Stephen Janis

review of
Stephen Tabeling & Stephen Janis's Black October and the Murder of State Delegate Turk Scott
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 11, 2018

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/615672-black-october

This the 1st e-bk I've read. I prefer bks that exist as physical objects & I prefer having a personal library of such bks. I don't like reading on screens (although I, perhaps ironically, publish huge amts online & make movies that're very text-heavy). I only got this e-bk b/c I didn't find anything available on this subject in hard-copy form.

I'm from BalTimOre. I moved into the city from the county in 1975. In the mid-1970s when I took the bus thru Baltimore City I saw graffiti that sd "Black October", mostly, if not entirely, in black neighborhoods. I remember it particularly along Greenmount Ave north of North Ave. Being interested in graffiti, this intrigued me. I was told by someone that black soldiers returning from Vietnam had found their black communities being devastated by heroin addiciton. I was told that they knew who the heroin kingpins were & that they started assassinating them. I was told that the police knew what was going on & eventually told the Black October assassins that it was time to stop. I never had any way of corroborating this story & that's one of the resaons why I wanted to read this bk.

One of the illustrations in the beginning is of a flier that was scattered at the scene of Scott's assassination. The flier says:

"THESE PERSON ARE KNOWN DRUG DEALERS. SELLING DRUGS IS AN ACT OF TREASON. THE PENALTY FOR TREASON IS "DEATH"!! BLACK OCTOBER ∆T∆"

The scan of the illustration is seemingly cropped too short so it really has "PERSO" w/ the beginning of what looks like an "N" & "DRU" w/ the faintest hint of a "G" & "TRE" is, apparently, the 2nd "TREASON" & "OCTOB" most likely finishes as "OCTOBER". More is cut off at the bottom. "∆T∆" is the Greek letter spelling of Delta Tau Delta", a Fraternity name. Nowhere in this bk is that ∆T∆ addressed at all. That strikes me as a significant omission.

The main body of text is large print on small pages. The 1st page of the story only has 142 words. These are in 6 paragraphs, 4 of the paragraphs are 1 sentence long, the other 2 are only 2 sentences. To give you an idea of how little content that is, my 2nd paragraph here has 138 words & 9 sentences. As such, it's about the equivalent of one page of this bk. This characterizes the whole thing. The bk is mainly filler, if you're looking for significant informative detail, like I was, forget it.

The bk does manage to tell the reader that the deceased was "State Delegate Turk Scott. / He was a politically connected bail bondsman, a consummate Baltimore insider who had been appointed to a seat in the Maryland General Assembly just months before."

"Scott had recently been indicted by federal authorities for drug dealing: one count for conspiracy and three counts for distribution of heroin by attempting to bring 40 pounds of dope into the city. An indictment that made headlines across the country regaling the tale of a public official who was alleged to have been involved in the business of moving drugs through the City of Baltimore."

40 pounds of heroin is a huge amt. Anyone selling that much is going to make a gigantic profit & is going to spread the misery-that-is-heroin-addiction far & wide.

"Allegedly named after an organized effort during the Vietnam War to aid heroin-addicted African-American soldiers, the group had come to our attention when another suspected city drug dealer was gunned down in broad daylight. Several days after that murder someone claiming to represent Black October called the News American newspaper and said the dealer was the first victim of their nascent war against drug dealers."

& that's about all I got out of the 1st chapter - basically a reiteration of what I'd already heard on the streets. The 2nd chapter has more stating of the obvious. I did learn:

"The person who pushed product into the Baltimore supply chain for many of the organizations we tracked was a New York-based dealer named Gary Matthews.

"Matthews was one of the biggest heroin traffickers on the East Coast. A legend, in fact, who gained notoriety by circumventing the Italian Mafia to buy heroin directly from the Cubans and Colombians and sell it in at least 20 cities up and down the East Coast."

As a long-term BalTimOre resident I agree w/ the author's saying:

"The growing business of distributing opiates gained momentum in the early 1970s and began the inevitable decline that has left us with the urban wasteland we see today."

