The cop riot is an American institution
Massachusetts needs to be ready for a cop riot like the ones in California
On Friday, federal immigration agents showed up near a Home Depot in Paramount, California getting ready to abduct people. Some people saw what they were up to and tried to do something about it. The feds didn’t like that, so they started rioting. Cops love rioting when they don’t get their way. Why do you think they have so much riot gear? They’re paid professional rioters.
The rioting federal agents attacked residents with their riot weapons—flashbang grenades, pepper balls, and the like. The cops continued rioting the following day. They choked an entire neighborhood with tear gas, a toxic chemical weapon that’s banned for use in warfare under international law. They shot two journalists in the head with their riot weapons.
In response to protests in Los Angeles, the feds rioted there too. They shot another journalist in the hand and back.
They even deliberately hit someone with an SUV, drove off like nothing happened, hit a bicyclist, and kept driving. Just our country’s secret police doing a couple casual hit and runs.
In this country, the cop riot is an institution. It’s part of how the government functions, just as much as legislative hearings and lawsuits. It’s how the ruling elite enforce their will when conditions become intolerable and people cease to tolerate them. The cops are always ready to riot—to manifest the violent power of the state—when enough people get in the way of the elite project. Cops are here to keep the rabble in line and start cracking skulls when things get too real for the ghouls who own this country and feed on its lifeforce.
For the individual cop, the joy of inflicting violence on people they see as their inferiors is the point of the cop riot. They love this shit. They laugh and brag about it when they think no one outside the Blue Wall is listening.
But the strategic goal of the cop riot to to spread fear—to make people so afraid of violent retaliation that they just give up. If you defy us, we’ll hurt you. We might beat you and file fraudulent criminal charges against you. We might shoot out your eye and give you brain damage. Resistance is futile. But resistance isn’t futile. The cops can’t riot all day every day even if they’d like to, and many of them definitely would. The economy would grind to a halt, and the rich ghouls would get pretty upset about that.
A cop riot is a contest of power, but not all power comes from the capacity for violence. There’s also power in conscience, conviction, and courage—in standing up for what’s right even when it’s risky to do so. Cowards with weapons are still cowards, and they can be defeated. “Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine,” as Henry David Thoreau put it. You may not come out unscathed, but it might be worth it if the stakes are high enough.
In Massachusetts, people of conscience need to be prepared for a cop riot, whether it’s the feds acting alone or in concert with state and local police. Donald Trump would love to unleash a cop riot on Massachusetts. The commonwealth overwhelmingly rejected him and his agenda during the last three presidential elections. And Boston Mayor Michelle Wu recently drew the ire of Leah Foley, the Trump-appointed US Attorney for Massachusetts. Wu called ICE agents “secret police,” said they were “snatch[ing]” people off the streets with “no justification,” and compared them to members of the neo-Nazi group NSC 131 for wearing masks to hide their identities.
Boston would be a great place for a cop riot, is a thought you might think if you have a fucked-up fascist brain like Trump toady Stephen Miller. But so would Worcester, a city where residents recently put up resistance to an ICE abduction that was carried out with the support of local police. So would Burlington, where ICE agents are holding their captives in torturous conditions in a two-story office building. So would anywhere in the state with enough people to hurt to make it worth their while. We run the risk of a cop riot here every time people stand up to ICE, like they did in Worcester.
If the feds riot here, we can’t trust Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey to do anything to stop them. While she’s offered some tepid criticism of ICE, she’s made it very clear that, like Trump, she views migrants as a burden and doesn’t think they belong in the country. She’s also praised police violence against students who protested against the genocide in Gaza. As the state’s former attorney general, she is part of the cop establishment.
Maybe Trump’s goons won’t riot in Massachusetts. But if they do, it would be a real shame to be unprepared.
While we’re on the subject of the Trump administration’s cruelty and dehumanization of migrants, please check out this Friday story by WBUR’s Miriam Wasser about an office building in Burlington that ICE is using to detain people:
[Attorney Alexandra] Peredo Carroll said her client spent a couple days in a small holding cell by herself — an 8-foot-by-10-foot space with nothing but a toilet. Eventually, two other women were moved into the room.
The space was so small that all three of them couldn't lie down at the same time, Peredo Carroll said.
"So two of them could lie down while one was leaning up against the toilet," she said.
Eventually, all three women were moved to a larger holding cell with about a dozen other women. Once again, there were no beds, or a sink with soap for handwashing, and the women slept on the floor.
There was one toilet in the center of the room and "the women used the aluminum blanket to cover each other as they used the toilet so they could have a little bit of privacy," Peredo Carroll wrote in her affidavit.
