USA

“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…

How Community Policing Can Work

  • August 12, 2016
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Los Angeles — After the recent murders of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., and the devastating videos of the shooting deaths of black men like Alton B. Sterling and Philando Castile, the future of police-community relations in cities all over America hangs in the balance. But even as the country is still reeling from these traumas, this is no time for despair. Since the urban unrest of the 1960s, a series of post-riot audits — from the McCone, Kerner and Christopher Commissions to President Obama’s Task Force on 21st-Century Policing (on which one of us serves) —…

Baltimore Police Used Force 2,818 Times In Six Years. They Found One Violation

  • August 10, 2016
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A Department of Justice report found the police force holds an “us-versus-them mentality” and routinely abuses residents’ rights. WASHINGTON ― The Baltimore Police Department routinely abused residents’ civil rights, performed unconstitutional searches, retaliated against individuals exercising free-speech rights and failed to hold cops accountable for misconduct, according to a damning federal report. The Justice Department report, to be formally released on Wednesday, confirms what some Baltimore residents already know ― that Baltimore police routinely and disproportionately stop, frisk and arrest poor black residents without legal justification. “Baltimore’s legacy of government-sanctioned discrimination, serious health hazards, and high rates of violent crime…

Homan Square: US inquiry into Chicago police ‘should also cover facility’

  • August 5, 2016
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Justice Department pressured to expand civil rights investigation as Rahm Emanuel’s challenger calls secret detention warehouse’s inclusion ‘crucial’ A major investigation into Chicago police should be extended to cover the detention warehouse Homan Square, a police interrogation facility exposed by the Guardian, a group of politicians have said. The Cook County board of commissioners, which oversees the second largest county in the US including the entirety of Chicago, approved a measure on Wednesday calling for the DoJ to expand its landmark investigation into the city’s police department “to look into allegations of civil and human rights violations” at Homan Square….

North Carolina Bans Public Access to Police Dash Cameras

  • July 14, 2016
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What good are police body cameras, or police car dash cams, if the footage they record is off limits to the public? That question might best be posed to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who yesterday signed into law a bill making that footage inaccessible to the general public, including everyday citizens who were recorded in the footage and might need it to prove police misbehavior. Despite widespread outcry, including protests and submission of a petition signed by more than 3,000 people, House Bill 972 received little opposition in the Senate, where it passed by a vote of 48 to…

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