COPS DO 'OCCUPY' POOR COMMUNITIES

Editor, Times-Dispatch:
The interviews with Chief of Police Andre Parker were quite interesting.
The Chief insists his police force is not an army of occupation, but then
points out a conspicuous lack of cooperation on the part of those
communities that supposedly are not being occupied.

Honest citizens inform others of the presence of undercover police
infiltrators in the community.

Jurors use their age-old right of nullification to acquit those brought up
on frivolous charges by the state.

An objective observer might think this sounds very much like resistance to
occupation. Perhaps the people of Richmond's poor communities are tired of
being victimized by police harassment, intrusion, frame-up operations,
brutality, and even murder.

Perhaps they are tired of seeing their families, friends, and neighbors
herded into the prison-industrial complex under archaic victimless-crime
laws. Perhaps they realize that the "war on drugs" and other such chimera
are a cover for the creation of an exorbitant police state.

Perhaps this is why the Chief and his minions receive no cooperation from
the communities in question.

Keith Preston

Richmond