Who Is Mark Fuhrman?
October 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Monday, October 26, as part of the media onslaught against Quentin Tarantino for taking part in the Rise Up October protests and speaking out against police terror, FOX News host Megyn Kelly had on Carl Dix, co-initiator of Rise Up October and representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, versus Mark Fuhrman on the police side. (See video clip of Carl Dix shutting up Fuhrman here.)
The name Mark Fuhrman rings a bell with many people—but for others who don’t recognize the name, this is the former LAPD detective who was revealed during the 1995 trial of OJ Simpson as a fascistic racist. These days, Fuhrman makes regular appearances on FOX News, promoted as a reliable voice for U.S. law enforcement—and indeed he IS! So who is Fuhrman, and what does it mean that this Nazi ex-cop is spotlighted as a major law enforcement “expert” on national TV?
The October 26 appearance wasn’t the first time Megyn Kelly has relied on Fuhrer-man. She brought him in to slander the young people of Baltimore when they refused to quietly accept the police murder of Freddie Gray; and before that when the young people of Ferguson, Missouri, rose up after Michael Brown was murdered while his hands were in the air. During jury selection for the trial of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, Fuhrman described Trayvon as “a dead victim or dead suspect” depending on “which side you’re on.”
Mark Fuhrman was a key detective in the trial of OJ Simpson, accused of killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Fuhrman was early on the murder scene, claimed he found blood in OJ’s Bronco, illegally entered Simpson’s estate, and then claimed he found a bloody glove lying out in the open. When the defense raised the possibility of the deliberate planting of evidence by police, Fuhrman was at the center of it—because he was pinned down as and proven to be a racist and a liar. After testifying that he had not used the “n-word” in 10 years, the defense produced four witnesses—as well as 13 hours of audiotapes from interviews he had given as part of a movie project—that proved he was lying. Fuhrman was eventually convicted of felony perjury.
As Revolution newspaper wrote about those tapes at the time:
They showed in detail how Fuhrman and his fellow cops hated Black people, Mexicans and women—even Black people and women on the police force. Here was a man who belonged to an organization called "Men Against Women" that harassed women on the police force. Throughout the tapes, Fuhrman uses the "n-word" to refer to Black people—40 times in 61 excerpts selected by the defense. He uses the word casually—it is how he thinks about Black people. The tapes contain 18 examples of Fuhrman admitting to illegal use of deadly force, beating suspects to extract confessions, planting evidence, framing innocent people and lying or covering up the misconduct of other cops. (See below for a few excerpts from the tapes.)
In the trial it came out that people who knew Fuhrman had heard him say that he couldn't stand the sight of a Black man and white woman together and when he encountered such a situation he made a point of harassing the Black man. A letter from Kathleen Bell, sent to Simpson's defense team, described what Fuhrman had told her: "When he sees a ‘n*gger’ (as he called it) driving with a white woman, he would pull them over. I asked, would he if he didn't have a reason, and he said that he would find one."
Whatever people may think about OJ Simpson’s involvement in the murders, these tapes answered the question, “What would be the motive for a frame-up?” They document Fuhrman’s undisguised hatred for Black men (like Simpson) who drove expensive cars, moved into privileged white neighborhoods, and dated white women. And they also answered the question, “How could such a frame-up be covered up?”
The OJ trial took place four years after the LAPD beating of Rodney King was captured on videotape. The Rodney King video was the movie, and the Fuhrman tapes were the soundtrack. Over the past year and more, people have been forced to witness the horrifying videos of the cold-blooded police murders of someone’s unarmed son or daughter or father or mother—one after another. And the Fuhrman tapes are still the soundtrack.
Think about the fact that Mark Fuhrer-man is promoted by FOX News as an expert on law enforcement. With his arrogant, aggressive racism, with all its genocidal overtones, Fuhrman isn’t “out of touch” with the armed enforcers of this system—he’s considered their voice. His hatred and contempt for the people who have stood their ground in the streets against the murdering police; for the family members of those murdered by the police in cold blood day after day who have courageously stood up and said this must stop; and for those who have come together in Rise Up October creating a vehicle, and pathway, for this movement to Stop Police Terror and Murder to grow more powerful—all of this reflects the great concerns of those who rule who have no answer but to lash back, and show their fangs.
