11 Miami Police officers accused of planting guns and cover-ups. Civilian Review Board appointed in response to the growing problem of police corruption in the Miami Police Department. We talk to PULSE President Bess McElroy about the new civilian review board and what powers it has.
00:00:15.000We're going to have open phones this hour.
00:00:17.000I know we've got folks patiently holding and I'm up in about 22 minutes.
00:00:20.000We're going to be joined by a bar owner where the police is coming in Virginia now and arrest most of the people in the bar even if they haven't been drinking.
00:00:29.000This is the new system where we're all criminals.
00:00:32.000The criminals take control of the society and basically put us in reservations.
00:00:37.000Plantations is what the cities have been turned into for the New World Order.
00:00:43.000In the last segment I was reading about trial for 11 Miami officers accused of planting guns and cover-ups.
00:00:48.000There's also been convictions for police drug dealing.
00:00:53.000I'll tell you that elements of the APD control narcotics and prostitution here in the city of Austin.
00:00:58.000That's been in the news in the back of the paper once or twice, but it's not as important as how to mow your yard or how to report on your neighbor for watering on the wrong day, but you know how it is.
00:01:08.000And we're joined by Bess McElroy, who helped nominate the new Civilian Review Board.
00:01:13.000We'll see what happens with that Review Board and what type of powers this Review Board has.
00:01:18.000First off, Bess, tell us about yourself.
00:01:22.000I am the immediate past president of PULSE, P-U-L-S-E, which stands for People United to Lead the Struggle for Equality.
00:01:30.000This is a grassroots civil rights organization here in Miami, Florida, and we address concerns of the citizens.
00:01:40.000And because there were so many shootings, as well as other misconduct by police officers, And these police officers were not being, in our opinion, in the citizens' opinion, were not being held accountable for their actions.
00:01:58.000There were a lot of questionable shootings.
00:02:00.000For example, there was a shooting of a man, some 122 times, the man allegedly was selling drugs from his home, and when the cops went there, there was no drug found.
00:02:16.000Um, the cop said that the man pushed something out of the window and when the window was investigated, there was no way that he could push anything out of the window because the window did not open.
00:02:31.000Also, there have been cases, I guess Texas is an example, and Austin and Houston, where it's the wrong house, and they shoot somebody 12 times in the back, and then they get caught planting a gun when the person didn't even own a gun.
00:02:44.000Or they kill a couple of their own SWAT team people, and then try to blame it on a guy who didn't even own a gun, and then later the cops admit, okay, we killed our own officers, we tried to frame him.
00:02:53.000I mean, not only do they shoot their own officers, shoot innocent people, then after they've killed you, they demonize you by planting a gun on you.
00:03:00.000In fact, police have gone public now, this is a fact, according to these police officers, that they have been planting guns on those they've been killing.
00:03:07.000Yes, we suspected that, and after talking with several people within those ranks, you know, police officers fear for their lives, which is why they don't come forth publicly.
00:03:20.000In most cases, and give information, but I have talked to enough of them to gather enough information to feed to the U.S.
00:03:30.000Attorney, and that's what we mostly did.
00:03:33.000We got information and we fed it to the U.S.
00:03:35.000Attorney and kept pushing him and pushing him.
00:03:38.000Well, here you are, a woman in Florida who's got more courage than these other so-called good cops.
00:03:45.000I'm tired of women and children and men in our communities having to go out and do all the work when so many so-called good officers stand by and let this stuff happen.
00:03:56.000Yes, that's exactly what was happening here in Miami.
00:04:01.000You know, the whole department really has become corrupt because I believe in guilt by omission and omission.
00:04:08.000If you know it's happening and you don't come forth and say something about it, then you too are guilty as far as I'm concerned.
00:04:16.000That's the first thing corrupt detectives will do is try to get you to take some drugs or stolen jewelry to get you compromised, then they can trust you and move you into the next level.
00:04:28.000Now, I want to point out something here to you.
00:04:31.000If you research the Constitution and Civil Rights and God-Given Rights, the term Civilian Review Board, since when are police and our elected officials the military?
00:04:42.000And that means we're under military law, which is how they're getting the Patriot Act through and all this.
