by David Clarke
When he didn’t show up for his court date, two Fulton County sheriff’s deputies went to one of Atlanta’s poorer neighborhoods to serve him a warrant. It was March 16, 2000. The deputies had been told he was possibly armed, but they had no idea what kind of situation they were approaching.
To start with, Al-Amin was also known as Hubert Gerold Brown. He was a towering, “hawk-faced” man. By the time he started his political activism as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1967, he went by the name of H. Rap Brown. When the SNCC merged with the Black Panthers, he was appointed their “minister of justice.”
“Violence is as American as cherry pie,” he proclaimed. And “if America don’t come around, we’re gonna burn it down.” He wrote a memoir titled Die, N—, Die!1 in which he expressed his views on this nation. (I’ll save you the money so you don’t have to buy the book; they weren’t favorable.) Soon, he made a speech in Maryland, urging black people to get guns and be “ready to die” and to use violence to further their political goals. “This town is ready to explode … if you don’t have guns, don’t be here,” he said. “You have to be prepared to die.”
In the least surprising development of all time, his listeners were involved in shootings, the destruction of two city blocks, and the destruction of a school.2 Brown was arrested for inciting a riot. After avoiding trial and carrying a gun across state lines, he became one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.
Sounds like a stand-up guy, right?
Originally, his trial was supposed to be held in Cambridge, Maryland, but it was moved to the town of Bel Air at the last minute. On March 9, 1970, two SNCC officials were on US Route 1 south of Bel Air when a bomb exploded, dismembering and killing both of them. Was that bomb an assassination attempt? Or was Brown’s group carrying it to be detonated at the courthouse during his trial? The next night the Cambridge courthouse was bombed.
For the next year and a half, Brown lay low. In 1971, however, he was arrested during an attempted robbery of a bar in New York. He spent five years in Attica, where he converted to Islam and changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.
After he got out of prison, he moved to Atlanta. There, he established and became the spiritual leader of a neighborhood mosque and married two women simultaneously. (I say “women,” but one of them was in her teens when he married her.) Al-Amin juggled life with two wives—who lived three miles apart from each other—and obligations at a small grocery store he owned and operated.
That’s exactly where Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Kinchen and fellow Deputy Aldranon English were headed to deliver their warrant, though they had no idea they were pursuing such a violent black nationalist. It just so happened that both Deputy English and Deputy Kinchen were black as well. Deputy Kinchen had received his degree from the historically black Morris Brown College and had been an officer for nine years. He was married to Sherese, with whom he had two kids.
When the officers approached the grocery store, things went bad fast. That’s what the public doesn’t really understand about police work. One moment, you are doing a routine task. The next you’re fighting for your life. Al-Amin shot at the officers with a .223 rifle. Deputy English was wounded immediately and stumbled to a nearby field for cover. Deputy Kinchen tried to protect his partner, but was shot and dropped to the ground. When Al-Amin ran out of ammunition, he went to his black Mercedes and got out a 9mm pistol. He walked back to Deputy Kinchen who was lying on the ground dying. He pointed the gun at the officer and shot him—one, two, three times—right between the legs.
The deputy did not survive the attack.
When Deputy Kinchen was buried, the line of police cruisers—lights flashing—stretched for miles outside the church. Thousands of public servants (firefighters, police officers, and transportation officers) drove from across Georgia to pay their respects in a service that lasted four hours. The Fulton County sheriff gave Sherese her husband’s badge, telling her they would retire his number. The service ended when his flag-draped casket was carried slowly to a hearse while the honor guard stood at attention and a lone bagpipe played “Amazing Grace.”3
“I wipe my tears and stay strong for my children because I know that they are hurting too,” his widow said at the trial.4 There, Deputy District Attorney Ron E. Dixon described Al-Amin as “buck-naked guilty.” He urged the jury of two whites, nine blacks, and one Hispanic to impose the maximum penalty. He pointed out Al-Amin’s brutality in shooting the officer in the groin. Ultimately, they agreed.
On March 13, 2002, Al-Amin was convicted of murder. Life in prison. No parole.
Justice had been served, and Deputy Kinchen was honored as the hero he was.
On May 2, 1973, Joanne Deborah Chesimard and two friends were driving down the New Jersey Turnpike about an hour south of New York City. Chesimard was in the passenger seat when the vehicle was pulled over for a routine traffic stop. It would be no average traffic stop. Chesimard, who’d changed her name to Assata Shakur, was already on the run after being wanted for several felonies in New York, including bank robbery. Even though she was only twenty-six at the time, she was a leader of the Black Liberation Army, one of the most militant and violent organizations of the 1970s. She’d also been a Black Panther.
New Jersey state troopers James Harper and Werner Foerster had flagged the vehicle down for a broken taillight. But when they approached the vehicle, Shakur pulled out a semiautomatic pistol and fired a shot. The passenger in the back seat fired multiple shots at the officers as well, but Trooper Harper killed him. The driver got out of the car and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Trooper Foerster, while Shakur began shooting at both officers.
