Has anyone heard about this case in Seattle where a local black activist is accused of punching out the Mayor? (Hmmm, punch the mayor, sounds like a euphamism for masturbation). The guy accused is saying he didn't do it. The papers are taking the oddest sounding quotes they can get and using them to make him sound crazy.

I'm not sure what to think. I know what the Times and PI want me to think, but considering their handling of the police shooting that led to the incident, I can't see them as anything more than the Mayor's press office. I do find it odd that at a media event somebody punched out the mayor but there is no videotape of the event.

Of course, I think getting punched out is nothing compared to getting killed by the cops, and I can understand how anyone from the CD could lose their temper given the circumstances. I think the $250,000 bail is ridiculous, and his intake hearing was little more than a show trial for the press.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Answers

I didn't hear anything about the mayor thing, but the "punching" euphamism for masturbation is generally "punching the clown".

Just, you know, in case you were curious.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

I haven't heard about the case, but it sounds like you're suggesting that there were multiple witnesses to the act, and that there's a conspiracy among all in attendance and the media to frame this guy for what is really a relatively minor crime. So, uh, why would they be doing this?

Again, I don't know the details, but it just seems more likely to me that one guy would lie in order to avoid being convicted of assault than that numerous people with no obvious agenda or connection to each other would lie in order to frame him.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

I'd like to hear a little more context, too. I mean, I'd be more willing to believe that this guy punched the mayor if there was evidence that in the past he had, say, waxed the bishop, choked the chicken and/or spanked the monkey. But I digress.

I don't really get what you're driving at, David. Are you saying that (i) the charges against this guy might have been trumped up by the media, or (ii) do you just mean that they're making him sound like a nut case who's denying the obvious, when in fact he is likely giving a more coherent explanation of what he did?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Actually, when I read about the incident, I thought that the claim was not that he had punched the mayor, but that he had thrown something (a bullhorn? I forget) at the mayor.

I think that it is unlikely that the papers and hundreds (if not thousands) of witnesses are engaged in a conspiracy to make this guy look bad. The defendant's claim that this is a political smear job to discredit his run for mayor would strike me as a little more credible if (a) it hadn't been a large public event and (b) his run for mayor was anything but a long-shot protest candidacy anyway.

The problem with the conspiracy theory, to my mind, is what my husband always called "The James Bond Villain Complex." How is it that the evil villain has an entire island staffed by thousands of flunkies engaged in unquestionably illegal and world-threatening activities and no one at any level has called home and said anything, and no one has noticed the tons of boats hauling in food and hauling out garbage and no one has noticed activity on any of the satellite maps, and, and, and...

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Do we really know what they're up to down at city hall?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Okay, I reread what the New York Times had to say about it (the mayor was hit below the eye with a megaphone, it turns out -- close enough).

The man accused is named James Garrett, aka Omar-Tahir Garrett. He was using a megaphone to harangue the crowd about the police killing of a man in the Central District (which is unquestionably bad, but given that this is the same police force that contains officers who were recently shooting AT EACH OTHER while looking for a suspect, I'm hesitant to label it racism rather than Overwhelming And Blazing Incompetence), and that megaphone was the one that broke several bones under the mayor's right eye, sending him to the hospital.

The dispute is apparently whether Garrett whacked the mayor with the megaphone (the majority claim) or whether Garrett handed the megaphone off to someone else shortly before the mayor was whacked with the megaphone (Garrett's claim.) Who to believe? Well, I wasn't there and I sure as hell won't be sitting on the jury, but I'm tempted to believe the witnesses rather than the defendant. There are more of them, and I'd say that since almost none of them are facing a felony assault charge, they're more objective.

And here's a quote that stood out for me:

"In 1988, Garrett was sentenced to 90 days in jail after grabbing a gun from a University of Washington police sergeant and pointing it at the officer's head. That incident occurred during a demonstration against the university's failure to rehire a popular black lecturer."

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Well, there's a couple problems here.

First, regardless of the Constitution we live in a "guilty until proven innocent" society. See the other threads on this board (Condit, Poundstone, etc). It's assumed by much of the public that if someone is accused of something, they did it. This is a huge problem. When someone accused of something tries to defend themselves, it's assumed they're lying. That ain't right.

Secondly, so far in the articles I have read only two eyewitnesses are actually identifying themselves and making definitive statements about what happened. One is the mayors wife, who said it was Omari who hit the mayor (with a bullhorn), the other is Omari, who says he didn't. I haven't been able to find any other actual eyewitness statements unless they are anonymous (they may come out, I'm just saying so far I haven't seen a lot of evidence. I also haven't read the latest stuff on the case).

