Police and Prisons

Rapper J. Cole visited prisoners at the birthplace of Black August—San Quentin State Prison—on August 1, 2017.

Cole made the prison visit during the middle of the North American leg of his "4 Your Eyez Only tour." 

BlackAugust originated in the prison camp of San Quentin 1979. African prisoners would wear black armbands to remember the heroic, revolutionary actions of the #SoledadBrothers, the San Quentin Six, Jonathan Jackson, Khatari Gaulden and all our fallen Freedom Fighters. 

St. Louis, MO—Prisoners in a medium security jail known as the Workhouse could be heard screaming for help for blocks outside the jail walls on Thursday.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—The state of Arkansas, in a span of eight days from April 20-27, 2017, committed State-sanctioned executions of four death row inmates by injecting them with a mixture of lethal chemicals.

Three of those inmates were colonial African subjects.

The spate of legal executions began with Arkansas frantically moving forward to kill eight people within an eleven-day period.

They were rushing the executions because their stock of midazolam, the powerful sedative used in their deadly injection “cocktail,” had a “use by” date of April 30, 2017 stamped on it.

A young African man was attacked by the police as he walked down the sidewalk of 16th Street South––not far from where TyRon Lewis was murdered in 1997––with his niece on the evening of February 23, 2017. 

PHILADELPHIA-The Black Is Back Coalition’s Black Community Control of Police working group attended a demonstration organized by Black Lives Matter, PA centered on the demand for the resignation of district attorney Seth Williams on March 27, 2017.  

The Black is Back Coalition (BIBC) is clear that it is not enough to only call for Williams’ removal. Williams must go to jail for malicious prosecution and participation in selling prisoners for profit.

About 100 protestors gathered outside of the convenience store Mike Brown visited on August 9, 2014 shortly before he was murdered in cold blood by now former Ferguson cop, Darren Wilson on March 12, 2017. The protest was sparked by a clip of newly-released video showing Brown at the convenience store the night before his murder. The video was used in a documentary about his murder, titled “Stranger Fruit.” It was featured at the SXSW film festival last month.

 
Before the murder of Mike Brown, the African community in Ferguson, already under military occupation by the police on a daily basis, saw that military occupation quadruple in size with the addition of tanks, troops and martial law after Mike’s murder.

ST. PETERSBURG––A horrendous crime was committed on March 31, 2016 by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department in St. Petersburg, Florida.

This crime was the murder of three teenage African girls, Dominique Battle, La’Niyah Miller and Ashaunti Butler, which violently ripped them from their families.

The tragedy began when deputy Howard Skaggs saw the girls driving, to which he pulled up behind them in an attempt to harass and intimidate them.

After an African woman, Jacqueline Craig, called the Fort Worth Police department to report an incident in which her 8-year-old son was choked by her white neighbor, her and her two daughters were attacked, arrested, kidnapped and taken to jail.

Terrytown, LA—Joe McKnight, a 28-year-old African former NFL player, was shot and murdered by a white man on December 1, 2016. Ronald Gasser, the 54-year-old white man who murdered Joe, stood on the scene holding his gun and waited on Terrytown police to arrive.