# Was Fred Hampton murdered by police? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 25, 2014, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470 "2014-08-25T17:43:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/1 "2014-08-25T17:43:27Z")
In the Pit thread on [Ferguson, MO](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=730860), the subject of other police shootings that resulted in murder convictions has been brought up. As an example of a murder committed by police, I offered up the name of [Fred Hampton](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Raid_and_assassination). The discussion in the Pit has involved, IMO, a lot of handwaving away of offered evidence of police killings as “well that wasn’t really a police killing because…” followed by reasons that the cop wasn’t _really_ a cop when he or she killed someone. So, since I expect the same thing to happen with regards to the murder of Fred Hampton (no charges were ever filed against anyone involved in the drugging, raid and murder of Mr. Hampton), I thought maybe we could debate it here and see what the consensus is amongst Dopers: was Fred Hampton murdered by the police? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/2 "2014-08-25T18:07:02Z")
From your cite - > [@](#): > > The federal grand jury did not return any indictment against anyone involved with the planning or execution of the raid. The officers involved in the raid were cleared by a grand jury of any crimes. Maybe in another forty five years things will be clearer, but for now, no, no murder was found to have been committed. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/3 "2014-08-25T20:03:52Z")
I’m not sure it’s quite accurate to say the grand jury “cleared” the officers - they refused to indict, not exactly a statement that they’d done nothing wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/4 "2014-08-25T20:23:43Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > From your cite - > Maybe in another forty five years things will be clearer, but for now, no, no murder was found to have been committed. > > Regards, > Shodan I don’t think that conclusion can be drawn from the failure to indict and I wasn’t asking for the grand jury’s opinion anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/5 "2014-08-25T21:30:30Z")
Title changed at request of the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2014, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/6 "2014-08-25T21:44:45Z")
Depending on veracity of the police exchange immediately prior to Hampton’s death, yes, it was murder by police. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/7 "2014-08-26T15:49:50Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > I don’t think that conclusion can be drawn from the failure to indict and I wasn’t asking for the grand jury’s opinion anyway. That no murder was found to have been committed is what your own cite says. If they have found anything new forty-five years after the fact, let’s hear it. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/8 "2014-08-26T15:57:05Z")
**Shodan** , no one is forcing you to participate in this thread. If you don’t want to read the wiki entry that I linked to and offer your own opinion, I don’t know why you would continue to participate; the OP didn’t ask for people to simply parrot what the grand jury said. Do you have an opinion to share? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/9 "2014-08-26T16:16:41Z")
I did read the Wiki entry, and it said what I quoted. Since you don’t have any new facts, it would appear that the grand jury considered the evidence, including statements under oath, and, even with the advantages to the prosecution afforded by a grand jury vs. a trial, found no basis for an indictment. So, in my opinion, there is not enough evidence to conclude that Hampton was murdered. I didn’t notice you posting your opinion on the matter, with facts to back it up. If you just want to toss off a Wiki link and leave it up to others, the thread isn’t likely to go anywhere. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/10 "2014-08-26T17:39:24Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I did read the Wiki entry, and it said what I quoted. Since you don’t have any new facts, it would appear that the grand jury considered the evidence, including statements under oath, and, even with the advantages to the prosecution afforded by a grand jury vs. a trial, found no basis for an indictment. He’s right. Look, a GJ listens to and see days or weeks of testimony. Much of it very fresh, much of it sealed. To think that you know more about a case than the GJ does, even after they had access to dozens of times more info than you do, is presumptuous. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/11 "2014-08-26T19:14:27Z")
I read the citation. Then I looked up the law in my state concerning murder: > [@](#): > > (a) [criminal homicide constitutes murder] When it is committed intentionally, except that it is an affirmative defense that, at the time of the homicide, the defendant was under the influence of an extreme emotional disturbance; So we have cops raiding a joint full of cop-killers, and a cop-killer gets capped under less than perfectly acceptable circumstances. I don’t see this as murder, some lesser crime maybe, but this isn’t murder. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/12 "2014-08-26T19:27:37Z")
Given the political climate of the time, I find it only too easy to believe that Fred Hampton was deliberately assassinated by police and that a racist grand jury declined to indict those responsible. It’s possible that’s not actually what happened, but it is not even remotely a far-fetched explanation. Institutional racism that manifested itself in government-backed violence against black people in those days was so widespread that it’s difficult to give the benefit of the doubt. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/13 "2014-08-26T19:45:07Z")
> [@Stealth\_Potato](#): > > Given the political climate of the time, I find it only too easy to believe that Fred Hampton was deliberately assassinated by police and that a racist grand jury declined to indict those responsible. It’s possible that’s not actually what happened, but it is not even remotely a far-fetched explanation. Institutional racism that manifested itself in government-backed violence against black people in those days was so widespread that it’s difficult to give the benefit of the doubt. Read this article: > **[Shoot It Out? The Death of Fred Hampton](http://chicagocrimescenes.blogspot.com/2009/11/shoot-it-out-death-of-fred-hampton.html)** > > Fred Hampton, Illinois Chairman of the Black Panther Party, was living with his girlfriend and other Panther friends in the first-floor apar... It makes it pretty clear the the Federal GJ was in no way racist. A later GJ did indict several cops. _The federal grand jury concluded that the original IID investigation was a complete sham, with each officer being asked questions which had been previously written up and given to them, along with a set of answers. The seven surviving apartment-dwellers refused to testify to the federal grand jury, and on that basis, the jury returned no indictments, but their report was unequivocal: “Physical evidence, standing alone and unexplained, is sufficient to establish probable cause to charge the officers with a willful violation of these survivors’ civil rights.”_ Simply- there wasn’t enough evidence to convict the Police officers. Lots of evidence, true, but conflicting & contradictory testimony, sometimes from the same witnesses made the possibility of a conviction zero. “\* What really happened in the early morning of December 4, 1969? After countless grand juries and trials, all of the details are still not known, will likely never be known.”\* ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/14 "2014-08-26T19:46:51Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > In the Pit thread on [Ferguson, MO](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=730860), the subject of other police shootings that resulted in murder convictions has been brought up. > > As an example of a murder committed by police, I offered up the name of [Fred Hampton](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Raid_and_assassination). > > The discussion in the Pit has involved, IMO, a lot of handwaving away of offered evidence of police killings as “well that wasn’t really a police killing because…” followed by reasons that the cop wasn’t _really_ a cop when he or she killed someone. > > So, since I expect the same thing to happen with regards to the murder of Fred Hampton (no charges were ever filed against anyone involved in the drugging, raid and murder of Mr. Hampton), I thought maybe we could debate it here and see what the consensus is amongst Dopers: was Fred Hampton murdered by the police? It’s possible Hampton was murdered. The problem with making that claim is that you have only conjecture and supposition, as opposed to evidence that might be used to convict someone at trial. So I’ll say no: based on the evidence, there’s not enough reason to say that Hampton was murdered. ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Potato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Stealth\_Potato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Potato)\ **Post date:** [August 26, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-fred-hampton-murdered-by-police/696470/15 "2014-08-26T21:36:57Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Read this article: > > [http://chicagocrimescenes.blogspot.com/2009/11/shoot-it-out-death-of-fred-hampton.html](http://chicagocrimescenes.blogspot.com/2009/11/shoot-it-out-death-of-fred-hampton.html) > > It makes it pretty clear the the Federal GJ was in no way racist. A later GJ did indict several cops. Fair enough, that paints it in a different light. If that description is essentially true then the grand juries acted appropriately.