Police go to the wall, six vandals arrested
Barry Gray, the Hamilton Spectator
October 11, 2008
John Burman
The Hamilton Spectator [Ontario]
(Oct 11, 2008)
It appears somebody doesn’t like the extra heat Hamilton police have been giving graffiti taggers lately.
Even as police made their sixth mischief arrest in a month Thursday night — catching a tagger red-handed at Gage Avenue North and Lloyd Street — anti-police scrawl has begun appearing.
Sergeant Mark Schulenberg says the anti-cop, anti-law messages began showing up earlier this week, after police arrested a 14-year-old tagger painting park equipment in Waterdown.
“It could be pushback (for arrests),” he said yesterday.
The new messages include a sign painted on the John Street wall of the John Sopinka courthouse that has a crude suggestion for “The Law.” Two more on Wellington Street North near the detention centre say “Off The Pigs” and “Burn Prisons.”
There’s a plea for “No More Cops” in fresh paint on the wall of a store at Mary Street North and Barton Street.
“It may be someone trying to get a message out,” said Schulenberg, adding the signs are not tags, just “anti-police, anti-justice slurs.”
Nevertheless, he says, police have no intention of letting up on spray painters. “Graffiti has already been targeted as a strategic priority for us for 2009,” he said.
Schulenberg also noted police are getting more tips from the public about graffiti because “they’re tired of it.” Graffiti makes an area look as if no one cares about it, which can attract other crimes.
The sixth tagger charged with mischief in a month was caught in the act by a uniform officer on routine patrol Thursday at 9:30 on Gage Avenue North. He saw a young man near Lloyd Street spray painting the tag ‘SCD.’
The officer arrested two youths including the painter. The “artist” has been charged with mischief under $5,000.
Confrontation 
TAKE THE HAMMER TO THE RICH!!
In recent weeks more than 6 graffiti artists have been arrested in a crackdown on street art by the Hamilton police. This is the early beginning of the police’s plan to intensify the criminalization of graffiti throughout the new year. By the end of 2009 they hope to have ridden the streets of any expression that doesn’t take the form of private advertisements for new developments and other commodities that only serve the rich.
Since the increase in arrests both police and local media have taken note of what they call a “push back”. Anti-cop, anti-law and anti-prison slogans have been scrawled across numerous parts of the city. The east-end of Hamilton has been the focal point of the anti-police graffiti.
Hamilton’s east end is a working class neighbourhood and has definitely felt the impact of devastating poverty and the accompanying substance abuse that has come to characterize the city. They call the city a dough-nut, because all the wealth is concentrated on the outside, while the core is “empty.” This is because the residents have nothing to offer the dough-holders. There is no investment to be made in single mothers, welfare recipients and drug addicts; and when we don’t serve the dough-holders, we don’t serve anything. This is how they see us, as obstacles to overcome in an endless pursuit of wealth.
Overcoming these obstacles to gentrification takes the form of police control over the lives that make up those so called “obstacles”. Even Sergeant Mark Schulenberg knows that “graffiti makes it look like no one cares about an area and can attract other crimes.” He’s right; developers don’t care about graffiti ridden spaces where police presence is scarce; an area where people find ways to work together to exist in a money driven world that’s been designed by the rich to serve the rich… at our expense.
There’s something more to this pigs statement. The crackdown on graffiti is just part of the strategic role of police that began with community policing. This policing strategy was developed in response to the police’s inability to predict or control the urban uprisings of the 60s and 70s. “Friendly Face” policing serves to legitimize police presence by building bonds with the communities they control. This allows them better access to what’s happening on the street by forcing their way into the community through neighbourhood watch, working with property owners, public forums, foot and bike patrols, volunteer opportunities, putting a focus on minor crimes and holding police sponsored community activities. This helps create the environment necessary to validate police presence and violence in our lives. It also helps pigs like Schulenberg turn our neighbors into the eyes and ears of police. “Police are getting more tips from the public about graffiti and those doing it” says Schulenberg about the snitching they’ve encouraged with their community policing strategy.
Community policing doesn’t limit itself to violations of the law, rather it spreads police’s role into determining “public order” and “quality of life.” This means that they see rundown property, juvenile loitering, graffiti, homeless encampments and noise as a gateway to larger social disturbances. The underlying belief is that any amount of lawbreaking, from jaywalking to the kids hanging out on the corners writing graffiti, contributes to more lawbreaking… and so the vice-grip tightens.