Throughout her stay in Burlington, Peredo Carroll said her client received three small meals per day: a small cup of oatmeal in the morning, a couple spoonfuls of pasta for lunch and some sort of rice dish for dinner that she likened to "dog food." A small bottle of water came with each meal.
Again, perhaps this will be the site of a future cop riot.
In March, federal agents abducted Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia and illegally renditioned him to a concentration camp in El Salvador. For months, Trump administration officials had been blatantly lying, claiming they did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia to the US, and they refused to comply with a court order requiring them to do so. But on Friday, the administration finally brought Abrego Garcia back—to face what are clearly trumped-up, politically motivated criminal charges.
Don’t forget that the Massachusetts Republican Party celebrated this lawless depravity by sharing a post by the White House’s official X account gloating that Abrego Garcia would never return to the US.
Law Enforcement Misconduct Tracker
Here are the stories of alleged law enforcement misconduct in Massachusetts that were reported by the news media last week:
“A former Massachusetts State Police union president who had been sentenced to 30 months in prison for kickback schemes will be resentenced following the overturning of three of his convictions on Monday by a federal appeals court. Dana Pullman, 60, of Worcester, was sentenced in 2023 for racketeering, fraud, obstruction of justice, and tax crimes. … The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals reversed three of his wire fraud convictions but let the rest stand.” (Boston.com)
“The state’s police oversight agency will make its case at a closed-door hearing beginning Thursday for why one of the former Stoughton Police officers involved in the Sandra Birchmore case should never again work in law enforcement in Massachusetts. Robert Devine, the former Stoughton deputy police chief, is among a trio of former Stoughton officers … accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with Birchmore after she joined their police youth program as a teenager.” (MassLive)
“Natale Cosenza, the former [Worcester] man jailed for 16 years on evidence a jury ruled was fabricated, has reached a $2 million settlement with the city regarding his long-running lawsuit.” (Telegram & Gazette)
“Former Hopkinton Deputy Chief of Police John ‘Jay’ Porter has been convicted of three charges of rape of a child. He assaulted the student while he was a school resource officer in the town’s school system, the Middlesex District Attorney said.” (WBZ)
Hampden County district attorney can’t stop being a weird liar
Last week, I wrote about Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni spreading the weird lie that victims of wrongful drug convictions were suing his office to get back seized property because they were being funded by George Soros. Gulluni made the false claim during an interview with a reporter for the Springfield Republican newspaper:
“These are efforts funded by George Soros and the ACLU, so they’re just going to keep spending money until there’s nowhere to spend it,” he told The Republican on Wednesday. “So they’re going to appeal to the Supreme Court. It won’t get accepted. It won’t go anywhere.”
When asked why he thought they were involved, Gulluni said: “Money. It’s called money.”
Besides it just generally being bad for elected officials to lie, falsely blaming Soros, a wealthy Jewish man, for funding groups and causes is an antisemitic trope often deployed by right-wing figures.
Hampden DA blames lawsuit over seized property on made-up George Soros conspiracy
A reporter asked Anthony Gulluni about a lawsuit. And then things got weird.
Last Monday, The Republican updated its story with new comments from Gulluni’s spokesperson, who basically said that Gulluni’s words didn’t really mean what they very obviously meant:
Payton North, a spokesperson for Gulluni’s office, said on Monday that Gulluni was speaking broadly “about asset forfeiture and the role of high-profile donors in criminal justice reform, noting George Soros has historically funded left-leaning efforts around issues pertaining to law enforcement. It was an offhand remark made in an informal setting, not meant to be interpreted as accusatory or evidence based.”
I had some questions about this! I sent Gulluni’s spokesperson an email that says in part:
I find this hard to believe. How is an interview with a reporter that will be quoted on one of the most popular news sites in Massachusetts “an informal setting”? Was this an open-ended interview or was it set up to discuss the lawsuit? If the latter, why did DA Gulluni bring up George Soros at all if he had nothing to do with the topic of the interview? And if DA Gulluni’s comments were “not meant to be interpreted as accusatory or evidence based,” why didn’t he just clarify that when the reporter asked a follow-up question? The story says that when he was asked why he thought Soros and the ACLU were involved, he said “Money. It’s called money” instead of saying that he didn’t think they were involved. Could you clarify what that comment was supposed to mean?
Also, is DA Gulluni aware that spreading false claims that groups and causes are funded by Soros, who is Jewish, is an antisemitic trope?
I sent follow-up emails, but she has yet to respond.
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Anyway, that’s all for now.