Artikel

Looking for Accountability in Police-Involved Deaths of Blacks

Ein Berlicht mit Statistik 11 cases have fueled outrage, heightened racial tensions and instigated protests around the nation. In some of the cases, the police offered an explanation for their actions, but raw videos led many to conclude that the police actions were unjustified. So far, officers have been indicted in five cases. In four cases, grand juries declined to bring charges. In the cases listed above, images of questionable police behavior were captured on video, which helped to stoke anger across the country. Officers in all the cases were placed on administrative leave or reassigned soon after the episodes….

Justice Dept. Shakes Up Inquiry Into Eric Garner Chokehold Case

The Justice Department has replaced the New York team of agents and lawyers investigating the death of Eric Garner, officials said, a highly unusual shake-up that could jump-start the long-stalled case and put the government back on track to seek criminal charges. Mr. Garner, 43, died in 2014 on a Staten Island street corner, where two police officers confronted him and accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes. One of the officers, Daniel Pantaleo, was seen on a video using a chokehold, prohibited by the New York Police Department, to subdue him. Mr. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a…

Operation Smoke and Mirrors: in the Chicago Police Department, if the Bosses say It Didn’t Happen, It Didn’t Happen

Part 1 Two young officers began to hear rumors of a drug gang operating within the Chicago Police Department. They were skeptical at first. On May 31, the city of Chicago agreed to settle a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two police officers who allege they suffered retaliation for reporting and investigating criminal activity by fellow officers. The settlement, for $2 million, was announced moments before the trial was to begin. As the trial date approached, city lawyers had made a motion to exclude the words “code of silence” from the proceedings. Not only was the motion denied, but the judge ruled…

There’s a lot of chatter about ‘stop and frisk.’ Here are the facts.

In the last two weeks, some Americans have heard more about a controversial New York City Police Department tactic — “stop and frisk” — than possibly ever before. A whole host of conservative ideologues, elected officials and others have stepped forward to defend the Trump-Pence campaign’s claims that that tactic is an essential crime prevention tool uniquely capable of fending off anarchy and saving lives in crime-ridden communities. That’s what the Trump-Pence campaign continues to say even when confronted with the fact that a federal court ruled in 2013 that the way New York City police officers used the tactic…

Intersecting Criminalization: What Killed Ugandan Refugee Alfred Olango

To flee from a war zone, only to be met with a fatal police bullet on the other side of the world: It’s an uncomfortable, truncated narrative of an abbreviated life. This was how Alfred Olango’s life concluded late last month, at the intersection of many forces of violence that converged at a San Diego suburb, in a scene that braided strands of war, policing, race and migration. A diasporic history caught up to him in the moment the police extinguished his life, but he had spent years in various states of escape. He was finally ensnared by a system…