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.”
But, it gets worse.
This officer Flemming also beat up a former police officer in 1995, an ex-cop named Gary Wakshul, days before that officer became a witness for the prosecution during the appeals hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Flemming and one of his partners on the police force beat the stuffings out of Gary Wakshul in the hallway of Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center, beating him so bad that he sustained multiple injuries. Wakshul subsequently sued the City for the beating and got $60,000 for it.
As you know, Wakshul was a police officer involved in the Mumia Abu-Jamal case. He was the one who brought Abu-Jamal from the scene to the hospital on the morning of Dec. 9, 1981 and Wakshul stayed with him until he was brought in for surgery. Initially, Wakshul filed an official report stating that “the negro male made no comment.” Two months later, he came out and said that he had heard Abu-Jamal confess. Then, when the
police asked him about the contradiction between his official report and the later confession claim, Wakshul came up with the absurd response that he “didn’t know the confession had any importance until today.”
Now, why was Wakshul working for the court system in 1995?
Because, in 1984 Wakshul almost beat a man to death in a hospital emergency room, and
he was fired. When he was put on trial for this, the judge said, “Well, I think Wakshul’s a good guy and since this happened in the heat of battle,” he chose to acquit him of this unjustified beating. Now, the man he almost killed was in handcuffs, so there wasn’t any battle. And then, guess what? The FOP tried to get Wakshul’s job back.
I will raise the question: what type of law enforcement does the FOP represent? Good lawful law enforcement, or does it support unlawful acts of brutality, many of which are tinged, if not saturated, with racism?
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