Thirdly, if this was a media event, why is there no tape of the incident? A few years back a UW cop pulled his gun on Omari at a protest because Omari was guilty of "failure to disperse." Omari grabbed the gun away from the cop. This was all caught on tape, but the tape *never* got aired. Insert your own conspiracy theory here. Even now, the event is referred to out of context. The papers have printed that Omari "took an officer's gun" at a protest, but none mentioned that the gun was pointed at him first. [I have friends who were there at the time. I have no reason to doubt their account].

Fourthly, Omari is neither stupid nor crazy. If he did do it I think he knows he would get a lot of mileage out of saying he did it, saying he lost his temper but it is an understandable result of what the administration and the cops have done to his community (esp the recent killing of a local guy by the cops). I'm not saying he definitely didn't do it, but I think if he says he didn't it's something to take seriously rather than automatically assuming an accused man must be guilty.

Fifthly: Haymarket, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Leonard Peltier. You don't need a grand masterminded James Bond villian for someone to get wrongfully convicted of a crime. Sometimes it just takes the person having unpopular views in opposition to the powers-that-be, and an ideological prejudice on the part of those same powers-that-be.

Sixthly: Omari is on the board of the African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center. The community has long wanted to turn an abandoned school into a museum and cultural center. City officials have wanted to sell it to their private developer buddies to be turned into expensive condos. At best they'll turn it into a museum if the board is made up of business people appointed by the city rather than the existing board that came out of the community. The abandoned building has been occupied a few times by museum supporters, and attacked using the types of paramilitary police tactics we've seen at the WTO and FTAA protests, only much more brutal (since there was no media and the crowd they were attacking was almost all black). Omari has been an outspoken opponent of police brutality, gentrification, and corruption for decades. The cops, city officials, the press, and establishment liberals hate the guy for this. It's pretty easy to believe that even if they didn't see what happened exactly, when someone says, "Omari punched out the Mayor" it makes perfect sense to them and they back the statement up.

Seventh(ly?): After community residents started fighting back against police brutality, the Times ran scare-headlines (for its white audience) about how the cops were afraid to police black people now because they didn't want to be called racist. They did everything they could to defend the cops and the mayor, to demonize the kid who was killed, and insult the intelligence of the community. Why? Conspiracy? Predisposition of professional editors who work for major media conglomerates? Who the fuck knows. Still, their word isn't worth a damn.

I do know that I've been involved in a lot of situations where I've seen major media take the most absurd quotes from the dumbest person and use them to categorize an entire movement. I've seen them take quotes completely out of context (such as the piece the p-i did on my pal Josh Harper). Hell, in that Josh Harper piece they attributed ideas to him that he'd never expressed. Again, I have no idea why they do this. Maybe because it sells more papers. Maybe because it fits in with their narrow worldview. Maybe because they are under deadline and don't have time or space for a good, accurate story. Maybe because they are controlled by the Cigarette Smoking Man. How the fuck should I know why it happens? I just know that it does.

Eighthly: Conspiracies happen all the time. I find this wonderfully illustrated (pun intended) by a particular this modern world strip. Conspiracy doesn't have to mean some arch villian with a master plan. It could just mean someone fucks up and someone else covers for them. I think it's easier for folks to immediately assume "Men in Black" and be dismissive than it is to take seriously someone who's saying something that falls outside of Conventional Wisdom (I also think this is why only the craziest juiciest stupidist quotes from radicals are given in a news story, because it makes the story easy to digest and the people easy to dismiss. No fuss, no muss, and certainly no long boring analysis by Chomsky).

The guy who was in charge of DEA operations in the Southern cone of South America left the DEA and wrote books about how the CIA was protecting some of the biggest drug smugglers (who also happened to be anticommunist CIA informants). He said he had a hard time being believed, even though he obviously had direct knowledge, because people would dismiss him as some wacko conspiracy theorist who probably believes in UFOs.

Ninthly: Memory is fallible. And, lets face it, the fact of the matter is to all-too-many white folks all black people look alike. Memory is suggestible. Maybe you only saw the thing out of the corner of your eye, but you remember Omari was there, you remember he and the mayor were arguing, and other people say he did it. Plus you know he's a "troublemaker". Maybe you'll remember seeing him hit the mayor. I don't think this means people are lying (consciously). I think it means what I said, memory is fallible and suggestible.