A bullet hit Trooper Foerster in the abdomen and arm, and he fell down along the side of the turnpike. That’s when, according to police reports, Shakur picked up the officer’s gun and shot him execution-style. Bam! Bam! Two shots right in the head. The officer was only thirty-four years old.
The three ran, but state police caught Shakur about half an hour after the shooting. One accomplice’s body was found near their abandoned car; the other was arrested about forty hours later.
Shakur was sentenced to life in prison (plus another sixty-five years for murder and assault), but she had other plans. Six years after the incident, three members of the Black Liberation Army visited the prison. When they got in, they pulled out their concealed .45-caliber pistols, pointed them at the guards’ heads, took two guards hostage, and drove a stolen prison van right through an unfenced section of the minimum-security facility.
In 1984, Shakur managed to get to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum, and the government there gave her money for living expenses. She has called herself a “20th-century escaped slave” and has written two books in exile.
In 1971, Atlanta police officer Jim Greene pulled his police van into a closed gas station to take a break from patrolling. Two black men approached him. One of them, Freddie Hilton, pretended to ask directions, while the other, Twyman Meyers, approached the passenger window and shot Greene several times.
After shooting the officer, they stole his service weapon and badge. Trophies.
Let’s say it together now: Hilton and Meyers were associated with the Black Liberation Army. In Atlanta to learn urban guerrilla tactics, they had become upset when a Black Liberation Army leader berated them for doing “stupid things.”5
“We did it! We did it!” they exclaimed back at the safe house while showing the officer’s gun and badge.6
For a long time, no one really paid for this crime. Meyers was killed in a Bronx shootout on November 14, 1973, but Hilton changed his identity and evaded authorities for twenty years. Finally, in 2001, a woman accused her boyfriend of molesting her twelve-year-old daughter. That’s when Hilton was arrested in New York. By that time, he was going by Sadiki Kamau and working at the telephone company.
Thanks to the dogged work by a Brooklyn detective, the NYPD was able to connect Hilton to the
Greene shooting. The Atlanta cold case detectives were able to get enough evidence while Hilton was doing time in New York to convict him in 2003 of murder. He was also sentenced to life in prison.
Justice had been served.
In 1971 two New York City police officers, twenty-eight-year-old Joseph Piagentini and thirty-four-year-old Waverly Jones, were on foot patrol working to protect the citizens of Harlem in the 32nd Precinct when a call came in: help was needed at the Colonial Park Houses public housing development.
Jones and Piagentini, both of whom were married and had two children, did what police officers all over the nation do every day: they went to help people in need. But it was a bogus call made by Black Liberation Army members Herman Bell, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim (born Anthony Bottom), and Albert “Nuh” Washington, who were hiding and waiting for officers in a staircase of the Macombs Dam Bridge.
It was about 10:00 p.m. As the officers were returning to their patrol car, they were ambushed. Officer Jones, who was black, received four shots to the back of his head and died immediately. Officer Piagentini fell to the sidewalk, bleeding profusely from his wounds. He begged for his life and explained that he had two young daughters he didn’t want to be orphaned. The murderers took the revolvers from both police officers and fired every single round into the young man. He died en route to the hospital, having been shot thirteen times.
Office Jones’s weapon was later found in San Francisco after several Black Liberation Army members opened fire on a San Francisco police officer.
Bottom was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to twenty-five years to life. Bell also received twenty-five years to life. Both admitted their involvement in the murders.7 Washington died in prison.
The FBI’s Most Wanted
I’ve told you these stories not to showcase the inherent risks of police work. Not at all. I’m telling you these stories because I want you to get rid of your notion that Black LIES Matter is the type of organization you can get behind. After all, you are black or you have black friends. You love everyone. Why wouldn’t you back Black LIES Matter?
The reason will chill you to the bone.
The New York Times reported that Movement for Black Lives (a collection of fifty Black Lives Matter groups) released a list of demands “aimed at furthering their goals as the presidential campaign heads into the homestretch.” As part of their demands, which I addressed briefly in the previous chapter, they called for the release of “political prisoners” and the removal of “legitimate freedom fighters” from the FBI’s Most Wanted Lists.
Who was on that list? The same people from the stories I told:
• H. Rap Brown, the man who shot Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy Kinchen and Deputy English when they were delivering his warrant. The one who retrieved his gun from the car to put three bullets between Deputy Kinchen’s legs as he lay dying.
• Assata Shakur, who shot and killed Trooper Foerster after he pulled her over in a traffic stop. Execution-style. Two shots right in the head.
• Freddie Hilton, who pretended to ask directions while his buddy shot Officer Greene to prove he wasn’t stupid.
• Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim, who called for help in Harlem because they knew police would respond, and they could ambush them with bullets to the backs of their heads.
Anarchy, the Real Goal
Why would Black LIES Matter want these people free? Especially since several of them murdered black police officers? Because they do not care about black lives. They care about their own radical ideology of terrorism: anarchy. This paints the July 2016 shooting that broke out at a Black LIES Matter rally in Dallas in a totally different light, doesn’t it?
