Racist Beating of Black Activist in Denver

Last week a close friend and fellow activist was a victim of a home invasion. He was beaten and abused by the intruders while his female partner was made to sit and watch the brutal actions of the intruders.
There were six to eight of them coming and going in the couple’s home. They ransacked the place. They dumped drawers and personal belongings on the floor. They even went into their refrigerator.
Larry and Melissa had just returned from a long trip to visit her elderly grandfather and grandmother. They were tired and just wanting to watch the basketball game on the tube. Their evening was interrupted by loud banging on their door.
Shortly after the knocking and someone yelling at Larry to open the door the apartment was full of people abusing Larry and Melissa. They were pushed to the nearby futon couch. Their cats were terrorized with the strangers entering the place. When Melissa asked if the cats could be put in a locked room, there was no response. Larry attempted to stand up to take the cats to the locked rooms and was assaulted by a female in the mob.
He was pushed to the floor; part of his hair was literally pulled out by another thug. Later Larry would be punched and taunted by yet another intruder. His hands were bound. His shirt was nearly ripped from his body.
Melissa was forced to sit and watch as the man she loved was assaulted and terrorized by the group. She kept begging them not to hurt Larry.
Luckily in the end both Larry and Melissa survived the frightening and terror filled attack.
They didn’t call the police, however..
It was the Denver Police Department that committed this crime. They were the thugs entering Larry and Melissa’s home.
Larry has been a longtime activist in several areas of peace and justice here in the Denver area. One area he’s focused on has been police brutality. He and another longtime activist have often observed police arresting people on the streets of Denver and also in Aurora, the large suburb of Denver. They’ve even taken to using their camcorders to document the arrests of the police.
Recently a black brother was shot in the back by the Denver Police in a case of mistaken identity. The brother had a past criminal record that included theft or something of that order but nothing violent.
After the shooting the brother was sent to jail on a parole violation which wasn’t related to the shooting. Larry kept in touch with him and when he came back out on parole offered his apartment as a place for the brother to live.
An arrangement was made over the telephone with the parole officer of the brother coming out of prison. He would be allowed to stay with Larry and Melissa but would be subject to visits and searches of his living area in the apartment. There wasn’t an agreement that Larry and Melissa would be subject to search.
The parolee quickly got himself an evening job which was a godsend considering the difficulty of anybody having a criminal record getting employment. The night of the home invasion the parolee was at his work.
The banging on the door was by the Denver Police Department. They demanded entrance into Larry’s home for a parole visit. Larry explained to them the parolee was at work. They still demanded entry. Once Larry opened the door the ransacking and physical assaults began.
Larry asked to be shown badges and to be given business cards to have a record of who entered his home. In Denver there’s an ordinance the police are to provide business cards to anybody they contact if the card is asked for.
The police didn’t provide the cards asked for and shoved badges quickly into his face before pushing him to the futon.
During the reckless search of Larry’s apartment a bag with some bullets was discovered in a box of private possessions. Larry told the police the bullets were his that he hadn’t disposed of but there was no gun in the house. That admission seemed to only intensify the ransacking of Larry and Melissa’s belongings.
A short time later Larry was pushed to the floor on his stomach when he stood up to rescue the cats. His standing only occurred after several requests by Melissa and Larry to let them secure the cats in a locked area so they couldn’t run away through the door the police kept opening and shutting. He announced to the police he was going to secure the cats.
A policewoman put an arm lock on one of Larry’s arms by twisting it behind his back and pulling it upward toward his shoulders. His other arm was pinned under his body. Two large policemen sat on top of Larry pushing him into the floor face down. One of them began pulling at Larry’s hair and pulled two handfuls out by the roots.
During this time of the assault police were yelling at Larry to quit resisting. Larry weighs less than 150 pounds and wasn’t resisting by his own account. Melissa witnessed the takedown and following actions and also says Larry wasn’t resisting.
The police finally picked Larry up with his hands cuffed behind him. He was in socks only, wearing a ripped tee shirt and a thin flannel pair of trousers. He was pushed out of his apartment and down a set of stairs to the building entrance. He stumbled at the top of the stairs and was dragged by the hand-cuffed arms out into the 30 degree night.
They pushed Larry up against one of the squad cars standing. A policeman came from behind Larry and pushed down on the hand cuffs with great pressure causing circulation problems. Larry asked him to stop the painful tactic. The policeman pushed his face toward Larry and told him “we can do a lot worse”
Larry lost it at that point and called the guy a “pig”. Larry’s head was pushed into the side of the car before he was pushed down into the back seat.
He was taken to an unidentified precinct station. There he was placed in a paddy wagon with three or four other males. All were either black or Latino. One of the other prisoners holding a sweat shirt offered it to Larry when he saw him shivering in the cold wintry night.
From there Larry was taken to city jail and booked for interference. He had been told earlier he would be booked as a “John Doe” so he’d spend at least three days in lock up and possibly be placed on a mental health hold because he’d been observed trying to harm himself during the melee at his apartment.
Meanwhile, Melissa was left behind at the apartment as the ransacking continued. She was handcuffed to a chair during that time. The police eventually left the apartment freeing Melissa from the cuffs. She immediately set about trying to bail Larry out of the jail. The jail only accepts credit cards or cash for bail. Melissa and Larry don’t have credit cards. So, Melissa had to use five hundred dollars intended for the monthly rent to post bail for Larry. He wasn’t set free until the next morning.
He left with bruises and scrapes. He was stiff and aching from being sat on. His wrists were swollen from the tightening of the cuffs.
If it hasn’t become obvious by now, Larry is a black male. He wears dred-locks. He is employed. He doesn’t use drugs, doesn’t drink and doesn’t possess a fire-arm. The bullets had sat around for years.
