Taos Crime, Kangaroo Courts and Slipshod Shots in the Dark

Kangaroo Court Convicts Alleged Protester

The Crime of Peaceful Protest—Truthdig Headline

The Bad Girl. Now come the headlines and reports from the dark side of America, the exemplary punishment and imprisonment of your average white woman, caught up in an Occupy movement shut down, a trailer parker and graduate student at the New School for Social Research, who would improve her own and other lives, convicted of assaulting an officer because she inadvertently and instinctively elbowed a copper, who reached round her torso and groped her breast while she celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by passing through Zuccotti Park.

Oh, yes, Cecily McMillan, above,  poses the ultimate threat to the privileged white American male: “How dare you challenge the Wall St. Corporate banksters, who sucked out the air in the form of financial derivatives and sent thousands, nay, millions of American homeowners into bankruptcy and penury?”

See how they beat and bruised her in the photo on the right.

Oh, yes the corporate governing class is making an example of Cecily McMillan, lest you, dear reader, consider protesting against the bankers and their kin. From New York to New Mexico, Susana Martinez’s fiefdom here in the Southwest, the state sends out cops, like the APD to  shoot the mentally ill and send messages to La Gente.

Each day the establishment signals that the American dream is no longer accessible to the nonconformist and unconventional citizens, who would exercise their constitutional rights, rights now reserved for the powerful and the wealthy by SCOTUS and POTUS.

Chris Hedges reports from Truthdig

[Cecily] McMillan, who spent part of her childhood living in a trailer park in rural Texas and who now is a graduate student at The New School for Social Research in New York, found herself with several hundred other activists at Zuccotti Park in Manhattan in March 2012 to mark the six-month anniversary of the start of Occupy Wall Street. The city, fearing the re-establishment of an encampment, deployed large numbers of police officers to clear the park just before midnight of that March 17. The police, heavily shielded, stormed into the gathering in fast-moving lines. Activists were shoved, hit, knocked to the ground. Some ran for safety. More than 100 people were arrested on the anniversary. After the violence, numerous activists would call the police aggression perhaps the worst experienced by the Occupy movement. In the mayhem McMillan—whose bruises were photographed and subsequently were displayed to Amy Goodman on the “Democracy Now!” radio, television and Internet program—was manhandled by a police officer later identified as Grantley Bovell.—Hedges

From Rikers Island (Truthdig)

“McMillan says Grantley Bovell, who was in plainclothes and did not identify himself as a police officer, grabbed her from behind during a March 17, 2012, gathering of several hundred Occupy activists in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. In a video of the incident she appears to have instinctively elbowed him in the face, but she says she has no memory of what happened. Video and photographs—mostly not permitted by the trial judge to be shown in the courtroom—buttressed her version of events. There is no dispute that she was severely beaten by police and taken from the park to a hospital where she was handcuffed to a bed. On May 5 she was found guilty after a three-week trial of a felony assault in the second degree. She can receive anything from probation to seven years in prison.” —Hedges

Taos Ski Valley

“This is a police state,” said [Gov.] Johnson, a former Libertarian Party candidate for president and advocate for drug legalization. “These are jackbooted thugs.” —Stiny, Albuquerque Journal

Oh yes, the corporate fraudsters and minders of capital continue to repress and jail not only the poor people of color, McMillan’s roommates at Riker’s, but they are coming for the middle class white people, too, the ones who go skiing, smoke Mota, and bear witness to nonconformity with their broken windshields. Like Grantley Bovell, NYPD, Tommy Barr of the Questa ranger district, has joined the foot soldiers and thugs, according to news reports.

“But the officers say they found 13 violations, including speeding and marijuana possession. Tommy Barrs, an officer responsible for the Questa Ranger District, said the raid was in response to observing violations around the lodge before, according to the report. Initially, the raid was to be conducted with six officers including two that would hit the slopes searching for illegal activity.” —KRQE-TV

Well, sure “illegal activity” occurs in Taos. According to the news, Ma Barker and the Bandidos robbed KCEC of $200,000, mas y menos, but the DA blew the case and the evidence got thrown out by Judge Paternoster, pictured, due to issuing what can be called “illegal subpoenas” by the DA’s office. This Judge is old-fashioned and doesn’t operate from a pouch. Now the joint crime task force, composed of feds, state, and town cops have arrested and charged a local Plumber, described more or less and allegedly as a Southwest drug kingpin, who might not be paying the taxes on his ill-gotten loot.

Simultaneously, small fry were swept up and KOAT TV 7 rejoiced in their photo op broadcast. We also hear a warrant for a prominent name was served but to the wrong address and that the alleged outlaw is still on the lam. Despite the alleged evidence, one must wonder if local DA Donald Gallegos, pictured, can follow the rules and statutes, when it comes to securing the paper trail and prosecuting a perp based on a convoluted chain of evidence, subject to interpretation. What if, like the Ma Barker gang incident, the evidence points toward politically connected higher ups?

Is it about conspiracy or incompetence? We’re only asking.