From: jake@bony1.bony.com (Jake Livni)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,misc.headlines,talk.politics.misc,misc.legal
Subject: Re: Say it ain't so
Date: 17 Nov 92 23:13:30 GMT
Organization: The Department of Redundancy Department

In article <1992Nov12.102247.7946@Princeton.EDU> niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:
>In<1992Nov6.171416.16625@bony1.bony.com> jake@bony1.bony.com (Jake Livni) rants:
>>In article <1992Nov4.080110.13323@Princeton.EDU> niepornt@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (David Marc Nieporent) writes:

>"Noisy demonstration" is one way of putting it. An interesting way, to
>be sure.  But when hundreds of policemen go around rioting, blocking
>traffic, yelling racial epithets at the mayor and anyone else who comes
>nearby, it comes a lot closer to a riot.  

Like I said in another posting, I wasn't present and wasn't reporting
it as a journalist.  So let's call it a riot.  It says something about
the relationship of the Mayor with his police force when they can riot
against him, don't you think? 

>>ago followed the shooting death of a drug dealer by a policeman, after
>>which the Mayor rushed to the drug dealer's family to comfort their
>>loss, while criticizing the police.  Mayor Dinkins is making the
>
>Yes, thereby preventing a riot, at a time when his background wasn't
>known.  And the fact that he was a drug dealer really doesn't make the 
>shooting more justified, unless he was threatening the policeman, 
>something which hasn't been shown.  

Great!  The mayor RUSHES to console the families of killed drug
dealers.  If the mayor had done just 1/10th as much for Jews mugged,
beaten senseless and murdered in New York, he'd be held in a higher
esteem.  If the best excuse that you can find is that his actions were
"preventing a riot", then that is pretty pathetic.  Is rioting the
only way to get attention from the authorities these days?

>>already difficult job of law enforcement in NYC even more difficult.  
>
>Well, I don't think that's either the police or Dinkins' fault.  I think
>it's the WOD which is at fault there.  But anyway, while Dinkins doesn't
>have credibility with the police, I don't think he doesn't have credibility 
>with most whites in NY.

Firstly, you're badly out of touch with NY.  Dinkins is getting plenty
of criticism in the press, beyond the Crown Heights pogrom.

Secondly, your using the WOD as an excuse for the difficulty of law
enforcement in NY is idiotic and simplistic.  If the WOD is stopped
tomorrow, will law enforcement become simple?  What have YOU been
smoking? 

>If the police didn't go around killing people under suspicious
>circumstances, they'd have a lot more credibility (and I'm not just
>talking about the above case; there were several others.)

The police are generally vindicated in these cases.  Your continued
suspicions make your postings more appropriate to alt.conspiracy.

>>the police mightily.  I don't think that there is anything the police
>>said in this case which was accepted by the jury; they discarded all
>>the evidence in court.
>
>Well, that was because there were other contradictions in the testimony.
>One policeman testified that he chased Nelson by himself, while a second
>policeman testified that both of them chased Nelson.
>
>If they can't even get their own stories straight, you'd expect the jury
>to find it hard to believe them.
>
>And that's the point.  The police's statements contradicted the evidence
>they had.  *That's* why they weren't believed.  You ignored the part
>about the blood.

Nelson's lawyer, realizing that his client didn't have a hope in hell
of getting acquitted based on the facts, and also realizing that his
mostly minority jury was quite susceptible in the current climate to
conspiracy theory suggestiveness (which worked so well in the
Kahane/Nosair case), put the NYPD on trial instead of Lemrick Nelson.

The jury, instead of finding Nelson Not Guilty due to Reasonable
Doubt, found the NYPD Guilty of Reasonable Doubt.  Your concentration
on the NYPD is only continuing the same diversionary tactic; it does
nothing for justice in the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. 

[...]

>>This is incorrect.  Yankel Rosenbaum had probably never met Lemrick
>>Nelson until a few minutes earlier.  It's no wonder, then, that
>>Rosenbaum didn't call out "That's him!  Lemrick Nelson!" but instead
>>identified the one in the red shirt.  This does not appear to be the
>>only means of recognition by the victim, but merely a means of
>>pointing him out.  Witnesses scanning a police line-up would say the
>>same thing.  
>
>Yes, but this *wasn't* a lineup.  If it had, the testimony would have
>been more believable.  Rosenbaum was lying there dying and they brought 
>Nelson up to him.

We were previously told that they had someone ELSE with a red shirt.
The other guy was (reportedly) caught BEFORE Nelson.  Effectively,
this WAS a lineup.  Lemrick Nelson wasn't the only guy nabbed and
brought before the victim at the scene of the crime.   

>The facts aren't clear as to whether they showed
>the knife before or after Rosenbaum identified Nelson.  The jury thought
>from the testimony that they showed the knife first, which would
>obviously prejudice Rosenbaum towards identifying this guy.  

These same suspicions of police conspiracy to railroad Nelson were
used by the defense to persuade the jury that the Police were guilty
and Lemrick Nelson was somehow irrelevant.  The jury, being biased
against the police, gladly convicted the NYPD and discarded the
ENTIRETY of their testimony, believing Nelson's claim to not have done
anything.  