I can recall having a sock full of rounds for a rifle I no longer own laying in my dresser drawer in my bedroom for many years. I didn’t want to dispose of them carelessly. The thought of a child or even a garbage guy being harmed by one exploding always crossed my mind. So, the presence of bullets isn’t something that would alarm me. Having them isn’t illegal and there wasn’t a gun for them.
Back in the 70’s I used to work with a VVAW member who was also the local director of the Black Panther breakfast program. He was a beautiful soul that always spoke softly and always maintained a sense of great dignity. He always respected other people around him.
The brother had lost part of his foot in Vietnam from a booby-trap. He later lost his leg up to his thigh after poor medical care at an Army hospital resulted in gangrene. He was also given narcotics for his pain and became addicted. He was weaned off the narcotics by his family. The Army and the VA failed to even recognize he’d become addicted.
During the time I knew this brother the Denver Police Department made almost weekly raids of his home. His wife and three kids were usually there when the raids occurred.
His wife was a joyous woman who dearly loved her kids and husband. And she could keep up with the best of us in political activism.
I visited their home on several occasions and saw the aftermath of the police raids. Wall paneling was stripped off to look into the joist spaces. Kitchen equipment was thrown about, drawers emptied, beds overturned and clothing thrown about the rooms following searches.
There was always some “tip” about drugs and weapons that justified the raids in the Denver Police Department’s way of thinking.
On several occasions the brother was thrown to the floor in front of his kids and wife. One time he was raided in the middle of the night. The Vietnam veteran responded as most of us would. He became ready to fight. He was attacked by a number of police, his prosthetic for the amputation stub was kicked out from under him and he was cuffed face down on his bedroom floor as his crying children looked on.
It would have been damn easy for this brother to become bitter and hostile toward my white face coming into his world after the many raids by the police who were always white. Instead this brother never wavered in his kindness toward me. He and I continued to work in VVAW to bring the troops home. Both of us testified at the local Winter Soldier’s Investigation the last weekend of June 1971.
He and his wife also fed me from their organic garden, showed me how to mulch and use different planting methods. My wife often came with me to visit and they came to our home to visit.
I marveled at Butch’s resolve and courage in the face of the harassment and violence the Denver Police inflicted on him because he was black, a Black Panther and a member of a rogue veteran group, VVAW.
This last week all those memories of Butch and his family came back to me when I read Larry’s email describing the police home invasion. Larry reminds me a lot of Butch because he also demonstrates a quiet dignity and great resolve for justice. He may appear slight in stature but his heart is courage personified.
A group of Denver activists appeared in front of Denver Police Headquarters last evening. It was probably the most diverse group I’ve seen in some time here in Denver. We all seemed to think it was a shame it always takes outrageous violence such as that imposed on Larry and Melissa to bring us together.
Here in Denver the brutality of the police is not uncommon. We’re probably second or third in police shootings in the U.S.. There’s been so many cases of brutality and accidental shootings they seem to dilute the responses of the citizenry. And because they’re almost always people of color victimized the outcry is limited.
I’ve grown old and seen the Civil Rights Movement come and then erode over the years. I’ve seen leaders assassinated if they challenged the status quo. I heard the dream of Martin Luther King spoken by Martin. I heard the outrage of Malcolm X spoken by Malcolm. I remember the dogs and fire hoses being shown on television screens from places like Montgomery and Selma. I remember the Watts riots. I remember the death of Martin as I sat in Vietnam wondering what was happening to this nation. Later I heard the report of Robert’s assassination over Armed Forces Radio while in Vietnam. I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t surprised by the riot of police at the Democratic convention in Chicago.
I quit being surprised at history repeating itself. I look at Iraq and see the veterans coming back and they appear with the same thousand yard stare and weariness Vietnam vets brought back from their war. I hear of police brutality and remember Butch. I remember walking down a Capitol Hill street in the summer of 1970 with another veteran. We crossed an alleyway and looked down the alley to see two Denver policemen “working over” a suspect on the hood of their car. They were beating him with their long metal jacketed flashlights. His face had large welts and bruises. His nose was bleeding. He was drooling blood from his mouth.
My friend and I approached the scene almost running toward the cops. We demanded to know why they were beating the brown skinned man who was obviously subdued. One of them drew his pistol on us, He told us to back “the fuck up” or he’d shoot us. He was clearly serious.
I was sickened by what I’d seen and the lack of power I felt. I was sickened to leave the Chicano brother in the hands of the two thugs. There were no cell phones to call such a thing in to somebody. And it was a wasted call because like today there was no accountability for police brutality.
Let’s not think the attack on Larry and Melissa was a purely racist act. It surely was a racist act but it was also an attack on thoughts and ideas. It was an attack on the freedom to dissent and challenge authority run amuck. It was an attack on all of us. But the black man or the brown man or some other non-white gets to take the physical pounding for us all.
And this is only one form of the attack. The daily rousting of non-whites by white cops is an attack. The daily slurs of the “cowboy” cop against a poor neighborhood are an attack. The daily differential treatment of whites compared to non-whites by cops is an attack. Continued racial profiling is an attack. One look at the prison system is abundant evidence of attack.
Serve and protect means nothing when all that is served is the system that continues to oppress and all that is protected is the status quo of white power. Police want respect but think it comes at the end of a baton or from the barrel of a gun. That same attitude is the attitude of occupation being used in Iraq. The “thin blue line” of police covering each other’s ass even when brutality occurs is the same mindset of the military covering up the atrocities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The “movement” is splintered and the attacks will continue until there are ten or twenty activists standing behind activists like Larry and Melissa. Every time a beating goes down by rogue cops the numbers of the movement should grow.
Will we confront the new “dogs and fire hoses” of this day and age as Martin and his brothers and sisters did? Or will we allow Larry and Melissa and all the other brothers and sisters beaten to go it alone?

