Exposed! The Real Story Behind a Shooting in the “War on Cops”
Updated September 18, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The September 1 death of cop Charles Joseph Gliniewicz near Chicago has been used as a rallying cry to falsely claim there is a so-called “war on police.” Authorities launched a military-style manhunt with 400 heavily armed cops for the alleged “suspects”—a Black man and two white men. Thousands of cops attended the funeral for Gliniewicz, who was made into a hero and martyr. It turned out that as of today, no evidence has been presented that anyone killed Gliniewicz. There IS NO “war on police”—there is an epidemic of police killing people! Just since the beginning of this year, over 800 people have been killed by police in America—compared to 31 cops dying in the line of duty. Which side are you on?
(Photo: Brian Hill/Daily Herald, via AP)
Over the past couple days, there have been strange developments in the case of a cop whose death was used to hype up the war on anti-police brutality protesters.
On September 1, suburban Chicago cop Charles Joseph Gliniewicz died from one or more gunshot wounds. News reports said before his death he radioed that he was chasing three people engaged in "suspicious activity.” Nobody has said what that “suspicious activity” was, but reportedly one of the “suspects” was Black, in the almost all-white suburb of Fox Lake, and the other two were white.
Immediately authorities launched a massive manhunt with 400 heavily armed cops, helicopters, snipers in camouflage and dogs for suspects identified in a surveillance video. Trains were stopped and searched. Residents were locked into their homes—they couldn’t even take their dogs out to relieve themselves. Authorities turned the area around the shooting into a scene that looked like the U.S. invasion of Iraq, or—to take an example closer to home—like old-time slave catchers gone rabid in search of a runaway or rebellious slave.
Thousands of police from around the country and others attended Gliniewicz’s funeral, followed by a mile-long funeral procession marked with blue ribbons in support of police. The so-called “Blue Lives Matter” movement made Gliniewicz—nicknamed “GI Joe”—a martyr and a hero. The media repeated the lie that the death of Gliniewicz was yet more supposed evidence that police were “all under siege” because of anti-police brutality protests. (Chicago Tribune 9/17/15). And this in the context of headlines like one at Fox “News” that claimed “In America today the blue uniform has a bull's-eye on it.”
Check It Out: Larry Wilmore, The Nightly Show, on the Phony “War on Cops”
Watch this video clip of Larry Wilmore, host of Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show where he takes apart the manufactured lie that there is a “war on police.” With humor and contempt and from his own perspective, Wilmore targets “Trickery Dickery” FOX News for regurgitating over and over again cops’ blatantly false claim that Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality protests are endangering cops’ lives.
Then what happened? The Gliniewicz story faded from national news. The suspects identified from surveillance video—targets of the invasion-level manhunt—were found and cleared by police with barely a notice in the press. Nobody asked what made them suspects in the first place.
And in a striking development, the County Coroner reported that Gliniewicz’s death could have been the result of a wide range of events including “homicide, suicide, accident, undetermined" because among other things, the trajectory and entry point of a bullet indicated suicide was a possibility. The coroner is now saying he cannot make a determination of cause of death because he is shut out of the police investigation and doesn’t “know what happened in terms of where did this bullet come from."
Additional reports have raised possible connections between Gliniewicz's death and a scandal that forced his chief to resign in the midst of an investigation into how his force handled an arrest in 2014. And in another development, a retired Chicago cop was arrested for calling the Lake County Sheriff's office and making threats against everyone investigating the Gliniewicz death unless it was declared a suicide. While neither of these reports proves anything, compare the way they are being treated to the way rumors and gossip are dredged up—like accusations that the victim was selling loose cigarettes—when a Black person is the victim of police murder.
Fact is, no evidence has been released pointing to anyone or anything responsible for the death of Gliniewicz, and there seems to be an effort by authorities to cover up the whole story. Yet his death is being used as a rallying cry for an invented wave of killings of police.
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Again: compare the way the powers-that-be responded to the death of Gliniewicz—due to unknown causes—to how they respond when a Black person is brutalized or murdered by police on video where millions see it happen and it is clear someone was murdered, and who the murderer is! When the victim is Black, and the killer a cop, is the victim made into a national cause? Is there a massive manhunt mobilized to apprehend his killer? Do top officials attend the funeral and vow this must never happen again? Do the media dig into what the motives and factors behind his murder by police were?
You know the answer: In cases where police brutalize and kill, there is almost no pretence of apprehending the assailant. In fact, each assault or murder-by-police is turned into an orgy of demonizing Black people as a whole as “thugs” and “demons” while celebrating the “courage” of the police who murdered them. It happened with Eric Garner. It happened with Mike Brown. It happened to thousands of others.
Since the beginning of this year over 800 people were killed by police in America, vastly disproportionally Black and Latino, and over and over again unarmed and presenting no threat to anyone. Compare that to the 31 police who—like Charles Joseph Gliniewicz—die in the line of duty and whose deaths were used to generate a blizzard of bullshit turning reality upside down.
NO! There is NO epidemic of people killing police, there IS an epidemic of police killing people.
Which side are you on?
Since the beginning of this year over 800 people were killed by police in America. 31 police are reported to have died at the hands of civilians. NO! There is NO epidemic of people killing police, there IS an epidemic of police killing people.
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