Well a crime is a crime, and equal justice would mean that you bring charges against all who committed crimes…particularly since most major investigations begin with charges against lowly folks who provide evidence on higher ups. So, on many levels, America doesn’t practice what it preaches.  So that is under girding the reaction to Rue Mumia.

In the early 90’s in New York City an Irish Republican Army operative, named Joe Doherty, was being held at a jail in NYC.  He had been convicted in Northern Ireland of murdering a British Special Forces officer during one of the IRA’s clashes with the British.  Set aside for the moment the propriety of what was going on there, and whether the IRA were actually terrorists or were fighting for their homeland.  The fact of the matter is that Britain is a major US ally and Dogherty had been convicted of murdering a British military officer. He escapes from Northern Ireland and comes to the US as a fugitive, hides out a couple years and is eventually arrested, and is being held in a federal detention facility.  Efforts by the US government to deport him and send him back, were countered by officials in NYC and about 100 members of Congress.

They’re standing up for this convicted murderer on the claim that he did not receive a fair trial in Northern Ireland.  In 1990, as a part of this effort to Free Joe Doherty, his supporters authorized the renaming of the street in front of the federal prison in Manhattan, and renamed it to Joe Doherty Corner.

Here you have officials rename a street for a convicted murderer, but then people are outraged when France does the same thing for an alleged cop-killer on the same basis, that they don’t feel that Abu-Jamal received a fair trial.  Hypocrisy, contradictions, double-standards of justice, you choose the name.

HB:     What do you think it is about Mumia’s case in particular that causes such
a fanatical reaction?

LW:    I think the level of fanaticism with Mumia’s case is a reaction to the level of support that he has received internationally.  Further, I think the intense reactions revolve around race, specifically racism…plus Abu-Jamal’s identification with the Black Panther Party and MOVE. “Law & Order” types hate the Black Panthers. And Philly police hate MOVE. Focusing anger on Abu-Jamal gives police a counter to criticism directed against
them for persistent police brutality.

The police are taking it on the chin all the time for continuing brutality, and this is the case that they have decided to dig in on.  You get all this police rage against Abu-Jamal despite the fact that he’s not the only person that allegedly shot and killed a police officer in US history. There were at least three police officers shot and killed in Philadelphia in 1981, do you know about that?

HB:     Yes, you’ve been researching that, and the two others in Philadelphia were black police officers?

LW:    Yes.

HB:     Do you feel that the Fraternal Order of Police’s behavior is racially motivated?

LW:    Yes, and it has always been racially motivated.  This is one of the most outrageous aspects of it, because that organization is racist.  I became a full time reporter in Philadelphia in October of 1975.  One of the first big stories that I covered was a protest in front of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) headquarters, by members of the black police officer organization, The Guardian Civic League.  Some of the people who participated in that demonstration are now State Rep Harold James, who was a police officer at the time, and also the current Sheriff of the City of Philadelphia, John Greene.

Why were these black police officers out in front of the FOP headquarters?

Because there is a bar in the basement of the FOP building, and black police officers (including ones there with their wives) would receive racist treatment when they went to the bar at their union headquarters and they were protesting against that.  That type of racism didn’t end in the 1970s.  Do a lot of officers find themselves treated badly on a
bureaucratic level within the PPD?  Yes, but who does the FOP stand up for?

Invariably, it’s white police officers.

One example, a couple years ago, the FOP made some public statements about the unfairness of the police departments in terms of their refusal to allow a police officer, I think his name is Flemming, to move up to become a detective.  Flemming has cost the City of Philadelphia over one million dollars in legal settlements because of police brutality.  Just a year or so before this controversy about his being promoted to detective, the City had to pay out $750,000 because Flemming beat up a man at the airport without provocation.  So here’s the FOP standing up for a chronically brutal cop, instead of saying, “No, this isn’t the type of behavior that we as an organization want to endorse.”

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