SF 8 celebrate release of 6 at Hamilton Rec

Most of them were members of the Black Panther Party, which at one time FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called "the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States."

Just as in the police murder cases of fellow political prisoners Mumia Abu Jamal, Imam Jamil Al-Amin and the MOVE 9, to name a few, the prosecution has no evidence and is using these charges to prosecute these community servants because of their political beliefs. Although the government is illegally trying this case for a second time, after the court acknowledged that the defendants were tortured and it was thrown out in ‘75, the prosecution is pushing full steam ahead.

Since the arrest of the San Francisco 8 in January of this year, there has been an enormous tidal wave of support nationally and internationally, pushing for the charges to be dropped and for their unconditional release. Here is how the case started.

MOI JR: Harold, can you tell us how this case started in 1971?

H. Taylor: In 1971, during the split of the Black Panther Party, I was in Los Angeles at the time. Myself, Ray Boudreaux and John Bowman, we were all in the party at that time, and Bowman and Boudreaux were visiting Los Angeles, and we got together. This was in September of ‘71.

An incident happened where some people had given me a phone call pertaining to Geronimo Elmer Pratt, concerning some personal property that belonged to him, and they wanted to know if I would come pick it up. I told them that I would do that. I made arrangements with somebody for me to come meet them at a house, and I would pick up Geronimo's property. It turned out to be that this particular person was an informant for the FBI, and it was a setup.

I was going by myself, but I happened to go to a house party, and John Bowman and Ray Boudreaux were there, and I told them that I couldn't stay long because I had an errand to run. They decided to go with me - and wanted to go with me - and I told them that that was fine.

We went, and at the time it was an ambush. It was a setup by the Criminal Conspiracy Section of the Los Angeles Police Department. The SWAT team and the FBI agents had set it up for me to go to this house.

It was an informant's house. When I got to the house, nobody was there. We got ready to leave and were followed by some police cars, and I didn't know they were police because they were plain cars. And during that time, there was a split in the party and numerous threats on people, and I didn't know if it was members of the party or the police, but it turned out that it was the police.

And when they pulled us over, they started shooting. They started shooting, and we had weapons, because during that time, people carried a lot of weapons because you had people getting killed all of the time by the police and by renegades, and numerous other things was going on at the time. It was real hectic.

And we defended ourselves. We all were shot. They shot into the car over 200 and something times. They shot me six times and shot John Bowman in the back and shot him a few times and also shot Ray Boudreaux five or six times. We all went to the hospital. We all survived.

After we went to the hospital, we went to county jail to defend ourselves against "assault on a police officer." That's what they called it. They attacked us - and charged us. While we were there, I got wind of this incident in San Francisco, the Ingleside thing (killing of a police officer), and I became a suspect.

I was in jail, and it just happened one day, when they brought me out to see my lawyer, I looked at the tag on my door, where they control the doors for opening, and I just happened to notice that it had a tag on my door that said "suspect in San Francisco police shooting." So I asked my lawyer about it, and she investigated and found out that John, Ray and I were suspects. That was the first I ever heard of Ingleside.

We got out on bail in ‘73, and this is during the time of the Watergate hearings and all of that stuff, raids on Black Panther offices and a number of different killings, and we felt that we weren't going to get any justice in the courts, so we decided that we weren't going to come back to court. At least I did, and I stayed in Los Angeles.

I do not know where Boudreaux and Bowman went. But later on, I got a call from Bowman. I ended up in New Orleans and I was only there for about three or four days, when I was arrested along with John Bowman, Reuben Scott and a number of other people. And that's what took place there.

After that time, that's where the torture and questioning began, with Ingleside and a number of other different cases across the country, with a number of different police departments from all over the country. That's when the beatings and the torture started - plastic bags over your head, chained to chairs, cattle prods stuck to your private parts, ear-slapping, hot blankets and numerous other ways of torturing you, keeping you up all night and dragging you into a gauntlet of police officers, while they kick you and beat you and spit on you and call you names.

That went on for it seemed like forever, but it probably was a week or so, and they were asking a bunch of questions, and I think that I stayed there from August to December. I stayed to testify in Reuben Scott's case on a bank robbery, to testify on the suppression of evidence on the torture that took place there, to help him on his case.

They extradited us back to California. When I was tried there, they figured that they had the strongest case against me, so we decided on a strategy that I would be tried first. And I was tried first, in ‘75, and I was found not guilty by a jury of 12 people of all counts, and it was a total of six counts: assault on a police officer and possession of firearms. If we didn't have weapons, we all would have been dead. It was a Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program of the FBI) operation. We later found out all of this.

After that, when I got out of jail, they took me to San Diego on a charge that they had for possession of a firearm that happened in 1969, when I was working there as a section leader reorganizing a branch, the San Diego branch. And they got me for possession of a firearm, but they dismissed it when I got there and released me, and I got out.

And I tried working in Los Angeles, but I couldn't keep a job because the FBI and LAPD kept harassing me, coming on the job and talking to people. They wouldn't keep me on the job, so I had to leave, and I ended up leaving the state, and I moved to Florida.

And I was there until this came about. I came here on the grand jury thing in 2005. I stayed here in jail one time for a month and a half, because I refused to testify in front of the grand jury.

I stood on my constitutional rights. I took the 5th amendment and the 14th amendment, and I refused to testify, and they held me for a month and a half and let me go. Then they came to my house about a year later; they wanted DNA samples, and they came threatening, saying that they were going to arrest me again and that they were going to charge me with this and so forth.

And then on Jan. 23, they arrested us. They came and got me at about 9 o'clock in the morning, and I stayed in Florida jail for a month fighting extradition; then I came here eventually. And I just got out - as a matter of fact, the night before last, at 8 o'clock, and I've been with Richard Brown ever since.

Email POCC Minister of Information JR at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and hear his popular Block Reports - broadcast regularly at 5 p.m. weekdays on Flashpoints at KPFA 94.1 FM or kpfa.org and other radio stations around the country - at www.blockreportradio.com.

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