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Blue Mafia: New Book explores police brutality & federal reform in OH


Guest Timtolka

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Guest Timtolka

I've recently finished a book entitled Blue Mafia about two federal investigations of police misconduct in which the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued local police for a pattern and practice of police misconduct. Ohio leads the country, relative to its population, with 7 DOJ investigations of police misconduct. NY state ties Ohio and California has one more, 8, but nowhere has the DOJ been more bitterly resisted than Ohio. Steubenville police had a reputation for roughness long before the DOJ heard about them. There were 50 civil rights lawsuits over the last thirty years alleging false arrest, assault, planted evidence, menacing, harassment, failure to discipline, failure to investigate, as well as a history of bribery and protection rackets with the local mafia. In 1995, Steubenville's investigation grew out of the very first DOJ investigation of a municipal police agency, in Pittsburgh. The DOJ pattern and practice lawsuit against Steubenville was settled only three months after Pittsburgh, and both cities got consent decrees over their police departments with an auditor to check up on them every three months, issuing quarterly reports, all paid for by them.

Blue Mafia examines the process of police reform from the police brutality victim / plaintiffs' perspective with one dozen accounts of criminal and civil rights cases that played a role in triggering federal investigations of police misconduct in Steubenville and Warren, corroborated by the plaintiffs and defendants themselves and their lawyer, Richard Olivito, as well as various current and former officials, and court records. Just over twenty cities have come to the last step of federal civil rights enforcement, the consent decree- and until now, no book has provided a complete account of the process, except Blue by Joe Domanick, which tells the story of the LAPD and its consent decree, but not in great detail and not from the defendant / plaintiffs' perspective.

Warren was Ferguson ten years before the death of Michael Brown, but it was worse- it was only six miles from the former headquarters of the KKK during its heydey in the 1920s. The pattern of racial discrimination in the WPD was atrocious. By 2000, when the WPD was put under the management of an African American safety director, black officers had complained publicly and to city hall of the use of racial slurs among the WPD brass. By 2004, right before the DOJ came to investigate, the chief had been referring to his boss, the safety director Fred Harris, and the other African American city councilors as the "head [n-word]s" openly around the police station for years. But Fred Harris used the power of his office to exert administrative power over the WPD through the chief, his worst enemy, while getting his tires slashed, his windows shot out and hostility from officers, community members, the press, and the KKK.   

Copblock recently published a press release about the book I've published the first chapter here. I'm going to publish in a month, while I raise funds on Indiegogo, where you can pre-order a signed copy. I am a white guy who grew up in a 'sundown town' in Illinois, where as a child I was too young to understand how that total segregation was maintained. Later in rural Louisiana, I learned all about racism although I was still too young, at 12, to comprehend, but I later got turned onto feminism, socialism, civil rights and identity politics in college and in three years of travel abroad as well as a decade in NYC, SF, and DC in my 20s. Today, I've marched for BLM in DC and protested in Charlottesville, published articles on civil rights and police misconduct, and try to stand up for racial justice in every way I can within my family, among my friends and colleagues. The research for the book as well as the subsequent incidents since Michael Brown opened my eyes to the enormous amount of remaining work to be done. 

My book is, at once, an incredibly sad story because our cities and our courts are a sad story with regard to civil rights and police accountability, a guide to the dirty tricks of the legal system and the most powerful tools of civil rights advocates as well as a cautionary tale of how legal careers are ruined, victims and their lawsuits are squashed and state courts are corrupted in order to avoid liability for civil rights violations. It also shows how the media and even the NAACP has gone against civil rights in small towns where the cause of civil rights was most dire. I myself wondered, What does it take to bring the DOJ into town? What do they hear about behind closed doors? My book reveals the results of three years of investigation into two town's experience with the federal government's ultimate stage of enforcement / pacification. Thanks for your attention, and much love. Tim Tolka

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