Yep, the greed of a few, as usual, created a destitution of the many.

"What if, I thought at the time, this group really was preparing to wage war against drug dealers in the city? What if this was just the first in a series of planned killings?

"To be sure, whoever was behind Black October wanted us to believe that Scott’s murder was just the beginning.

"So when a man claiming to represent the organization called the News American and took responsibility for the killing, we knew we had to solve this case quickly, otherwise whoever or whatever Black October was, could mushroom into something far worse."

The "far worse", apparently, wd be the threatened killing off of the heroin kingpins. I have to wonder whether this might've cut the heroin business off in the bud. From my perspective, the "far worse" is what really did happen: namely the spread of heroin on a massive scale throughout BalTimOre. The result? Something like 10% of the population becoming heroin addicts, robberies at a presumably unprecedented level, plenty of murders.

In other words, in the scale of things: a few drug dealers executed vs 60,000 drug addicts & all the attendant misery. I get the impression that the detective who wrote this bk was more concerned about the drug dealers. That's not fair to him but, still, that makes sense considering how heavily the BalTimOre police dept has been implicated in the heroin business. I, personally, have witnessed a pay-off. Then there was the time when a large amt of heroin was confiscated from trafficing police officers & put in the evidence rm. Gee, the evidence 'disappeared', what a surprise! NOT. I'm told that recently an internal investigator who was about to testify against the police drug trafficers was murdered. Gee, what a surprise! NOT.

As it was discovered, the assassination suspect was "Sherman Dobson".

"He was the son of a minister and nephew of one of the most prominent African-American pastors in the City of Baltimore"

The author has 1st encountered him at a protest at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a public high school.

"More than 200 students were staging a “sit-down” to protest against the Vietnam War. We were called in to calm things down."

"One of the leaders of the student protest was Sherman Dobson."

The author ruminates on needing a search warrant to look for weapons at Dobson's home & explains his pro-by-the-law-bk-position:

"The Fourth Amendment not only protects citizens, it protects police as well. Imagine if we could simply barge into any home or open any door in a non-emergency situation without so much as a calling card. That we could simply stop people on the street whenever we felt like it, or break down the doors of people’s homes simply because we didn’t like them.

"That’s what life would be like without the Fourth Amendment. The police would be hated and feared by everyone, with no cooperation, and with good reason."

Yes, well guess what, there are ways around that, aren't there? Cops can dress in plainclothes & pretend to inform someone in a house that they're cops & then bash the door down in pursuit of a suspect who tries to keep them out w/o knowing that they're cops. This can then be augmented by claiming that the victim has tried to kill the officers. It happened to a friend of mine. It can be all lies. When the police lie, usually, the court is going to take their word for it. Fourth Amendment or not, if the cops want to break into your house they'll make it 'legal', somehow. The author makes his case for law-abiding police:

"A cop with a gun and a badge is an ordinary person with extra-ordinary powers. If he or she could stop you without probable cause or enter your home without a warrant signed by a judge, it would make the core right of democracy — the freedom to come and go as you choose — impossible."

Have you ever been stopped on the streets "without probable cause"? I have. Let's see, there was the time I was stopped b/c I "fit the description of someone going around & beating up black folks", someone "dressed in casual clothes". I was wearing clothes made entirely out of zippers, you would think a witness wd notice that, eh? Or there was the time when I was stopped as a suspect, as someone who'd robbed a guy who'd apparently been picked up by him for sex. Or the time I was stopped on the street & searched by an undercover cop as "matching the description of someone carrying an automatic weapon". In all of these cases, I was just a weirdo. Cops don't like weirdos. They've told me that after arresting me on false charges & telling me that I'm the "type who hangs himself in his jail cell". All of these experiences were in BalTimOre.

"In a sense, the trial of Sherman Dobson was a watershed moment for the city’s criminal justice system, a notorious case so thick with politics it was hard to breathe in the courtroom. Because from the onset of the trial the defense made it crystal clear that the defendant, Sherman Dobson, wasn’t the one who was on trial at all. It was in fact us, the Baltimore City Homicide Division."