You’ll remember that the protest was a demonstration against illegal and unfair killings at the hands of police officers. But guess what? They needed cops in order to properly protest, and the Dallas police officers put on their uniforms and stood among the crowds of people who were maligning them. That’s what cops do, after all. It’s our duty and our honor.
Then, horribly, it turned into bloodshed. A heavily armed sniper began shooting at police officers, picking them off one by one. A dozen police officers returned fire during a series of gun battles that stretched over blocks. The attack, which was carried live on national television, caused Americans to wait with bated breath as the gunman holed up in a parking garage. He was able to hold off the police by falsely stating that he planted bombs in the area. Eventually, a remote-controlled robot delivered an explosive device that killed the sniper. By the end of the night, five officers were dead while seven officers and two civilians were wounded.
As National Review pointed out after the shooting, it was not an isolated incident, nor is it new. In the five days surrounding the Dallas shooting—which was the worst police massacre since 9/11, by the way—there was even more Black LIES Matter–inspired violence:8
• In Tennessee, a black man who claimed to be motivated by “police violence against African Americans” opened fire on a highway, killing a woman and injuring three others—including a police officer.
• In Missouri, a black motorist ambushed a white police officer after a traffic stop—shooting the officer in the neck and leaving him “fighting for his life.”
• Also in Missouri, a young black man threw a planter through the front door of an off-duty police officer’s home and advanced into the house while the officer’s wife, mother-in-law, and young children tried to escape through a back window. The officer opened fire and killed the intruder. He apparently targeted the home after an online argument over Black Lives Matter.
• In Minnesota, Black Lives Matter protestors attacked police with “rocks, bottles, and other items,” injuring twenty-one—including an officer who suffered a broken vertebra “after a concrete block was dropped on his head.”
Let me guess. You’d never heard of these incidents. That’s because the media protect and lie about this insidious terror organization. And killings keep happening like clockwork. In Baton Rouge on July 17, 2016, days after the Dallas shootings, a man ambushed and killed three law enforcement officers and wounded three others.
When Life Gives You Lemon …
All of this happened right after I received an interesting voice mail from Donald Trump Jr., whom I’d met at the NRA Convention a couple of years earlier.
“Hey, I was on a flight with my father today, and we talked about you,” Don said when I called him back. His father, of course, was only the Republican nominee for president at the time. He hadn’t yet gobsmacked the political world by finally ridding America of the Clinton political machine. “Want to get involved in the GOP Convention?”
“Well, I’ll probably be there,” I said. “What do you have in mind?”
“We’d like for you to speak,” he said.
I didn’t want to do that. I want to be a foot soldier promoting conservatism. I didn’t need the bright lights and the cameras on me. “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be there, but I don’t want to do that.”
“Sheriff, we really think you ought to do this.”
That’s when I understood. It was going to be a law and order theme, and they really wanted me on that stage.
“All right,” I relented. I packed my bags and headed to Cleveland, along with every media outlet covering the hotly contested race.
The interview requests came pouring in. CNN’s Don Lemon asked me to do his show on location from the RNC. Lemon, a black news anchor who voted for Barack Obama twice, has been described as one of the “fastest-rising stars” and “one of the worst reporters of 2014.”9 I was about to see at least half of that.
First of all, it’s very hard to get into media row at these events. If you don’t have the passes, you aren’t getting in. CNN was supposed to have people meet me to get me past the guard, but they didn’t show up. Finally, a CNN field reporter overheard me talking to the guards and got my wife, Julie, my friend, and me through. While we were walking up,
two interns approached me. By this time, it was getting late. I’d been up since 6:00 a.m. doing media. I hadn’t had time to eat dinner, so I felt like a little courtesy was due. I was pretty hot, to say the least.
“Sheriff Clarke, we’re so sorry.”
“I’m doing you guys a favor,” I said. “I didn’t ask to be on this show.”
“Yes, we’re sorry.”
“Apologies are for funerals. They don’t work in business,” I said. “You guys run a Mickey Mouse operation here.”
Eventually, we made it to the booth. I was supposed to be on the air soon, but I waited and waited as I watched Lemon take a guest, then another, then another.
I went up to the scheduler and tapped on my watch. “What happened?”
“Oh, you’ll be up soon.”
“My watch has numbers on it,” I said calmly. “And none of them say ‘soon.’”
When they finally got me on, I was fit to be tied.
“Hello, Sheriff Clarke,” Lemon said when I sat down. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better,” I said. I think he sensed that this interview was going to be like none other.
I don’t get emotional frequently, but I do when I hear of police deaths. I will not let others get away with platitudes. I knew that Black Lives Matter movement is an anarchist movement that runs parallel with the violence of the 1960s, but it’s been masked and wrapped around poor blacks. They put that on as a mask to gain support and sympathy from the unsuspecting public who might be watching from afar, reading about it in a newspaper or watching it on TV. Years ago, I decided I was going to unmask them, but Lemon apparently didn’t get the memo. Things went bad from the very first moments of Lemon’s show after he began by saying he spoke to the Baton Rouge sheriff’s department and police department.
“Their message is peace and coming together in the country. What’s your message?”
