Detroit stress police

What does a pressure campaign look like? I will be able to highlight issues such as getting rid of the surveillance state.

Working in consultation and doing demonstrations with DSA when there are opportunities to move pieces like a facial recognition software ban is crucial.

Can you describe the current political landscape and the obstacles to socialist electoral organizing in Detroit? When you poll voters, they can be progressive. We have a study where Detroiters said that water should be a human right, and they want internet access and public transit.

We have a lot of messaging to do on that front. The messed up part is that living in Detroit is expensive. We have the largest water bills in the country, we have a 2 percent city income tax rate, and property taxes are among the highest in the country. Do you have any plans after your run for Board of Police Commissioners? Where do you see yourself five or ten years from now moving the socialist project forward in Detroit?

I think that I do have the skills to win a seat. And I come to this from a movement perspective — how can we grow DSA, and how can we build a force that can oppose capital in this city and this state?

You came to socialism through the Bernie Sanders campaign. I would love to hear your story. How did you find out about DSA, and what made you become so invested? What are your hopes for joining this board, and where do you think you can take it? He claimed to have identified himself as a police officer and ordered them to halt, but instead they fled. The autopsy report showed that Fennicks was extremely intoxicated, raising questions about why the STRESS unit did not just apprehend him.

Patrolman Ziolowski shot and wounded Hicks, allegedly as he fled, but his stomach wound instead indicated a close-range shooting.

The DPD charged Hicks with felonious assault, but a judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. According to Hicks's testimony in a civil lawsuit against STRESS, when the threesome asked Ziolkowski for a quarter to buy a drink not knowing the white man was an officer , "he said he didn't have nothing for no n Police officers threatened Wren's life for agreeing to testify.

Fennicks and Moore fled down an alley and died of gunshot wounds in the head and back, fired by the white backup officers. Harry Taylor July 6, Lewis then fired his gun, as did backup Patrolman Bardel, sending both of the alleged assailants to the hospital with serious injuries.

The officers claimed to find a knife that one of the suspects dropped at the scene. The DPD charged Taylor with armed robbery, but a jury acquitted him. Before he died, in testimony in a civil lawsuit, Harry Taylor said that he and Pender had left a bar around a. They were then attacked for no reason by a white man Patrolman Lewis who "shot me in the stomach.

The bullet spun me around. Then he shot me again. James Smith July 14, When Van Wie declined, they allegedly attacked and tried to mug him, with one wielding a knife.

Van Wie claimed to have identified himself as a police officer before shooting James Smith as he fled. According to testimony by the two survivors, Pearson and Roberts, the police account was a complete fabrication. They stated that Patrolman Van Wie precipitated the encounter while pretending to be drunk, and James Smith was not even initially on the scene.

Instead, Smith emerged from a nearby hotel and told the group to stop loitering. Smith died of three gunshot wounds one week later. Louis Ellios, Jr. September 3, Ellios had gone upstairs when the plainclothes officers arrived, and as he walked back downstairs still holding the gun, Patrolman Miller blew a hole through his stomach from close range with a shotgun. The officer claimed that Ellios had pointed the shotgun at him.

James Henderson September 9, The anti-STRESS movement, led by the Labor Defense Coalition, charged that the two officers murdered Henderson to silence him as an eyewitness to Patrolman Peterson's suspicious killing of Herbert Childress the previous May, when Henderson allegedly had lured the undercover decoy into an apartment for a homosexual liaison see above.

In the September incident, Patrolman Brown claimed that, while acting as a decoy, two men asked if he wanted "a girl" allegedly soliciting him for prostitution and then jumped him with a knife and tried to rob him.

Patrolman Peterson, the backup, claimed that as he responded to the situation of Henderson holding a knife to Brown's throat, someone inside the hotel yelled 'Police! In Peterson's story, Henderson then threatened the officers by claiming to have a shotgun none was found, and threatening an armed officer with a nonexistent gun defies logic.

Peterson and Brown both stated that they then shot the cornered Henderson through a closed bathroom door although the bullet wound was in the back and 'found' the knife. The other man was Rawley McDuffy, the hotel night clerk, whom the STRESS unit arrested as an accomplice to armed robbery, presumably to intimidate him against reporting what he actually saw.