Wm Terry Leichner, RN
USMC combat vet (Vietnam ’67-’69)

Losing the Battles at Home

I checked my email in the middle of the night as I’m prone to do and found a note from a friend informing me of the death of another Iraq veteran. She had killed herself. She had returned home from the horrors of war but couldn’t endure staying alive once home.

I didn’t know who the vet was until a day or so later. I kept remembering the faces of the Iraq veterans I marched with from Mobile to New Orleans back in 2006 and prayed it hadn’t been one of them. But that made no sense, either. It was still another young life stolen from this country by the masters of war who have betrayed all the young troops they sent to their illegal and immoral war.

The suicide of veterans hasn’t been a well hidden secret by the war-mongers. The secondary body count of war stacks up by the month and mental health experts voice an alarm they failed to voice when this war first began.

After multiple deployments and separations from family and friends the American military has reached a crisis of fatigue and disillusionment not known since Vietnam. Only this crisis exceeds the one seen in the troops of Vietnam. PTSD, traumatic brain injury and suicides are coming at a far greater rate than seen in Vietnam. The VA and the military healthcare systems have failed to keep up following years of cuts from a Congress and Executive Branch long ago out of touch with the real people they send to die.

The sons and daughters of America dying in the dirty little war for oil and profit aren’t the sons and daughters of the American “elite” and rich. They are the sons and daughters of the urban centers of America, the farmlands of America and the disappearing middle-class of America.