>Anyway,
>Rosenbaum was lying there dying and they brought a guy in a red shirt up
>to him -- how good his identification likely to be?

Probably, pretty good.  Don't you think you'd remember the face of the
guy that knifed you?  Five minutes later?  Rosenbaum was able to 
recognize that the other suspects DIDN'T do it and was able to
recognize the one that DID.  

>>Thus, when Nelson's lawyer found out that there was no record of the
>>alleged confession, he most likely would have instructed his client to
>>deny making it.  It worked.  It often does.
>
>So?  This is certainly true that his lawyer *could* have told Nelson to
>deny it; it's also irrelevant.  It's up to the police to prove that they
>have a confession, not up to Nelson to prove they don't.

He COULD have been the killer, too.  COULD have confessed to it.
Hardly irrelevant.  

>And saying "No, really.  Trust us.  He confessed," isn't really the way
>to do it.

Instead, the jury chose to convict the NYPD and accept Nelson's
claim that he never confessed (on the advice of his theatrical agent,
er, lawyer).   

Yankel Rosenbaum's murderer walks free because Dinkins and the NYPD
have a bit of a feud.  And you're still trying to defend this kind of
justice system?  Why don't you defend the WOD as vigorously?  What
HAVE you been smoking?

[...]

>>Thus, there was no need to "quiet down the Jewish community" because
>>the Jewish community was not being violent.  Nelson was picked up and
>>idnetified by Yankel Rosenbaum even before he was taken away by
>>ambulance; he died a few hours later.
>
>Not quiet them down in a rioting sense; perhaps that was a poor choice
>of words. I meant quiet them politically.

It wasn't a poor choice of words; it was either an accidental false
charge on your part based on non-factual material or it was a
deliberate and malicious false charge.

There was no need BEFORE Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to pacify any
Jews.  Blacks were rioting before the stabbing and after it as well.
The only ones who were pacified by City Hall were blacks.  The police
caught a suspect in a stabbing attack minutes after the stabbing.
Several hours later, the victim died.  

The police didn't arrest anyone five minutes after the stabbing in
order to appease Jews in the same way that they haven't arrested
anyone else in the 14 months following the stabbing.  They caught a
very likely suspect who was fleeing the scene of the crime, with the
weapon still in his pocket.  

>>Your charge that Nelson was arrested to appease the Jewish community
>>is based on invented facts.  What is your agenda?
>
>Really?  I don't have one.  I'd like to graduate.  Maybe get a job.
>Get elected President.  Help end the WarOnCivilLiberties, otherwise 
>known as the War on Drugs.  

Get a life.  This is 1992.  Soon it will be 1993.

>What's yours?  Why are you so convinced that Nelson did this, when you
>haven't even seen all the evidence?

I am not impressed with people who defend murderers by creating
conspiracy theories to explain away the crime.  Meir Kahane was
murdered with the same OFFICIAL sanction (no one has been convicted of
his murder, not even the guy who did it) and the same thing has
happened to Yankel Rosenbaum.  The Protocols of Zion and similar
anti-semitic efforts rely on the same conspiracy-theory technique to
justify the killing of Jews.  It IS happening in America today.  

>>What's more, Mayor Dinkins and his Chief of Police at the time, Lee
>>Brown, instructed the police to allow the mob in Crown Heights to
>>"vent their rage" for 72 hours.  While Jews in Crown Heights huddled
>>inside, a riot outside continued as people looted stores and ran
>>through the streets.
>
>This isn't necessarily true.  

What's not true?  That Jews huddled inside for 3 days without food or
other necessities?  That the riots went on for 72 hours before the
police cracked down?  That stores were looted and wrecked in a
peculiarly NY City-style party atmosphere?  What other excuse are you
now going to propose for the temporary abandonment of an ENTIRE
neighborhood to lynch mobs for 3 full days?  Ethnic cleansing?

>Dinkins and Brown deny this.  Where do you
>get your information?  They claim the rioting happened too fast for them 
>to respond to, and that by the time they were ready to respond, they
>were afraid of making matters worse.

Your excuses are becoming ludicrous.  The NYPD couldn't respond
quickly enough to a riot?  Maybe it'd take half an hour or so, but
THREE DAYS?  What pathetic excuses you are coming up with?

Face it, Jews can be beaten and murdered in NY City and no one in
power will give a hoot.  Even the Great American Justice System would
rather play footsy with itself than effectively pursue justice in
cases of injustice against Jews.  All of your sideline arguments are
trying to hide these simple facts.  Just because it worked on a
minority jury pre-disposed to accept such tangential arguments doesn't
mean that it'll work on thinking Americans.  I still hope that the
System can be fixed before things get much worse.


-- 
Jake Livni  jake@bony1.bony.com              10 years from now, George Bush will
American-Occupied New York                   have replaced Jimmy Carter as the
My opinions only - employer has no opinions. standard of a failed President.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish