The mayor and police chief of Washington DC established unconstitutional check points in the city's Trinidad neighborhood which has raised considerable objections from the city council and others who still believe in constitutional government. Chief Lanier gained some of her views on policing while being trained by Israeli apartheid operatives. She would have done better learning from 27-year-old Naji Mujahid, whose impressive testimony to the DC city council follows:
NAJI MUJAHID, BLACK AUGUST PLANNING ORGANIZATION - My name is Naji Mujahid, I'm 27 years old, I was born in the district and I've lived here all of my adult life; I spent most of my childhood in Prince George's County, MD. I do not live in Trinidad, I live in Ward 7, in the Marshall Heights area. . .
Crime in our community should absolutely be of [our] foremost concern and its something that those of us that are most affected by it should be dedicating ourselves to minimizing and eliminating. When we examine the statistics of the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of our residents, it becomes clear the we have [either] an innate inclination towards sociopathic behavior or there is a systematic flaw in the administration of our community affairs.
The first that any intelligent person does when confronted with a problem is to critically analyze the cause of that problem. And when we look closely at our community I believe that what we witness is not a haven for a degenerate species of human beings, but we see reflections of ourselves reacting to the criminally and sadistically poor social conditions of their environment. The poor education, the poor economics, the lack of opportunities, the broken homes, etc., which is the result of either a protracted plan to keep us as a dependent, subservient, and easily exploitable under-class or of endemic malfeasant and contemptuous neglect by our elected officials and those in league with them. In other words, we refuse to be demonized for the incompetence and criminality of others.
One example I'd like to point out is the existence of drugs in our communities as a catalyst for crime. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a suffering people are likely to self-medicate with substances that make their conditions easier to deal with (I could just as easily be talking about Prozac as crack/cocaine) and when those substances can be provided with the incentive of monetary gain for the provider (I could just as easily be talking about Merck Pharmaceuticals as your local pusher man), particularly when economic opportunities are scarce. . . the outcome of those given dynamics should not be surprising; crime follows.
What should be kept in mind and considered is where the drugs in our community came from. And it has been documented by Journalist Gary Webb in his expose 'Dark Alliance,' by former DEA agent Celerino Costillo III in his book 'Powderburns', and by Professor Alfred McCoy in his book 'The Politics of Heroin', that there has been undeniable government complicity and participation in the global and local drug trade; [facilitating] the influx of illegal drugs into our communities.
As the police are deployed into our communities to seek and destroy crime - crime as defined by outsiders who stand to benefit from our arrest and incarceration - they themselves become criminals as they follow questionable orders without question. They become the antagonists in this tragedy. With their claims of protecting our well being, they become similar to an abusive spouse with a literary gift for writing love sonnets. The police are the government's answer for their inability to provide our community with the establishment of justice, the insurance of domestic tranquility, the provision of a common defense, the promotion of the general welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty. Once again, we refuse to be demonized for the incompetence and criminality of others.
Last year a 14 year-old was shot to death by the police with impunity of the law. Over the past two years, surveillance cameras have sprung up across our communities. This year the police initiated a door-to-door search program and resolved to arm the department with high-powered military assault rifles, AR-15s (at a time when the government is fighting against the right of law abiding citizens to arm themselves). And we are joined here today to discuss the new initiative of check points being used in our communities. This is clearly the development of a police state designed under the guise of ensuring public safety and securing our communities from the criminal element in our midst, while ignoring the real criminal element outside of our midst. When will this stop? At what point have the police crossed the line from security to intrusion [. . . .to occupation]? This is unacceptable and I repeat for a final time that we refuse to be demonized for the incompetence and criminality of others. Thank you for your indulgence.
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