Finally: Here's a plausible scenerio. Omari and other activists show up at this meeting of business people and city officials to protest the heavily aggressive overpolicing of the CD which led to Roberts' death. Arguments ensue. Omari is seen with a bullhorn, is seen arguing with the mayor quite vehemently. A crowd of his supporters are there. Someone strikes the mayor and the mayor goes down. Assume for the sake of argument that someone wasn't Omari, since he's not the only person there pissed off at SPD killing a black guy. Because he was arguing with the mayor only seconds before, because he was in the general vicinity, because he'd had a bullhorn in his hands only a minute or two before, it's assumed he struck the mayor. The mayors wife saw a black man strike her husband, it all happened quickly but she was pretty sure it was Omari. So she fingers him. He gets arrested.

As I said, since memory is fallible, since it *could have been* him, and since politicians and business people think of his as a troublemaker, they all agree it probably was him. Well someone else said they saw it, and he was there. Yeah, he hit the mayor. Yeah, I kinda saw it. I'm pretty sure I saw it. I saw him hit the mayor.

Happens all the time.

So now what? Lots of folks have convinced themselves it was Omari, and he's claiming he didn't do it. Well, they don't have to take that claim seriously because of point 1 above. Guilty until proven innocent. But lets pretend for a second that someone knows that it wasn't him. The administration is already facing pretty serious charges of racism stemming from gentrification, overpolicing, busting the African American Heritage Museum (a much longer story), and most recently, cops killing a black guy with the community not buying the all-out PR assault on the victim.

Now you've just wrongfully jailed one of the leading critics of the administration, giving him ammunition to claim you're trying to silence critics, oppress black people, and that you think all blacks look alike.

Remember, this is an administration that couldn't even issue an apology when they wrongfully killed someone, they're certainly not going to issue an apology over mistaken identity.

The sad fact is fuck ups get covered up with the most disgusting Machievellian excuses. "Maybe he didn't punch the mayor but he probably did something illegal at some point." (I've heard this from lots of conservatives... that people in jail may be innocent of the crime they were charged with, but they're probaby criminals anyway so they belong there). "It's best for the city." "The guy is an asshole." "I don't want to lose my job." Again, see the low-grade conspiracy thing. Maybe no one even knows it wasn't him (assuming it wasn't) because everything happened so fast. Maybe a few people have their doubts but don't want to look like idiots for disagreeing with the mob opinion, especially since they only have (doubts*, they aren't *sure* it wasn't him.

But the question still remains... the media were at this event, they had cameras. So where's the tape of Omari punching the mayor? That, to me, is a huge smoking gun.

I guess a lot of this comes down to perspective. I remember an African-American commentator writing an essay I think in Time or Newsweek or something around the time of the Rodney King/L.A. Riots. He said that to most white folks, especially middle or upper class white folks, cops didn't invade your house or randomly search you or beat you down... they came and got your cat out of the tree and protected you from bad guys. Therefore a lot of White America had a hard time understanding what was happening.

This is why polls about race relations in America always show large numbers of whites saying that racism isn't a problem anymore, while large numbers of blacks say that it is. Thats why its easy for lots of white people to dismiss police brutality as "isolated incidents" because we only hear about the really bad sensational cases. To relate it to this message forum, it's like how I said on the "man with the hand" thread that because I never experienced catcalls and ass-grabbing I never really believed it happened. I always thought it was something from the movies. Men are often dismissive of women's fear for their safety or complaints of harassment because most of us live in a very different world. It's easy for us to dismiss something really bad as being isolated and something not-so-bad as just flirting. It's easy for men to look at women who complain of harassment as being paranoid.

In this specific case, I think I am more sympathetic to Omari because we have friends in common, because I know he's not as crazy or stupid as the media is making him out to be, and because I've been on the wrong end of media bias before. If you've never been part of a news story where the reporting appears to bear little resemblance to reality, it's probably harder for you to accept that the New York Times isn't always right. If you've never known anyone who was persecuted for being a radical it makes it hard to believe that happens.

Oh yeah, and even if he did do it, seriously, what the hell is up with setting bail at $250,000 for punching someone?

***

Wow, that took me like an hour to write. Christ. I hope I got the HTML right, since Greenspun won't let me go back and edit.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

I saw a piece once (okay, it was on an airplane) about an experiment performed in some kind of college class. As the lecture was going on (and being taped), the professor left a backpack on a table next to him. A man came in and ran up, grabbed the bag, and ran out. When the students were asked (later) to describe the man, and later pick him out of a group of photos, almost all of them picked the same man. The problem was, it was the wrong guy. It didn't even look remotely like him.

What happened? The professor made a few comments about the guys appearance (size of his nose, etc), and after a little time had passed, the students "remembered" what he said as being part of what they saw. None of them had any hidden agenda, they didn't know any of the 'suspects', but their memories were false.

