for burglary. Both wanted Harris, a fifth-dan kung-fu expert, to teach them the martial arts.
Cooks wanted to learn kung-fu so he could kill whites “because they had castrated and killed our ancestors and stomped our babies’ heads in.”
While an inmate at San Quentin prison, Harris became a devout member of the Nation of Islam.
At that time, the spiritual leader of the Nation was Elijah Muhammad, who preached a gospel of black separatism and superiority. Muhammad taught that whites were literally the incarnation of evil, a race of “blue-eyed devils.”
Elijah Muhammed
To test the worthiness of His Chosen Black People, proclaimed Muhammad, Allah had allowed their 400-year persecution by these “bleached-out, grafted snakes.”
But that great testing period would soon come to its end. Then would follow the literal, heaven-sent destruction of all whites. At the conclusion of this divine slaughter, Allah would create a paradise earth for His Chosen Black People.
Harris, Moore and Cooks had a conversation in the temporary Muslim temple in the prison–about “killing people and cutting their heads off—just white people,” Harris later testified in court.
After Harris was paroled on October 15, 1973, he drifted into San Francisco. There he made a new friend—Larry Craig Green, who helped him into a job at the Black Self-Help, a Muslim-owned, furniture-moving company in the city.
Yet another new friend he made there was J.C. Simon.
Soon he was reunited with Jessie Cooks, who had been paroled in July. The release of Manuel Moore followed in November—as did his own arrival in San Francisco.
In September or October, 1973, Harris and 12 to 13 other Muslims—including Simon, Cooks and Green—et at J.C. Simon’s San Francisco apartment.
“They asked me,” Harris later testified, “was I able to kill anyone? Did I have my mind together? They wanted me to work in the [Muslim] temple” as a kung-fu instructor.
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