Cop killer to be freed
A story I wrote on Thursday about a convicted cop killer who a judge is freeing from prison in two years, reducing his original life plus 15 year sentence, brought an e-mail from a former police officer who was there at the time.
The shooting occurred in 1970 when three members of the Black Panther party opened fired on two officers who were sitting in their patrol car writing a report in West Baltimore.
Skip Panowitz wrote:
I will never forget this night. I was there, albeit after the fact. I was a young, "rookie" officer in the central district. I was leaving home for work on the 12-8 shift when the news flash came on the TV.
Officer Sager worked the post adjacent to mine on the shift before mine.I knew him. It was an eerie night. These officers were doing nothing more than sitting in a patrol car reviewing an incident report. It was a senseless, cold blooded killing, an ambush.
The night was spent looking over your shoulder wondering if you would be the next target. There were no one man patrol units that night-we worked at least in pairs. The suspects, including Johnson, were apprehended later that night.
My fellow officers and I were disappointed in the sentence as we thought that the death penalty was in order for all of them. I wish I had known about the hearing yesterday, as I would have been there to give my support for what it is worth. The young officers of today, and this judge, just don't have a clue. A lot of time has passed in almost 40 years, but that doesn't change the facts: Johnson is still here, and Sager is not, because of the act of Johnson & his associates. A life sentence should mean just that - Life in prison.
Comments
Interesting to note that the very forces the Panthers were trying to "fight" through their improper violent tactics managed to imprison a probably-innocent man Eddie Conway for this shooting. Like the officer that gave his life, Conway never had a chance.
The cop killer should not be set free, but it is at least worth mentioning the other, possibly innocent man implicated in this horrific crime.
Posted by: J | July 31, 2009 11:16 AM
um...bad idea, but Baltimore is not known for its good ideas. Sooo I guess we will just go with the flow and see what happens. I guess that's what we do in this town. How's that workin for ya Baltimore????
Posted by: tom brown of baltimore | August 1, 2009 5:11 PM
• Deaths per year resulting from alcohol: 100,000
• Deaths per year resulting from tobacco: 430,000
• Deaths per year resulting from aspirin: 180- 1,000
• Deaths per year resulting from legal drugs: 106,000
• Deaths that have ever occurred in direct result of MARIJUANA: 0 (that's right zero) let us smoke WEED!! Copy & Paste to END THE NEW SLAVERY
youtube.com/watch?v=S_tTInSQwus
safeaccessnow.org
drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30
Posted by: Jimmy Jones | August 2, 2009 7:02 PM
This is humbling, but I stand corrected:
webmd.com/mental-health/news/20051201/marijuana-raises-risk-of-fatal-car-crash
please disregard my previous ignorance.
Posted by: Jimmy Jones | August 6, 2009 11:40 AM
The black panthers were a revolutionary organization dedicated to the liberation of all americans from the tyranny of capitalism.
The role of the police is to protect the property relations existing in society. As most of this property resides in the hands of the ruling capitalist class, the role of the police is de facto (and indeed de jure) to protect the interests of the ruling class against those of the working class and 'lumpenproletariat'.
As such, while any merely criminal act against the police must be condemned, (as it is merely the redistribution of wealth from one criminal class to another,) any such act undertaken by revolutionaries must be seen in the broader context of liberation, whether this goal is achieved or remains a horizonal promise. That said, the panthers' mistake was to copy the powers they opposed by relying upon the gun, rather than by organizing unions for effective strke action, reserving the gun, at the very least, for scabs alone.
Police departments across the United States had been engaged in a concerted campaign of assassinations against members of the black panthers. The occasional death of a police officer, while an unneccessary tragedy that achieved absolutely nothing except to leave a family in mourning and play into the hands of the ruling class who sought to discredit the movement, is statistically unremarkable against the vast current of politically sanctioned murder of high-ranking panthers, and, indeed, against the culture of immunity wherby police officers still kill citizens with virutal impunity.
Are those deaths marked in the homicide stats? How high is Baltimore's homicide rate when the murders committed by police are included?
Posted by: simon fuller | October 26, 2009 7:49 PM