Agitprop: PBS' Black Panthers Film Lies to Incite Race Hatred
Agitprop: PBS’ ‘Black Panthers’ Film Lies to Incite Race Hatred http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/04/07/agitprop-pbs-black-panthers-film-lies-to-incite-race-hatred/
The Truth about Bobby Huttonshare
The following balanced account was written by Edward Epstein for the New Yorker in 1971 as part of a much longer article showing deception about the true story of the Black Panthers.
Shortly after 9 p.m. on April. 6, 1968, Officers Nolan R. Darnell and Richard R. Jensen, while on patrol in the area of Oakland, California, that is predominately inhabited by blacks, stopped their patrol car on Union Street next to a parked 1954 Ford when they caught a glimpse of a man crouching at the curb side of the car. In their report, they said that they suspected he might be trying to steal it.
Moments later, while investigating the situation, both officers were hit by bullets fired from behind them. Afterward, forty-nine bullet holes were found in the police car, the rear window had “two large areas shot inward,” and the side windows and the open door, next to which Darnell was standing at the time, had also been hit numerous times. According to medical reports prepared by Dr. William Mills, Jr., of Samuel Merritt Hospital, Darnell was wounded in the “upper right back.” Jensen, apparently hit by a shotgun blast from a 12-gauge shotgun, suffered multiple wounds in the “lower right back,” in the “right arm,” and in the “right ankle and foot.” According to Darnell, a number of men armed with shotguns and rifles ran from cars parked behind and ahead of the 1954 Ford, some of them through an alley into the block across the street, while Darnell urgently called for help on the police radio.
An account of the incident in the Black Panther newspaper said, “Several Panthers in cars in West Oakland on Saturday night, April 6th, were approached by two pigs and menaced with guns. When the Panthers tried to defend themselves, shooting began, and the Panthers ran into a nearby house…. Two pigs were wounded slightly.”
Four Black Panthers gave statements to the police in which they said that they had been patrolling the neighborhood with guns, in three cars, to protect Negroes against “police brutality” and had just parked their cars on Union Street to stow their weapons in a nearby house when the patrol car pulled up. But the four disclaimed any knowledge of how the shooting began. Cleaver later said in an interview that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, “I don’t know how those cops got shot. There were so many bullets whizzing around they may have shot themselves.”
In any event, after the two police men were shot, police from other parts of West Oakland and even from nearby Emeryville, responding to the radio alarm, surrounded a building on Twenty-eighth Street that the Panthers had entered, and there ensued a ninety-minute gun battle, in which a third policeman was wounded.
Finally, after an exploding tear-gas canister had set fire to the building, two Panthers emerged: Cleaver, naked, and wounded by a tear-gas shell, and Hutton, fully clothed. According to police witnesses, Hutton suddenly bolted down Twenty-eighth Street, whereupon at least half a dozen policemen opened fire, fatally wounding him.
Cleaver, in the Chronicle interview, gave a different version of the shooting of Hutton. He admitted that Hutton had fired some shots at the police, but said that he himself “took Bobby’s gun and threw it out” of the window, and that they both came out unarmed. “The cops told us to get up and start running for the squad car,” Cleaver continued. “Bobby started running — he ran about ten yards — and they started shooting him.” The grand jury, after hearing thirty-five witnesses, concluded that the police had “acted lawfully,” shooting Hutton in the belief he was trying to escape.
Eight other Panthers, including Cleaver, who were allegedly involved in the shooting of the policemen were arrested that night and then were released on bail. Two of the eight were subsequently convicted of assault with deadly weapons; one was released to a juvenile court; one was tried and convicted for an unrelated armed robbery and sent to state prison; one, Cleaver, jumped bail and fled the country.