Spike Moss is a superannuated racist hustler and demagogue of the Black Power variety. I saw him speak at the University of Minnesota Law School in 1978 when he gave a speech denouncing Professor Steve Nemerson. Nemerson had committed the outrage of opposing “affirmative action” as a discriminatory policy. Moss turned in an unforgettably disgusting performance.
Moss is perhaps most notable as a co-founder of the gang front called United For Peace in 1992. United For Peace sold itself to gullible municipal authorities as an organization bringing the Minneapolis police together with Minneapolis gangs to decrease violence.
In September 1992 Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf was murdered execution-style, shot in the back as he took a coffee break at the Pizza Shack on Lake Street in south Minneapolis. Police later determined that Haaf’s murder was a hit performed by four members of the city’s Vice Lords gang. The leader of the Vice Lords was Sharif Willis, a convicted murderer who had been released from prison and who sought respectability while operating United for Peace.
In May 1993 United For Peace participated in a bizarre Kansas City conference of 200 gang leaders, community activists, and official observers from 26 cities. A Los Angeles Times account of the meeting quotes Moss at the conference: “Gangs are nothing but a symptom of our oppression.” Yeah, baby!
The Times story also includes this nugget: “The truce efforts in Minneapolis looked so promising that local foundations gave Willis’ crew cellular phones, walkie-talkies and beepers so they could respond if trouble erupted. But last fall, his nephew was arrested for slaying a police officer and authorities have severed all ties with the group.” That police officer was Jerry Haaf.
The murder of Officer Haaf had been planned in the confines of Willis’s home. Indeed, as the Times story notes, one of the murderers was Willis’s nephew — Montery Willis.
Law enforcement had little doubt that Willis was responsible for Haaf’s murder but was unable to pin it on him. He nevertheless had their attention. In 1995 Willis was convicted in federal court on several counts of drug and gun-related crimes. He was sent back to prison for 20 years. In the aftermath of Haaf’s murder and the convictions of four Vice Lord gangbangers for the murder United For Peace folded.
United For Peace is long gone, but Moss rolls on in Minneapolis peddling snake oil to gullible municipal authorities. Foremost among them is Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara.
O’Hara found it fitting and proper for Moss to serve as the keynote speaker to new Minneapolis police officers at their swearing-in on January 30 of this year. Liz Sawyer’s Star Tribune story was a pathetic puff piece celebrated Moss and the swearing-in event. Sawyer describes Moss as “a trailblazing civil rights activist” and treated his quoted remarks as the gospel without any mention of his checkered history.
The Minneapolis Police Department needs officers. It is grossly understaffed. At the time of George Floyd’s death in May 2020 it had 900 officers. Hundreds of officers chose to move on. The city is legally obligated to maintain a force of 731 officers, but it isn’t close. The most recent number is 580.
Sawyer reported that “the department ended the calendar year [2024] with a net increase of officers, adding 36 sworn staff after a targeted marketing push and a historic pay increase.” Was the net increase 36 officers? Later she stated that the total number is “above 580”:
The rank-and-file hit an all-time low of 560 last March, down from more than 900 in early 2020, according to payroll data. Today, that number is back above 580, and O’Hara said some officers now eligible for retirement are opting to stay.
Sawyer isn’t much of a reporter and she doesn’t say what it is. If the net increase were 36 officers the total number would be 616. Incidentally, her story didn’t allow for comments.
Last week O’Hara had Moss back again. This time around, however, Moss embarrassed O’Hara. Deena Winter reports in the Star Tribune:
The Minneapolis police chief apologized for comments made by longtime Minneapolis activist Harry “Spike” Moss during police training last week in which Moss talked about Nazi uniforms in police lockers and police shooting people in the back.
Chief Brian O’Hara called Moss’ comments “deeply offensive and inappropriate,” saying he met with the police union president to talk about their “mutual concerns,” according to his email obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
O’Hara wrote that he was particularly disappointed by Moss’ assertion that Jerry Haaf was a dirty cop stealing money from the Vice Lords gang. Haaf was shot to death by gang members as he read a newspaper in a Lake Street pizzeria in 1992, months before he planned to retire.
Four young Vice Lords were convicted in connection with the execution-style killing, which was one of the most shocking murders in Minneapolis history. Prosecutors alleged the killing was revenge for the alleged mistreatment of a blind Black man on a bus the day before.
At the time of the murder, Moss was a leader at City Inc. — a controversial Minneapolis program that worked with gang members to combat street violence. He told the Star Tribune in 2022 that one of the men convicted of the crime should be released if he’d done his time.
O’Hara said he reached out to Haaf’s daughter to express his “disappointment and sorrow” and ensure “something like this never happens again.”
For some reason, the Star Tribune once again precludes comments the story.
Winter does her best to save face for O’Hara if not Moss by presenting a tribute to Moss from an unintentionally revealing source: “Attorney General Keith Ellison said during the event that Moss inspired numerous people, like him, to become leaders…”
Keith Ellison…hmmm, that reminds me.
In October 1992, Ellison helped organize a demonstration against Minneapolis police that included Willis — the leader of the Vice Lords gang responsible for Haaf’s murder. Willis was the last speaker at the demonstration. According to a contemporaneous report in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Willis told the crowd that Minneapolis cops were experiencing the same fear from young black men that blacks had felt from police for many years. “If the police have some fear, I understand that fear,” Willis said. “We seem to have an overabundance of bad police. . . . [W]e’re going to get rid of them,” he said. “They’ve got to go.”
The Pioneer Press concluded with Ellison’s contribution to the demonstration: “Ellison told the crowd that the police union is systematically frightening whites in order to get more police officers hired. That way, Ellison said, the union can increase its power base.”
Ellison went on publicly to support the Haaf murder defendants. He spoke at a demonstration in February 1993 for one during his trial, leading the crowd assembled at the courthouse in a threatening chant that was particularly ominous in the context of Haaf’s cold-blooded murder: “We don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace.” Ellison’s working relationship with Willis finally ended in February 1995, when Willis was convicted in federal court on several counts of drug and gun-related crimes and sent back to prison for 20 years.
One can infer from Winter’s story that O’Hara is trying to distance himself from the most recent invitation to Moss: “O’Hara’s email said the seminar was organized by Shawn Williams, who oversees MPD’s training division. But MPD spokesman Garrett Parten said O’Hara ‘invited/approved the invitation to Spike.’” As I have previously observed, O’Hara is a spinless weasel.
Liz Sawyer and the Star Tribune might have saved O’Hara from embarrassment if they had called him out about his selection of Moss as a keynote speaker at the swearing-in this past January. However, Sawyer omitted any mention of Moss’s disgraceful past. Winter mentions the honor O’Hara accorded Moss earlier this year toward the end of her story and quotes O’Hara introducing Moss at the January function as a “man who has spent his life fighting for justice, equality and for the betterment of our community.”
Among those who have brought Minneapolis to its current state of degradation are Spike Moss, Chief O’Hara, and the Star Tribune itself.