This is a war on how we go about our lives. Making the sterile walls of a city that doesn’t belong to us into an expression of who we are, using the streets as a meeting place or training gym outside of the offered services of corporations, and learning to interact without police mediation are attempts to take the city back into the hands of those who built it: us!!
The criminalization of the way we express ourselves and live our lives is an act of social war, waged on behalf of those who would rather see the streets as lifeless as the neatly manicured walls of their next business opportunity. They want us out because we won’t have our home turned into another development that is designed to accommodate the rich.
It’s everywhere that people like us get displaced because of rent hikes and the increase of property values. If we let this shit continue we’ll actually end up with less than we already have. Look at what’s happening in East Vancouver, Strathcona, Kitsilano and the Downtown East-side. It’s the same thing that’s happening in the north end of Halifax, east Montreal, Westboro in Ottawa, the south end of Guelph, Leslieville in Toronto. This process is systematic, when the rich want your hood, they’re going to try whatever they can to get it, even if that means ripping it away from us with police crackdowns, increased surveillance, court orders and prison time.
We can learn a lot from the recent graffiti push back, as minor as it may seem. The people putting up “Off the Pigs” in the streets, “Fuck the Law” on the courthouse and “Burn Prisons” near the Barton jail know that the crackdown isn’t just in the hands of the police. It’s the courts as well as the prisons; but it still needs to go further. It’s the rich and their expectations for our city (yuppie developments and what have you), it’s Progress itself that is guiding this crackdown.
Just like the graffiti push back is going beyond the police themselves, it needs to go beyond paint and markers. Our whole neighborhood needs to show the pigs and the dough-holders they serve that they are not welcome, anywhere. What this means is that sometimes we need to paint and draw, other times we need to smash their developments and surveillance cameras; they own everything, so we need to hit them everywhere. If we want to live in our own neighborhoods where we create the conditions in which we live, where “quality of life” is a term that we define, then when they hit us we need to hit them back, everywhere. Like Sergeant Schulenberg said, it begins with graffiti and face-to-face interactions. A few walls covered in paint, cameras taken down and broken windows will lay a starting point for organizing ourselves towards full-scale disorder: where we finally dunk this unaffordable dough-nut in the flames of social revolution.
-Graff Against Cops
That’s a great communique. Inspiring to see people articulating and acting this way for themselves and their class.
They caught my friend.
Fuckin cops.
FUCK THE POLICE AND ALL THIER SNITCHES
Police repression in Hamilton, Ontario
[Contributed by Anonymous on January 28, 2009, to news.infoshop.org]
On Thursday, January 22nd, the hamilton police stormed a peaceful folk show taking place at the Mex-I-Can restaurant on James street. The show had started around 8:30, with a crowd of around thirty people come to see the traveling musicians who’d stopped here for the night. Around 11:00, halfway though the show’s lineup, word rushed through the room that there were cops outside. The show stopped, the crowd went to the street, and three people were arrested.
Just outside of Mex-I-Can’s doors, three women were talking together, one of whom had an open beer. An unmarked car pulled up in front of them, and two men leapt out. Without identifying themselves in any way, they lunged to grab the woman with the drink, who panicked and ran inside; the two men followed her and seized her in the doorway. They now identified themselves as police and were joined by two other cops. A group of about ten people from inside followed the cops back out, yelling at the pigs and trying to take their friend back. The police became aggressive, striking people with their hands, and the woman was taken around the back of the police car by one cop, three of her friends close by. A scuffle broke out near the front of the car and when the arresting officer went to join in, the woman managed to escape and remained safe for the rest of the events.
The police were now arresting another woman near the front of the car, and the crowd pressed strongly against them, not letting their friend be stolen. A man in military dress came from across the street and jumped in on the side of the cops, falsely claiming to be a cop himself. Several people were captured by police but broke free with the help of the group.
During this time, another police vehicle arrived about every thirty seconds, to a total of nineteen, including two paddy wagons.
The captive escaped, and the crowd fought a retreat back through the doors of the restaurant — all the cops were outside and most of the folk were inside. Some people stood outside between the cops and the doors trying to dialogue. The police regrouped, and sergeant John Harris arrived and took charge. The people attempting to dialogue were now roughly struck aside and the cops stormed the restaurant. James Street was a sea of police lights for a full block in either direction.