All that just to say I'm a lot more skeptical of eyewitness accounts than I used to be. Not only can the eye be fooled, but memory can be manipulated very easily. Even if people are honest, they may not be anywhere near right. (and if you add in prejudice, hidden agendas, and all of that, it just gets worse).

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

I think this whole incident perfectly illustrates the dire need for anti-megaphone legislation in this (well, your) country. How many mayors must topple to the ground in a crumpled heap before something is done about this menace to mayoralty?

And David, you forgot another possible explanation: It wasn't Omari's megaphone that clocked the mayor at all, but a second megaphone from a nearby grassy knoll.

But seriously...

Omari's story just doesn't ring true. Is it more likely that a person holding a megaphone lost his cool and hit somebody with it, as the police allege? Or is it more likely that an already angry person was given a megaphone and immediately used it to strike the mayor, as Omari claims? If the person was mad enough to strike the mayor they wouldn't have waited until somebody handed them a megaphone, they would have just used their fists.

Secondly, you talk about the lack of witnesses. There really hasn't been much information about witnesses, but I suspect the police have a few up their sleeves. What I find particularly telling is that a fellow protestor, who had been holding the other end of a protest sign with Omari just before the incident, has been quoted as saying, "Omari just lost it." He didn't say it wasn't Omari, rather, he offered an excuse on Omari's behalf. That pretty much clinches it for me.

Omari's real name is James Garrett, by the way. It's funny, but an activist named James just doesn't seem to have the same mystique as one named Omari, does he?

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Well, hey, I was just responding to your thoughts here. I don't see any point to responding to the whole missive, but two things (1) I don't think the NYT is always right, having had friends and colleagues quoted in the most ridiculous ways possible before. This is hardly specific to left-wing radicals, by the way -- one of my old professors, who is like unto Milton Friedman in his economics and politics, though rather less insane, was quoted in the NYT as saying something about as meaningful (though more controversial) as, "Economics is about money." The quote was taken out of context, and made him look like an utter moron. However, I don't think we're disagreeing about the facts I got from the article, namely: mayor hit by megaphone, disagreement about who did it, guy charged has been charged before.

And (2) I do know people who have been persecuted by the government for being radical. The kind of people, in fact, who try to get their personal records under FOIA and receive a packet hundreds of pages long with all the words blacked out.

But you know what? Even if the media is trying to paint Garrett as a whacko and he's not, I still think that he's not the most credible witness of the witnesses available, simply because he's the guy up on charges (not that he's guilty just because he's charged -- geez, I'm not insane -- but I wouldn't want to be convicted of a felony either. Moreover, people adjust their memories to fit their self-image, which I find an even more interesting psychological effect than the various problems with eyewitnesses.) And I would believe the other witnesses first, whether currently identified or not. However, if even one person steps up and identifies the mysterious megaphone-wielding stranger who Garrett claims did it instead of him (or something about said stranger that suggests he's not Garrett), I would feel that there was more going on than I've seen so far. Then we're talking interesting.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

i'm not prepared to discuss this in great detail, mostly because i haven't really taken the time to read all about it, but i did want to point out one thing.

the mayor wasn't just punched in the face, at least three bones were broken around the eye and nose. while that still may not call for a $250,000 bail, it is a little more serious than if it were just a punch, either with fist or megaphone.

-- Anonymous, July 13, 2001

$250,000 might sound high for bail, but the severity of the crime is not the only factor considered when bail is set. Flight risk is also taken into consideration. The accused has a criminal history and the courts deem him as a high risk regardless of who he allegedly hit and why. I have no idea if this guy did it, but if he did, get his arse off the streets because he is dangerous. Assault is assault. Dave, with your ninth statement above; are you saying that white people can not be expected to correctly point out a black suspect of a crime? That "And, lets face it, the fact of the matter is to all-too-many white folks all black people look alike" is a weak argument you constantly use whenever something happens to a black person. You seem to be the only one who brings up such stereotyping. What's the difference between a Left Wing Nazi and a Right Wing Nazi? Answer..not much.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2001

But all us morons understand that eyewitnesses often get it wrong, and that eyewitnesses of one race are even less likely to pick an individual from another race out of a line-up. It's not the way it should be. It is the way it is. Oh, and there are no left-wing Nazis. Moron.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2001

Just found out another wrinkle in this case. Apparently there is a 22 million dollar lawsuit against the city right now for police brutality, police harassment, wrongful arrest, and that sort of thing.

Guess who one of the star witnesses is? Yup, the guy who's been shackled, thrown in the hole and denied his meals over allegedly throwing a punch at the mayor.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001