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Excerpts from the Fuhrman Tapes
On the arrest of a man in the Westwood neighborhood
"He was a n*gger. He didn't belong. Two questions. And you are going: Where do you live? 22nd and Western. Where were you going? Well, I'm going to Fatburger. Where's Fatburger. He didn't know where Fatburger was? Get in the car."
On criteria for stopping cars
"N*gger drivin' a Porsche that doesn't look like he's got a $300 suit on, you always stop him."
On where he grew up in Washington State
"People there don't want n*ggers in their town. People there don't want Mexicans in their town. They don't want anybody but good people in their town, and anyway you can do to get them out of there that's fine with them. We have no n*ggers where I grew up."
On L.A. neighborhoods
"Westwood is gone, the n*ggers have discovered it. When they start moving into Redondo and Torrance. Torrance is considered the last white middle class society."
On the LAPD chokehold
"We stopped the choke because a bunch of n*ggers have a bunch of these organizations in the south end and because all n*ggers were choked out and killed—twelve in ten years."
On changes in the LAPD
"That we've got females...and dumb n*ggers, and all your Mexicans that can't even write the name of the car they drive."
On practicing martial arts kicks on arrested people
“I used to go to work and practice movements....I used to practice my kicks.”
On police misconduct investigations
“Now, it's funny because guys in Internal Affairs go, ‘Mark, you can do just about anything. Get in a bar fight. We'd love to investigate just some “good ol boy” beating up a n*gger in a bar.’”
On brutalizing suspects during interrogations
"Why don't you give them the 77th lie detector test? [The "77th" refers to the LAPD division in South Central L.A. where Fuhrman worked for many years]...And a bunch of guys will laugh—old timers, you know. And then one kid will ask his partner, ‘what's that?’ You choke him out until he tells you the truth. You know it is kind of funny. But a lot of policemen will get a kick out of it.”
On attitude toward interrogating Black people
“When you are talking to somebody it is not like you are really listening into their words because you will key on what is the truth and what isn't. First thing, anything out of a n*gger's mouth for the first five or six sentences is a fucking lie. That is just right out. There has got to be a reason why he is going to tell you the truth.”
On taking a suspect "to the baseball diamond"
“I just handcuffed him and went the scenic route to the station. We searched him again and found the gun. Went over to the baseball diamond and talked to him. When I left, Dana goes, ‘No blood, Mark.’ ‘No problem, not even any marks, Dana.’ Just body shots. Did you ever try to find a bruise on a N*gger. It is pretty tough, huh?”
On assuming guilt and fabricating reasons for making an arrest
Fuhrman: “I didn't arrest him under anything, just took him to the station, ran him for prints, gave them to the detectives to compare with what they've got in the area. I'll probably arrest a criminal that way.”
McKinny (writer interviewing Fuhrman): “So you're allowed to pick somebody up that you think doesn't belong in an area and arrest him?...”
Fuhrman: “I don't know. I don't know what the Supreme Court or the Superior Court says, and I don't really give a shit...If I was pushed into saying why I did it, I'd say suspicion of burglary. I'd be able to correlate exactly what I said into a reasonably probable cause for arrest.”
On falsifying evidence
“So if that's considered falsifying a report, and if some hype [junkie], you know says, ah, you know whatever, I shot [up] two days ago, and you find a mark that looks like three days ago, pick the scab, squeeze it, looks like serum's coming out. As if it were hours old. It's a hard find. You just can't find the mark. Cause he's down. His eyes don't lie. That's not falsifying a report. That's putting a criminal in jail. That's being a policeman.”
On brutalizing people for speaking Spanish
“We don't speak Spanish here. Work Mexican gangs, and I don't know how to speak any Spanish...When they speak Spanish. ‘No comprende.’ Slap them upside the head. Then they speak English. I'm an English teacher. Just like that. That's police work. And that's being able to pick out the people. That type of treatment is necessary...”
On conduct when working in a Black neighborhood
“You have to be a switch hitter. You have to be able to look at your area and look at how you talk to people. Look at how you deal with things and what you can and can't do even with a criminal. You can't go up in Bel Air [an affluent neighborhood in L.A.], and some guy gives you a hard time in broad daylight, and slap them. ‘Dammit. I want to know what's going on.’ You just don't do that. I mean, it's obvious. But when you work down in the south end, Watts, the metropolitan area, you work skid row. You use your stick more than your mouth. You don't—I mean, you just, you go of course. Don't try to tell people to go there. Go there. You just use your stick. Smack 'em. They'll move.”
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