00:04:48.000I would ask, I would try to get the name change to Citizen Review Board instead of Civilian Review Board, because last time I checked, the public officials are servants, not military occupation leaders.
00:05:04.000Well, we kicked the name around quite a bit in what name we would come up with.
00:05:09.000We had several names, and Citizen was one of them, and we ended up with Civilian Review Panel.
00:05:18.000Which is to be made up of ordinary citizens.
00:05:23.000But what I'm saying is, you know, inside an occupied city, say in occupied Germany or Japan, they would have citizen review boards about soldiers raping and killing and it was called civilian review boards and this has been suggested by government.
00:05:38.000Oh, we'll call it civilian review board and nice people like yourself picked that up.
00:05:42.000I would investigate that term and what that means.
00:05:46.000you probably heard about how they want to get rid of posse comment on a son
00:05:48.000but groups on the street has been in the news you heard about that
00:05:52.000well believe me this is getting ready for that but you'll be overseeing what
00:05:55.000the military does uh... they've been involved in their weather aircraft for a
00:05:59.000while in the war on drugs the war on their competition
00:06:02.000but now uh... they're getting ready for just for general crimes
00:06:06.000I'd watch out, because down the road, it means big trouble.
00:06:11.000Because under military rule, you don't have any rights.
00:06:14.000So, in this particular case, with the planting of the guns and the drugs, what happened?
00:06:20.000Well, they're getting ready now to go to trial.
00:06:23.000They're in the process now of going to trial for all of that.
00:06:59.000Well, you know, they gave their story.
00:07:01.000They're going to be testifying for the government.
00:07:04.000They're going to be witnesses for the government.
00:07:07.000And, I mean, I've got some detail here in the article, but they're saying that in cases of multiple shootings of unarmed folks, they would plant guns.
00:07:17.000Can you give us any more detail on that?
00:07:20.000No, not really, because that's basically, you know, that's basically what we know, what we've been told, that In many of these instances where they have shot people and for whatever reason they shot them, then they go back and plant these rubbers to cover up for themselves.
00:07:38.000Certainly they were not in fear of their lives.
00:07:50.000And of course when you shoot, you shoot to kill.
00:07:52.000There have been many innocent people who have gotten shot who had no weapons.
00:07:58.000Well, they also like to spray nearby houses.
00:08:02.000And with hundreds of rounds in some of the cases in Miami and around the country, I know that they then use the statistics of people shot to death as part of their statistics of the people that have been killed by guns.
00:08:22.000I'm not aware of not even one instance where a cop shot another cop.
00:08:27.000It happens on a lot of SWAT team raids.
00:08:31.000In the last year, Lubbock, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, it's been happening in every city really.
00:08:41.000Yes, well I'm not aware of that, but I will say this, that it's rather harmonic now that we've got the Civilian Investigative Panel is about to be seated.
00:08:53.000Since we've passed and gotten this into, gotten this panel established, we haven't had these shootings.
00:09:03.000So it's a testament to what getting involved, having courage, blowing the whistle, standing up, what it can do.
00:09:21.000How long has your organization been working to finally put the spotlight on these shootings?
00:09:28.000Well, now the organization came into being back in the early 80s, 1981, following a riot that was following what we refer to as the MacDuffett Riot, where an insurance guy was shot and killed by police officers.
00:09:44.000And it created a riot, so this organization came into being as a result of that.
00:09:51.000And as far as the new oversight board, we began to work on that in May of last year and putting that board together.
00:10:03.000Attempts had been made previously back in the early 90s to put in such a board, but we weren't able to get it into being.
00:10:13.000Well, I think it's a natural response to riot when somebody who's unarmed gets shot 120-something times in the back.
00:11:17.000They give each other awards for killing somebody?
00:11:20.000Yeah, that was three years ago, and by the way, they just dropped all the indictments.
00:11:23.000They admit it happened, they admit they did all this, but they just went ahead and dropped all the charges after everybody forgot about it.
00:11:31.000I guess that's kind of a tactic, drag out these investigations until no one gets charged.
00:11:46.000Alright, I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna take some calls.
00:11:50.000Then I'm going to hit some other news from around the world, and we got another guest coming on where you go into a bar, haven't even drunk a beer yet, and they arrest you.