Armando Vazquez
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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
Last Saturday, Todo Poder al Pueblo, our friends in the local struggles for community social, democratic and economic justice held a community forum at our Café on A to provide an update on the developments of the Oxnard March for Justice held on October, 2012, that was organized by Todo Poder to commemorate the then-recent killings (and police misconduct and brutality) of Alfonso Limon, Robert Ramirez, Oscar Zepeda, Michael Mahoney at the hands of the Oxnard Police Department.
The presentation made by Todo Poder was well documented and researched, and was supported by video and internal police documents that were obtained by Todo Poder from the OPD. It was revealed at the community forum that over $13,000 dollars was spent to pay a score or more of OPD cops to monitor, spy and attempt to control the few hour one day peaceful march, that was of course protect by the First Amendments right to free assembly.
The well attended community forum was sobering, very frightening and painfully revealed that the OPD has the same kind of ruthless national law and order malignant military mindset that is afflicting so many of today’s American police departments that literally at war with “domestic enemies”.
This military mindset is to a large degree responsible for the reprehensible and ruthless executions of youths of color like Oscar Grant of Oakland, Alfonso Limon of Oxnard and Michael Brown, the unarmed 18 year old black youth in Ferguson, Missouri. The national and local mindset of many police departments is a fascist first responder protocol. The cops are programmed to shoot to kill, intimidate, arrest, harass, systemically squash civic protest, and then target the leadership (the “troublemakers” and eliminate them in one form or another. Unconfirmed sources like “Filmingcops” have reported that since 9/11 there have been more than 5,000 civilians killed by cops on a national level. According to the Officer Down Memorial web page there were 386 officer killings for the period covering 2011-2014(to date).
Tragically that is what the Todo Poder al Pueblo forum of September 12, 2014 reported and revealed; namely that the OPD cops are at war with certain sectors of our community they are suppose to protect and serve.
There is no mystery to the recent national and local escalation in the militarization of our communities by the cops. America has been gripped by the insane “us versus them” irrational safety fear since the 60’s. This national fabricated and false “safety fear” has been fuel largely by the law and order propaganda machine that introduced some 50 years ago their demonic domestic wars on communist, drugs, gangs, immigrants, youth, terrorist (real, fabricated and created), the poor, people of color, women, children, gays and the list expand every year.
Since 9/11 on a national level and here in Oxnard the cops pretty much have carte blanche to do as they please and they have injected themselves into every civic fiber and affair of our community claiming cavalierly that they are rooting out and eliminating enemies both foreign and domestic, real or created.
The OPD is dangerously omnipresent; rabidly enforcing the cities draconian gang injunctions, insane zero tolerance graffiti war, that makes every kid of color in this community a “potential criminal suspect”. Because the cop’s DNA is alpha-rabid they do not stand or work behind with anyone with differing opinions, they lead or they do not participate; community policing in Oxnard is a oxymoron. That is why Oxnard has cops controlling much of the youth recreational agenda in our communities, there is the PALS program that is blindly subsidized by the city with little to no program or administrative oversight (give the kids a basketball, puts some boxing gloves, and get the PR machine going because we are “honored” to again host the PALS national boxing tournament). In fact if you look at the Oxnard Police Department PR website you will see about 19 community policing programs that have been ostensibly created to work with the community. Like a rabid Pac-man with a gun the OPD swallows up about 1/3 of the cities yearly budget (approximately 60 to 80 million dollars in tax payer monies go to the OPD budget). The beast is never satisfied and it will continue to fabricate more fear and create programs to ameliorate to the “us versus them” crime that they have largely fabricated, that is the way law enforcement works today in the United States and in Oxnard.
Over the years I have had conversation with the highest command of the OPD, and they invariably discuss their desire to work closer with the community and especially those individual residents and local organizations that work with and succeed with youth. One top ranking OPD cop always confess to us that his police department does a very good job with adults but is doing poorly when it comes to working with the youth of the community. Which of course begs the question; what the hell are the cops doing meddling in some many programs and activities that involve the youth of our community? The answer is simple, power, control and money!
The OPD adventurism has lead them to create and control the Oxnard Alliance, a local conglomeration of cops, community lackeys and gutless cheer leaders that does absolutely nothing for the youth of our community, but the Alliance does however provide expensive junkets and high paying jobs for ex-cops and their proxies.
Recently we injected ourselves into the local fight to keep cops out of Cesar Chavez Elementary School that would have become a community resource site for the OPD. We petition the OSD board to come to its sense and not permit the cops to be on the school grounds and we won a temporary retrieve. So we thought, because I have come to learn that the OSD and the OPD have an ongoing working cooperative relationship which permits “community resource officers” to be utilized strategically on OSD school grounds. The profane and omnipresent cop safety protocol of the “us versus them” mentality is now embedded in our local schools. Cops in school are driven by the phony and dangerous “us versus them” narrative and the central fuel to this tragedy is irrational and cowardly “safety fear” exhibited by so many so called leaders of our community.
We have become a nation and a city gripped by irrational and cowardly fear and we hid behind the cops and their selective law and order war that they wage against the most defenseless and marginalized residents in our community, the youth, the immigrants, the homeless, the chemically addicted, and the mentally afflicted. It is this inhumane, unjust and cowardly “us versus them” domestic war that is tearing this country, this city apart, and only a courageous, organized and community supported stand, like Todo Poder al Pueblo is taking in Oxnard can awaken the apathetic public to the abuse of power that the police wage in the name of justice nationally and here in Oxnard. Wake up my brothers and sister because tomorrow you may be one of “them” and they will be coming after you!
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard.
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