Before long, the police emerged with the woman they were holding before, and the crowd poured back out too. One man who’d been involved in the scuffle earlier was carried out by four cops, one on each limb, while two others performed pain holds on his neck and ears. His pants were pulled down and he was not allowed to pull them back up. One person attempted to provide him with the contact information of someone who could find him a lawyer, but was prevented from doing so. A third person was arrested seemingly at random, snatched from where he stood off to one side, and his clothing was torn as he was dragged off by police.
Someone dialoguing with several officers at this point reports that the cops believed someone became violent when presented with a drinking ticket — this would become the official story. Other cops thought they were reacting to a protest, and shouted ‘Go protest somewhere else’ to the crowd, and at least one cop though he was responding to a robbery or street fight. Many cops refused to identify themselves when asked, responding instead with insults.
The police reentered the restaurant lead by Harris and his lackey wielding a pepper spray canister. The musicians were packing up their gear, and the police turned their attention to the two merchandise tables where zines and music were being distributed. Some of the zines were anarchist in nature, and the cops asked many questions about them and tried to steal some, but this was resisted. Harris and his lackey now became extremely rude and abusive, mocking those packing up the tables and insulting people loudly. The concert was not political in nature, the money being raised going entirely to the musicians, but many people, including the owner of the restaurant, were questioned about their political beliefs and about political organizations that might be involved with the show.
Some folk talked to the cops and found out where the arrested were being held, what their charges were, and when they might be released or appear in court. The crowd got their things together, collected the belongings of those arrested, and left. Two people were charged with obstruction of justice (everything a cop does is justice, getting in their way is obstruction) and resisting arrest, and one with disturbing the peace, a nothing charge usually used to break up large groups in protest situations.
Apart from this being a ridiculously disproportionate response, there are several facts that lead me to believe that there is more to the cops’ actions than there seemed. Just before the initial police action, a friend had gone for a walk around the block and saw that directly around the corner on York Street, there were seventeen cop cars parked and waiting. As well, someone eavesdropping on cops after the crowd left reported that some cops were excited about the way this raid ‘played into their hands’ as part of an ongoing investigation.
These two facts, combined with the aggressive way they approached the woman with the open drink, makes me think that this raid was a planned act of disruption and provocation on the part of the police, not a response followed by escalation as they claimed. That Thursday, the police used bare-faced violence as part of an ongoing campaign against some part of the progressive community in this city. Likely, they desired to spread fear and confusion, and to force us to turn our energy inwards rather than outwards towards social change.
What else can we learn from this? I believe the most important lesson is to be prepared. The group there on Thursday had no reason to think they would encounter police that night, but because most folk had planned and practiced how to deal with police, they were able to act decisively and cohesively to defend themselves. Even in the heat of action, communication was maintained, and people who had never met found themselves working together effectively. There could easily have been many more arrests that night — more than ten people were snatched by cops only to be unarrested. And while some people fought back against the police, others dialogued and learned the ‘official’ stories, as well as information that allowed us to support our friends while they were held and to meet them upon their release.
Even if you and your group aren’t doing anything illegal, it does not mean you will not become the target of state violence. Looking at the actions of COINTELPRO and CSIS, we can see that state forces are usually not trying to make arrests in groups they consider politically motivated — they are trying to ruin people’s lives and make it impossible for activists to continue their work. Since that night, people who were present there have been followed by police and approached by undercovers in their workplaces. Be prepared. The cops’ job is to protect state and corporate interests, and laws are only some of the tools they use to do that. Intimidation, disruption, surveillance, and harassment can be as effective as incarceration in silencing dissent.
There is no one in hamilton unaffected by this issue, and those working for change need to be especially vigilant. Regardless of how you and your community intend to deal with police, have a plan and practice it. And it’s important that we support each other. We on the left should set aside our ideological differences in face of police repression — although we may have differences about what we want, we need to remember which side of the barricade we’re on.
May 23, 2009
The Hamilton Spectator
(May 23, 2009)
Hamilton police have arrested another person for vandalizing with spray paint.
Sergeant Marty Schulenberg said at about 9:40 Wednesday night a witness reported seeing two youths, one sporting a spray can, near the Bank of Montreal at Queenston Road and Lake Avenue.
Police arrived and found spray paint damage to one of the bank’s security cameras. Later a youth was found with orange paint on his hands. A 16-year-old has been charged with mischief.
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/570832