After a judge dismissed this charge as completely unjustified, the prosecutor offered McDuffy a plea deal for disorderly conduct. The LDC compiled firsthand evidence that a few weeks before the fatal shooting, a DPD car drove by Henderson's residence and an officer called out, "Bitch, we're going to get you next. The night clerk, Rawley McDuffy, testified that he witnessed two white men Patrolmen Peterson and Brown enter the hotel and begin beating James Henderson.

When McDuffy tried to intervene, the plainclothes officers beat and threatened him as well. The officers then dragged Henderson into a room, and McDuffy heard one of them yell, "Run, n," followed by five or six gunshots. The two officers then returned to beat McDuffy until he was unconscious. Ricardo Buck and Craig Mitchell September 17, Multiple teenage eyewitnesses contradicted the police version and insisted that Worobec had instigated the encounter, fired unprovoked at the unarmed youth, planted the watch on Buck's body, and that other STRESS officers fired on Buck as well.

The STRESS killings of two unarmed and fleeing teenagers led to a mass protest movement and two civil rights investigations calling for major reforms, which the DPD rejected. Donald Saunders September 21, Miller alleged that around a. Patrolman Miller then claimed that he identified himself as a police officer, ordered Saunders to halt, and then fired several shots when the suspect kept fleeing.

Patrolman David Siebert, part of the backup team, also fired shots at Saunders. The forensic evidence contradicted this account and revealed that Saunders had been shot from the front, in the chest from close range, as well as in the hip. Click here to read an excerpt from Patrolman Miller's testimony and the contradictory evidence provided by the Wayne County Medical Examiner.

Silas Hudgins November 12, In the police account, Hudgins threatened other residents of the building and then pointed the gun at the officers, fired one shot, and refused to drop the weapon when so ordered. The three patrolmen hit Hudgins with fatal shots in the chest and abdomen.

This was true, although the tragedy raised different questions about the tendency of police to respond with gunfire to people undergoing mental health crises. Neil Bray November 13, Van Wie and his partner, Patrolman Phillip Kocinski, were disguised as hippies and pretending to be inebriated when they encountered Neil Bray, with Patrolmen Raymond Peterson and Michael Worley working backup. In the police version, Bray accosted the two decoys with a broom handle, striking Van Wie in the face, and demanded their money.

Van Wie claimed that another member of the group Bray was with allegedly threatened them with a sawed-off shotgun, but the police did not recover this at the scene. Van Wie immediately opened fire, striking Bray in the chest. Patrolman Peterson claimed to have shot Bray as he fled the scene and "lunged" at him, despite the likelihood that the young man died when Van Wie shot him from point-blank range.

Bray suffered six gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. Patrolman Van Wie sought treatment for "facial abrasions. The LDC contended that "for this act, he [Bray] was summarily executed. At no time did the officers attempt to disarm or arrest Neil Bray. The anti-STRESS protests by a broad civil rights coalition during spring undoubtedly saved lives, forcing the DPD to scale back the decoy operation before the warmer summer months when the bulk of police shootings traditionally occurred.

The dominant pattern of STRESS decoy-instigated killings marked by excessive force and wrongful death in street patrols, so clearly evident throughout , also gave way to a more diverse set of circumstances in the five homicides attributed to STRESS officers during Still, the majority of STRESS homicides continued to involve unarmed victims or younger African American males who allegedly, and inexplicably, attacked officers with knives and other weapons, raising suspicious patterns of excessive force and police coverups, especially given the context in which STRESS operated.

Everett Winfrey February 25, Patrolman McCallum cornered Winfrey in a parking garage and shot him several times. Winfrey was not armed, and it is not clear why the shooting of a cornered man was justified under DPD regulations that apprehension of a suspect should take place without deadly force when possible.

McCallum claimed that the suspect ignored orders to halt and turned around just as he was shot, explaining the bullet wound in the chest. This suspicious police account did not generate the controversy and civil litigation of previous STRESS killings, perhaps because the purse-snatching victim was a civilian and not a decoy officer, but whether the use of force was justified is certainly debatable. In , the Detroit Police Department launched the S.

The unit was eliminated by Mayor Young in , but the stories of those three years are dark and violent. An award-winning documentary, Detroit Under S. S , delves into this controversial era. Van Wie is a Michigan native, whose father served as S.

Through the years, Van Wie said he began to gather bits and pieces of the story. Then, just five years ago, he confronted his father about the S. S and I about fell over in my chair. Van Wie told his father that they had to share this story.

Listen above to hear Van Wie discuss how S. S operated, and what he hopes viewers will take away from the film.