"When I say politics, I mean the tensions between the Police Department and the community. That’s because it was the dramatic testimony of Sherman’s uncle, Rev. Vernon Dobson, that turned the proceedings into an indictment of us, the cops."

"a Baltimore City jury found him not guilty of killing Turk Scott.

"And while he was found guilty of kidnapping and robbing the city cab driver who identified him, the verdict in the killing of Scott was a stunning blow to justice in this city."

& I say: "Bravo!" to the community that turned the trial on its head. I, truthfully, don't give a shit that Turk Scott was executed. As for the "stunning blow to justice in this city"?: What justice is that, exactly? The justice that tortured & killed Freddie Gray? & the untolled other murders of young black men by city police? Gimme a fucking break.

"Several years after he was acquitted of Scott’s murder he shot a police officer in Baltimore during a robbery. The officer survived, but the fact remains that Dobson was willing to point a gun at a cop, and at least in that instance, fire."

Gee, I (DON'T) wonder why?!

"But what made me most uneasy about Scott’s murder trial was the role politics played in its outcome."

Can this guy really be this naive?! Turk Scott was a Maryland State Delegate. Don't you think he got there by "politics"? Politics that involved major criminal activities? Those are the politics that the author of the bk seems to turn a blind eye to (at least until the 2nd part).

"But there is a time for politics and a time to mete out justice. In the process of deciding guilt or innocence the meddling of politics that has nothing to do with guilt or innocence can render a justice system dysfunctional."

The very 'justice' system he supports is well-known to its victims & to the political activists who have the sense to fight it as an INJUSTICE SYSTEM &, as such, it's aptly named. The so-called 'justice' system is a card-game w/ a heavily stacked deck. How much more obvious does it have to be that if you're poor you'll get a cursory trial, at best, & then be whisked off to jail for unbelievably petty 'offenses'. I've been put in jail, literally, b/c I was walking down the street when a cop passed me who didn't like my looks. How often to you think that happens to the rich? As I like to say: "We are all UNEQUAL under the LAW & THAT is its PURPOSE."

"To be sure, Scott was not the only suspected drug dealer Black October took credit for murdering. Shortly after his death the group claimed killing two other known dealers. The city was, to say the least, on edge."

No member of Black October ever went to jail for these executions. I really doubt that the city was "on edge" b/c some major heroin dealers were being targetted. Walking on BalTimOre City streets under ordinary circumstances was enuf to make a person permanently on edge. I called BalTimOre my "psychopath training school". I lived in at least one neighborhood where it wasn't so improbable that I'd be murdered any time I left my residence.

Since the 1970s, the heroin problem in BalTimOre has become incredibly widespread & destructive. The author of this bk takes credit for keeping Black October under surveillance until they disappeared, presumably leaving the city. Apparently, they didn't succeed w/ such a strategy w/ the drug dealers. Do they want to know who the bigwigs are? What about when they bust someone in the chain & he's immediately represented by a 'smart' (read sociopathic & greedy) lawyer? Who pays that lawyer's bill?

Maybe if the cops were really interested in putting a stop to all this the evidence wdn't disappear from the evidence rm & the internal affairs investigator wdn't get killed. But, hey!, there's big money at work here & cops want those luxuries as much as the drug dealers do. In the long run, it's precisely the system & all its unwritten laws & subtexts that keep heroin a thriving industry. If people weren't so damned miserable, if they weren't so damned desperate, they wdn't be turning to heroin so much.

I'm not a vigilante, I've made it thru my life w/o killing anybody yet & I hope that can continue. Nonetheless, I respect Black October. They used desperate measures in a desperate situation in full knowledge that Turk Scott represented a NORM of the system, not an exception. This same system wasn't about to ultimately stop what he was doing—& it never has. BalTimOre is still a drug-addicted hell-hole 45 yrs later. Reading Alfred W. McCoy's The Politics of Heroin puts it all in very clear perspective.

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/615672-black-october… (plus d'informations)