NYPD

Justice Dept. Shakes Up Inquiry Into Eric Garner Chokehold Case

  • October 25, 2016
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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…

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

  • October 10, 2016
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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…

“Protecting” the Police: The Legislative Attack on Black Lives Matter

  • August 23, 2016
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“There is a phenomenon in this country that we need to examine and it’s just not in New York,” NYPD Commissioner William Bratton told reporters in May, after addressing a national conference of police chiefs at the Times Square Marriott Marquis. “This has become very serious. I would almost describe it as an epidemic.” Bratton, who announced his retirement on August 3 — much to the delight of Black Lives Matter demonstrators who set up an encampment at City Hall calling for his resignation one day previously — was not speaking of zika or ebola. He was talking about civilians…

Police use of lethal violence in the United States—as powerfully documented by the Guardian and the Washington Post

  • June 21, 2015
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“Bernard Harcourt, who wrote influential books and authored studies debunking the famous Broken Windows theory of policing (the debated idea that focusing on low-level “urban disorder” will curtail serious crime), recently pointed out (Guardian, 6/6/15) that the “crime wave” politics being carried by right-wing and corporate centrist media outlets are a classic response to a political movement that takes on racist policing in America: The point of the “Ferguson effect,” though, is not to be accurate. It is instead to distract us from the growing evidence about the magnitude and extent of police use of lethal violence in the United States—as…