On this day, 30 April 1923, radical Jewish actor Al Lewis, best known for portraying grandpa Munster in the popular 1960s sitcom The Munsters was born in Brooklyn, NY. His mother was an immigrant garment worker who took him on May Day protests in New York City as a child.
By the time of the great depression, he was a convinced socialist involved in supporting tenants and the unemployed. He told a journalist: “During the Depression, people were getting evicted, ten a day. We used to come along and break the lock and put the furniture back in again… We would storm the Home Relief Centres, that or this person didn’t get a cheque for $8 or something, and get hit on the head [by police.]”
He stayed true to his beliefs until his death in 2006.
Learn the history of May Day in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/the-incomplete-true-authentic-and-wonderful-history-of-may-day-peter-linebaughhttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.1819457841572691/1976177415900732/?type=3
Holy shit if you watch the video he literally says “I thought you were a bad guy” like a fucking toddler
He shot the undercover officer because he saw the undercover officer was armed. In the United States, there is a constitutional right to bear arms, but the police will open fire the moment they see you’re exercising that right, and they’ll only be sorry if it turns out you were one of them the whole time.
Not that we didn’t know the US has a police brutality problem, but “even cops don’t know how to avoid getting shot to death by the cops” is a pretty powerful statement.
It gets even worse! The guy that shot the other guy was his boss. So he knew the guy, knew what he looked like, knew he was going to be there, knew he was arned. He missed the briefing and didn’t decide that maybe he shouldn’t be part of the team going in. He was using an unauthorized weapon with unauthorized ammunition. All over a tiny “drug bust” involving less than a hundred dollars worth of drugs. This is a stunning display of idiocy, willful incompetence, and murderous brutality. By someone in a leadership position. It’s so bad you could suspect it was an attempted murder covered up as an accident, except that cops are just that fucking incompetent.
But the worst part by far was the fallout afterwards. The shooter got to retire from being a cop without any formal discipline. He didn’t even lose his police certification. The charge that was purposed was “negligent use of a fire arm”, a misdemeanor. For nearly murdering one of his employees. He was never actually charged because the process was intentionally delayed until the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor ran out.
There is nothing that a cop can do that will get other cops to break the blue line, not even shooting one of their own. Because they cannot let the idea that anything they do should have consequences set into the public mind. That is their only goal in protecting murderers in their ranks, they want to be able to continue murdering people without consequence and they will throw anyone or anything under the bus to keep their complete lack of consequences intact. Even one of their own.
so he used an unauthorized weapon and unauthorized ammunition to full the undercover guy full of holes (nearly every major organ!)— because the undercover guy was carrying a gun