The ultimate betrayal of the American young is that few of the old cynical bastards in government have ever put their lives on the line for the “homeland” they constantly claim to protect. The regime of the Bush administration has fomented fear and hysteria but a closer look at the architects of war will show they “were too busy” or had other reasons not to serve in the military they so easily send to die.

The voluntary military created to avoid the resistance caused by the draft in Vietnam has allowed most Americans to “go shopping at the mall” while soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen and women soak the desert sands with their blood.

Yellow ribbons adorn the SUV’s and ever larger oil and gas consuming trucks and cars of this nation while the forgotten volunteers die to protect the continued gluttony and consumption by the drivers claiming to “support” the troops.

The silence of the American public is the greatest betrayal to these troops. They still allow the Bush regime to commit their criminal acts and steal their Constitutional rights. They still continue to allow sleazy politicians of both parties to sell their souls and influence to the corporate masters of war without holding them accountable. They still allow fear and jingoistic hysteria to immobilize them. They still allow corporations to steal their wages and benefits while the corporate profit margins reach the highest levels in history.

The silence of the moral leaders of this nation is a compelling repudiation of their morality. Church leaders fall in line with Bush and his group of evangelical fanatics in apparent attempt to gain advantage against the Islamic world and to reap profit from a voucher system for the failing public schools. They fail to lead against a corrupted government that time and again has allowed injustice and oppression to flourish. They fail to implicate the Bush administration for their neglect of the poor, the hungry and homeless.

Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel and Blackwater will forever be known as the beneficiaries of American tax payer dollars going down the drain. A trillion dollars later, Iraq still remains a country without an infrastructure and worse off than it was before the great boondoggle of “shock and awe”. 8 billion dollars left in the hands of Paul Bremer somehow came up missing and unaccounted for. Blackwater bullies start a riot in Fallujah, get killed and the entire city is bombed back to the Stone Age. Halliburton/KBR are given no bid contracts, hire slave labor and skim millions if not billions by charging two to three times to haul oil as the local Iraqi oil company. Empty tankers escorted by American troops are sent out onto roads full of IED’s and possible ambushes simply to justify billing millions of dollars for work not done.

Meanwhile young American troops are getting head injuries, amputations and mental trauma in an unjustified war and return home to shallow promises of care. Many present with classic signs of PTSD and are court-martialed for bad conduct or given personality disorder diagnoses. Instead of treatment they are discharged and made ineligible for benefits.

The abuses of troops following wars are nothing new. From WWI to Iraq the American people have promised their war veterans they would be taken care of when they returned. Following every war the veterans were left to fend for themselves or subjected to bureaucratic stalls to prevent them from getting what had been promised.

Mustard gas, nerve gas, Agent Orange and depleted uranium are only a small list of toxic and deadly agents troops have been subjected to during the many wars of protecting American “freedoms”. Not only are few veterans given the necessary treatment but the nations polluted by the toxins are left to care for the innocents subjected to them. The numbers of innocent are ten times more than the troops affected.

Over 800,000 individuals are still waiting for entry into the VAMC system for needed care. Most are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Of the 230,000 individuals from those wars who have gained some form of treatment at the VA, 84,000 have been diagnosed with mental health problems. The stories of young men and women dying on return from combat grow. The stories of spouses and children abused by untreated veterans from these wars grow. Stories of homicide, substance abuse, acts of violence and other adjustment problems on return from combat grow.

New studies, new reports and new investigations reveal what every veteran knows. The systems meant to support, to treat and to welcome back the young men and women sent to the killing fields of war aren’t doing the job.

Imagine being the parent or spouse or child of one of these veterans who survived the combat only to come home and lose the battle for life in a dark cloud of despair that leads to suicide. Imagine how much despair and hopelessness it takes to reach a decision to end your own life.

Politicians use “support the troops” as a mantra to show their patriotism, flag wavers use yellow ribbons to say support the troops, peace activists let the troops speak against the war but seldom about their problems, mental health experts decry the conditions of the care available and everybody says they want the best for them but each day more die in despair or their rage boils over and ruins a life.

These expressions of concern ring hollow. The actions needed to avoid another young woman who recently killed herself or another young man who got in a stand off with police is missing. That is the stark testimony of how we really support the troops.



William T. Leichner, RN

USMC combat veteran (Vietnam ’67-’69)