For immediate release (2/15/99)
by Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)<ARTISTpres@aol.com>
provided through OPENAIR-MARKET NET
Question: What are Police "commandos" in an "elite unit" whose motto is, "We own the night" and wear tee shirts with a Hemingway quote about the addictive thrill of "hunting" humans. Answer: South African secret police? A Serbian Death Squad? Nazi SS? Nope, it's Adolf Giuliani's street crimes unit. In two years the unit's 400 officers (almost all of whom are white) illegally searched 40,000 people (virtually all of whom were black or Latino). Last week four members of the elite unit shot 41 9mm rounds at an unarmed, completely innocent 22 year old West African immigrant hitting him at least 19 times.
Giuliani's solution to this problem? Give the cops hollowpoint bullets. Now when they fire on suspicious looking black males death will result after one shot making the other 40 shots unnecessary. It calls to mind Hitler's cost effective decision to use poison gas on the Jews because it was too expensive to shoot them one at a time.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics); Email: ARTISTpres@aol.com, 255 13th Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11215. For extensive information on this go to http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html