Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/02/23/policemans-deathbed-confession-that-the-nypd-and-the-fbi-killed-malcolm-x.html
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Wow, this comes out the same week as the fine film “Judas and the Black Messiah”, concerning a different 1960s assassination of a charismatic black leader through conspiracy of the FBI and the police.
If we can deport a 94-year-old for their Holocaust crimes (also this week!) we can have some justice for this murder.
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But that’s holding OTHER PEOPLE to account for THEIR ACTIONS…
We do that to OTHER PEOPLE not US PEOPLE
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The NYPD and FBI should investigate!
Sigh.
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There was always this suspicion of police/FBI involvement, despite the “official” story…
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Oh, what a surprise, said nobody.
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I think the headline here is off. Not that the NYPD and the FBI wouldn’t have happily murdered Malcolm a million times over, but the confession wasn’t that they “killed Malcolm X,” but rather they made it easier for members of the Nation of Islam to kill him. If true (and I’d be surprised if it weren’t), it means they had a hand in it, but they didn’t do it, themselves (which, again, I’m sure they wish they had).
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Still sounds like conspiracy to commit murder.
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Conspiracy requires an actual agreement. This is just hitting the easy button for someone else to do what you want them to do.
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IANAL, however if you are aware of someone having plans to commit a murder and you take steps to make it easier for them then you must be culpable. Especially if you are a police force tasked with preventing crimes, which include murder.
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Sounds like ‘aiding and abetting.’
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Facilitating the act, by omission or commission, is conspiracy. Just like lending the getaway car or driving the getaway car is the easy button for your bank robber friend. I don’t know what your “actual” agreement might be? (A letter of intent, signed by both parties, witnessed, notarized, filed with the county clerk?)
But as to this “news”, I would have believed it more if he’d said either NYPD or FBI had conspired to do it. By throwing both agencies under the bus, it makes the claim less credible.
All true. But how does NYPD cop know about Hoover’s secretive FBI? The FBI alone (not “FBI and NYPD”) tapped MLK’s hotel room and sent him the “anonymous” letter suggesting suicide. Sorry, but it’s too kitchen-sink for me.
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Both institutions were fully aware to the threats on his life, and they not only did nothing to protect him, they all but ENSURED that he’d get shot, by taking out some of his security detail.
And the fact that at least ONE of the shooters has since been exonerated, there is a lot more going on here than most understand.
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Er… what? The NYPD and FBI had a history of going after Black leaders (e.g. the FBI trying to drive King to commit suicide) and Black Panther Fred Hampton was murdered by an FBI/police conspiracy four years later. This isn’t just “not unlikely,” it’s literally part of a pattern of behavior.
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I didn’t really know the details, but just assumed the state murdered him.
Just like Dr. King.
It’s a ‘safe’ assumption.
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I mean, it’s nice for a cop to confirm what we all knew, I guess.
all you have to do is read the book.
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There has to be a “meeting of the minds”. You have to explain what’s going to happen (bank robbery), and them to agree to help (such as by driving the get away car). If you rob a bank, and borrow my car, but you regularly borrow my car for other things, and don’t tell me you’re borrowing my car to rob the bank, I’m not conspiring to help you rob the bank.
If I know you’re going to rob a bank, and do nothing to stop you, but don’t give you an assistance, that’s still not a crime. I’m not required to turn you in for crimes. I’m just required to not help you commit a crime.
If I suspect you’re going to commit a crime, but I don’t know for a fact that you’re going to do so, and do something that might be helpful, that may or may not be a crime (criminal facilitation). But it’s not a conspiracy, because conspiracy requires agreement to commit the crime, and we didn’t actually talk about it.
Agreement doesn’t necessarily need to be explicit. If the plan is explained, requiring a getaway driver, and you show up as a getaway driver, even if you never explicitly said you’d do so, that’s enough. But this does require actual knowledge of the crime. So unless the shooters said “Hey, we’re going to murder Malcolm X at this time and place, and need you to leave a clear path” to the cops, that’s not conspiracy, because the cops don’t know that a crime will happen, and leave the area in furtherence of the crime.
It arguably could be criminal facilitation, except for the fact that cops don’t actually have any duty to protect any body. You could be getting ax murdered in front of a cop, and they can wait for the guy to finish before shooting him. (Warren v. DC & Castle Rock v Gonzalez)
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the cases you cite don’t exactly state the doctrine which you ascribe to them. the warren case doesn’t say police have no duty to protect anyone, instead it says that because police forces are finite they do not have duty to protect everyone at once so that the police cannot be sued if a crime takes place. meanwhile in castle rock the court ruled that the plaintiff had no right to sue the police because enforcement of a protective order was a process and not an enumerated right and therefore the plaintiff could not use the venue of the courts to seek redress. both cases are in the background of the doctrine of “qualified immunity” for the police which is not really, i think, the point of your argument.
i understand that the slogan “to serve and to protect” is more along the lines of psyops disinformation propaganda than reality but what are you trying to get at here?
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In this case, the allegations are that the PD and FBI did plan and implement a crime, which was to set up an innocent man to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted for a crime they did not commit. If a murder also happened as part of that plan, then the conspiracy to do another crime rolls the murder that occurred in the process into the conspiracy. IANAL, but you can’t just write off crimes that happen as a result of your other planned crimes as “shit happens.”
See also, the murder of a Capitol Police Officer as part of the Trumpsurrection.
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