Torture: an interview wit' Harold Taylor of the San Francisco 8

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Torture: an interview wit' Harold Taylor of the San Francisco 8
by Minister of Information JR

SF 8 celebrate release of 6 at Hamilton Rec
SF 8 celebrate release of 6 at Hamilton Rec
Harold Taylor is one of the political prisoners released on bail in the San Francisco 8 case that is currently underway at 850 Bryant in San Francisco. The police and the government are using a 1971 unsolved police murder in the Ingleside District of San Francisco to continue their torture and life-long harassment of community workers.

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.

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.

This is Part 3 of the torturous history of the San Francisco 8, told by political prisoners Harold Taylor and Richard Brown of the SF 8. With the Supreme Court recently refusing to rule against torture, we should have our eyes glued to this case, because if we don't stand up now, we will be facing torture at the hands of the police like what members of the San Francisco 8 endured in the '70s. If you missed Parts 1 and 2, you will be able to read this interview in its entirety at www.blockreportradio.com. Stay tuned ...

Richard Brown: And to show you how these people really are, John (Bowman) passed in December and we were arrested in January. They didn't know that John had passed, and they didn't attend the funeral. He was cremated.

And to this day, they are still running around asking questions, because they believe that he is underground or escaped. I have a granddaughter who is 12, and they have contacted her and asked her, "Where is your uncle" or "Where is John" and that type of thing. They're still looking for him, they don't want to believe that the brotha is deceased, that he died and was cremated and buried.

Harold Taylor: And also me and John was charged with this case in 1975, and a judge here in San Francisco - I never even had to appear in front of him, just on the evidence that he read and the statements that he saw and the violation of our constitutional rights, and what he read about what happened to us from the case that we had in Los Angeles pertaining to the torture where they tried to use torture evidence there, and where a judge there suppressed everything they said about New Orleans - well, the judge here saw all of that, and he dismissed the charges against me and John Bowman in 1975, and we never even appeared in front of him.

We was indicted by a grand jury and never even notified. We found out later that we had been charged with this case, but it was dismissed because of what happened in New Orleans. So really, this is like double jeopardy. Once again I am being charged with the same thing, with the same evidence that they had back then.

MOI JR: What new "evidence" do they say they have?

Richard Brown: That's tricky. To get this, they came to the D.A. (district attorney) here in San Francisco first, from what I understand, and they couldn't get them to do it. They couldn't get the FBI. So they claim that they have new evidence, and the bottom line is that they don't. We've been asked by our attorneys not to go too far off into that because the case is still pending.

What they're attempting to do is re-charge us for crimes that we've already been charged with, and served time behind us. Double jeopardy. They're also trying to bring in confessions that were obtained through torture. The judge is going to be ruling on those two things.

The only reason that six of us are out (on bail) is because there has been a tremendous amount of support around this case. People have been there and have been watching it since day one, and they cannot get away with a railroad job and with in-the-dark procedures that they are so famous for, because there is too much light and too many people paying attention.

And we've had a great deal of support from everybody, not only in San Francisco, but from all over this nation and all over the world really. I really want to thank everyone for that, from the bottom of my heart. We all do. And we want to ask people to continue to support us because we really need it.

If they could get away with torturing people and using confessions, then everybody in the world is in trouble. If they could get away with double jeopardy, everybody who has done any time before and served their time and thinks that they have put that behind them - if that could be brought back up and you can be charged with that all over again - then everybody is still in trouble. So this is going to be two rulings that everybody should be interested in and pay attention to.

Harold Taylor, Terry Cotton
SF 8 defendant Harold Taylor and Black Panther and KPOO broadcaster Terry Cotton at a SF 8 hearing.
Harold Taylor: I just want to point out one other thing: Herman Bell and Jalil (Muntaqim) Bottom are still in jail, and they've been in prison since the '70s. I know Herman was arrested in New Orleans, at the same time that me and John Bowman was. Now the same informant that has Herman Bell and Jalil in prison is the same informant that they tortured and are trying to use now in this case, and he's the same informant who got Jalil and Herman in prison today (on the NY3 case).

He is the same identical person; there are no if, ands or buts about it. His name is Reuben Scott, and they know it. We all know it. His confession was suppressed because of the torture.

He admitted that he was tortured and beaten. He's come and testified on my behalf, up in Los Angeles. At the time they used statements against me, he came into court in Los Angeles in 1974 and testified to the fact of what happened in New Orleans, that we were tortured and he was beaten, and he was made to say certain things about me, and that I was made to say certain things.

So now he's back. He has perjured himself on numerous occasions in different courtrooms under oath, and he is the sole witness that got Herman Bell and Jalil Bottom in prison and had them there ever since the '70s.

Richard Brown: The one thing that I think that I can share is that they have been hollering about new evidence. In order for us to be arrested, they claimed they had DNA and fingerprints - new DNA and new fingerprints. They had a weapon and it took us months to get through discovery in the court to try to get to the point where - and this is all public testimony that happened in court, so I'm not revealing anything.

But it turns out that their new evidence - they do have new DNA; it just doesn't match any of us, none of us. They do have new fingerprints, that doesn't match any of us. And the murder weapon that they claim they have, they are saying now that they've lost it.

MOI JR: So they "lost" the murder weapon?

Richard Brown: Yes.

MOI JR: But they have eight of y'all on trial with the potential that if John Bowman would have been here, it would've been nine of y'all on trial, and they claim that they have lost the murder weapon?

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