Especially for Black Panther History Month, we are bringing our readers the story of the San Francisco 8, who are currently fighting conspiracy and murder charges in the case of a San Francisco police officer slain in 1971. 

The courts originally threw this case out after it was acknowledged that some of the defendants were tortured in the process of being interrogated in 1975.

Continuing the government's war against the Black community, the Department of Homeland Security illegally revived the same case in 2005 and brought the defendants before a grand jury. When they refused to cooperate, they were jailed and eventually released.

In January 2007, the case was brought up a third time, and eight defendants were rounded up from around the country and brought to San Francisco to stand trial. Currently, six of the eight are out on bail, with political prisoners Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim being the two remaining members stuck behind enemy lines.

We ask all of our readers to get involved in helping to free the San Francisco 8 as well as all political prisoners. The next SF 8 court date is Wednesday, Oct. 10, 9 a.m., at 850 Bryant in San Francisco.

MOI JR: Can you tell us a little about this grand jury in 2005 and how you tie into the case or how they are trying to tie you into the case?

Richard Brown: The grand jury investigation of 2005 stems from the torture and the so-called confession in New Orleans. Since the advent of the of the Patriot Act, and with Cheney and that other dictator, Bush, trying to advocate torture and saying that it is all right to use confessions that are obtained under torture, Homeland Security and the FBI were trying to get us to cooperate with them in 2005 with this grand jury investigation.

They came and rounded up all of us again, took us before the grand jury, and we all refused to testify. They held us in contempt of court and locked us up from anywhere, from John staying locked up for a week ...

H.Taylor: and took us all to separate jails.

Richard Brown: And the rest of us were separated and held for about three months - different people for different amounts of time. We were all released on the same day, Oct. 31, around noon.

So we got together and started the CDHR, which is the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights. And they told us that eventually they were going to come and charge us with that regardless. So we started to prepare for this case that they came in January of this year and arrested us for.

MOI JR: Can you talk a little bit about the officers who were involved in torturing some of the members of the San Francisco 8 in the ‘70s, as well as the ones who came and picked you up on this recent case?

Richard Brown: Erdelatz and McCoy have been on this ever since New Orleans. They were two San Francisco homicide detectives who were there in New Orleans, present during the torture.

They came during the grand jury investigations and knocked on our doors and asked us if we remembered who they were and that type of thing, and they even came back out of retirement. Erdelatz, from what I understand, is working at 850 (San Francisco jail) right now, on the fifth floor. They hired him back, and McCoy is somewhere slithering around.

These two officers have seemed to make it their personal vendetta to try to hang this crime on us, for the fact that we exposed them to the world because of the torture that they did in New Orleans. They really didn't like that and haven't forgiven anybody for it yet, because it was a proven fact.

H. Taylor: In 1973 in New Orleans it was Erdelatz and McCoy that was the two detectives that came from San Francisco that was there during the torturing. They would stay in one room, and New Orleans police officers would conduct the beatings and the torturing.

And they would tell us, "If you didn't talk, you would get more of the same" or "If you didn't do what we say, you would get more of the same." And they would put us back in the room with Erdelatz and McCoy.

And when I went into the room with them, I would say: "Look, I don't know what you guys are talking about. I have no knowledge of what you are talking about." They would simply look at me and laugh and open the door and say, "He doesn't want to talk," and New Orleans police officers would come back in and continue the beating and the torture and the plastic bags and the ear slapping.

You lose track of time, and it was getting to the point where you can't hardly register the pain. So they would use that cattle prod to get your attention, to get you back on track.

And they would tell you after that, "If you don't go in there and cooperate, we will be right here outside the door, and if that door opens, we are coming back in." And they would continue to do the same thing over and over again.

This starts early in the morning and goes all day. You might think that you are going to get some water and get a break. You don't know if it is night or day.

They put you in a cell, and you think that you are going to be able to rest, but you still got chains on. Then they'll come and drag you out, and you'll run through a gauntlet of police officers.

And you wouldn't see not one Black officer in the whole department. They were all white officers and they would do the beating and the screaming and the cussing, and all of them are jockeying for position to get their licks in.

This went on until I left New Orleans, until I left the custody of the New Orleans Police Department. They held me in custody in the police department jail for something like three weeks before they released me into the care of the Sheriff's Department to go to Parish Prison.

Parish Prison is an old slave trading quarters. It is not there any more; it was built in the 1800s. It's where they bought slaves to be sold from.

It rained inside of that prison. There was windows but no glass on the windows. There were bars on the windows. So it rained in New Orleans every day during the summer - what they call "dog days" - it would rain all day on you so you stay wet.

Me and John Bowman, we were together. (When) I went into that jail, I weighed 195 pounds; when I came out, I weighed 135 pounds when they got me back to California.

They fed us like they slopped a hog. They had you bend a can so it would fit between the bars, so that they could come and pour your food in. And sometimes it was maggots in it, and you would have to pick through it to find out what you could eat and what you couldn't eat.

We stayed sick all of the time. Me and J.B. (John Bowman) always had a cold. It was only me and him. They kept us in a cage, and it was like a big bird cage, and it was only me and him there.

We didn't see any other inmates for maybe a month, until some lawyers came and got them to move us and put us not really in population, but put us in isolation with some other prisoners; some of the roughest prisoners in the jail. Everybody had knives in there; it was like gladiator school.

We stayed there until we did the testimony for Reuben Scott - to tell about the torture - and then we were extradited back to California. Erdelatz and McCoy did the questioning. There was New York Police Department there - there was numerous different police departments.

You had the FBI and everybody was jockeying for position, and everybody wanted statements. And New Orleans was providing the beating and the torturing in order to get what other departments wanted people to say.

Richard Brown: And in a lot of the different states, they figured that that was a way for them to clean up their books. For any unsolved crime, they would just come there and tell the New Orleans Police Department what they wanted the people to say and try to get it beat out of them.

H. Taylor: Me and John Bowman was charged with bank robberies and numerous different things, but we never went to court. They were all dismissed. I think that we had about seven counts when they first arrested us in the state of Louisiana, but when we left there we had no charges at all.

They used that all as an excuse to keep us up there and interrogate and torture us. John Bowman is not here any more, but to this day I believe what happened to John affected him and made him sick.

And I understand torture and what it does to people, because torture is a life sentence. You never get over that. You live that forever. It stays in your dreams, and it always follows you.

John Bowman used to call me at night time. I knew he couldn't sleep at night, because I couldn't sleep for 30-something years. Because neither him nor I ever talked about what happened to us, only to each other, because it was so humiliating what they did to us. It was a real painful experience.

And John's gone, so now I tell the story. We tried telling it together on our tour, as we talked in different places across the country, explaining what happened and how this case came about.

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 visit www.blockreportradio.com, hiphopwarreport.com and myspace.com/blockreportfilm.

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