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Nineteen Facts About American Policing That Will Blow Your Mind

June 3, 2020 Lee Camp, Consortium News. , , ,
With all the protests and anger and violence across the country, a justified discussion about policing has begun on our corporate media airwaves. (I would say the discussion is overdue, but in fact we’ve had it roughly every three years for the past 40 years.) However, despite all the coverage, a deeper debate sits ignored – A debate about why our American police system exists at all, how it works (or doesn’t), and where it came from.  The following 19 facts about American policing will change everything you think you know. First let’s start with the sheer amount of murder.   Police kill roughly 1,000 Americans per year. In 2016 The Guardian found that American police murdered 1,093. That’s three lives extinguished by police every day. 

Atlanta Officers Charged After Students Pulled From Car

June 2, 2020 AP News. , , ,
Atlanta - Six Atlanta police officers were charged Tuesday after dramatic video showed authorities pulling two young people from a car and shooting them with stun guns while they were stuck in traffic caused by protests over George Floyd’s death. Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced the charges during a news conference. “I feel a little safer now that these monsters are off of the street and no longer able to terrorize anyone else,” said 22-year-old Messiah Young, who was dragged from the vehicle along with his girlfriend, 20-year-old Taniyah Pilgrim. The Saturday night incident first gained attention from video online and on local news. Throughout, the couple can be heard screaming and asking officers what is happening.

George Floyd Protests: Police Escalating Violence Across The US

June 1, 2020 By Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. , , ,
While some in media have condemned the protests as violent “looters” imposing “tyranny” upon the country, much of the violence is being deliberately instigated and propagated by an out of control police force that appears to have gone berserk over the widespread public challenge to their authority and their impunity to act as they wish. Six days after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, asphyxiating him by keeping his knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes, America is still burning with outrage. Violent clashes have broken out across the nation as the killing has proven to be a catalyst for protests against a racist justice system.

White Supremacist Infiltration Of US Police Forces

June 1, 2020 By Danielle Schulkin, Just Security. , , ,
The term “systemic racism” does not mean that individuals who operate within the system are generally racists. Instead, it means the institutions we have in place produce racially disparate effects on minority populations. And, in that regard, there are well-documented empirical studies of systemic racism in law enforcement agencies—including the use of policies like stop and frisk and disparate rates of policing activities including traffic stops, searches of motorists during traffic stops, levels of respect shown during stops, misdemeanor arrests, marijuana arrests, use of SWAT teams, individuals jailed for inability to pay petty fines for moving violations, militarized policing of different neighborhoods, resolution of murders of white versus black victims, sustained complaints against police officers, and unarmed victims of police shootings.

Nationwide Uprising Against Failed State Triggered By Police Killings

May 31, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
The nationwide uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd and other recent racially-motivated events is a response to the bi-partisan failed state in which we live. It comes in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic and the largest economic collapse in the US in more than a century. These three crises have disproportionately impacted people of color and added to longterm racial inequality and injustice. Black Lives Matter erupted six years ago when a police officer shot and killed Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Since that time, police have murdered approximately 1,100 people every year. The response of the government at all levels to the crisis of police killings has been virtually nonexistent. 

BAP Calls On United Nations To Address U.S. Human Rights Crisis

May 30, 2020 the Black Alliance for Peace. , , ,
The extrajudicial murders of African/Black people, such as Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, by agents of the U.S. government and armed civilians have sparked urban rebellions in cities across the United States. Yet these murders cannot be understood outside of the context of the U.S. state’s ongoing assault on the human rights of African/Black people. U.S. President Donald Trump’s tweet demanding lethal violence—“...when the looting starts, the shooting starts...”—requires the United Nations to intervene. Trump’s threat comes as the U.S. state has tragically failed during the COVID-19 pandemic to recognize and protect the human right to health of poor and working-class people, including Africans and undocumented migrants.

Media Smeared Ahmaud Arbery After His Lynching

May 30, 2020 Joshua Cho, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , ,
While it took two and a half months for the authorities to finally make arrests in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, corporate media were much quicker to follow the time-honored practice of besmirching victims of racist violence (FAIR.org, 3/22/17). First they kill your body. Then they kill your reputation. When white supremacy is the foundation of the US’s media, political, legal and corporate system, victims of racist violence are often killed twice in this way. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation on May 7 arrested former cop Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, for the murder of Arbery, an unarmed 25-year old African American out for a jog—only after a widely circulated video of the lynching became too difficult to ignore.

No More Cop Unions

May 30, 2020 Kim Kelly, The New Republic. , , ,
When Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department killed 46-year-old George Floyd in cold blood last week, he showed the world exactly what kind of man he is. Chauvin has been cited multiple times for using excessive force on the job; he has been involved in at least two other police shootings, including that of Ira Latrell Toles, who is Black, in 2008. Chauvin has repeatedly abused his power, privilege, and authority to menace and terrorize—and he’s now been shown killing a human being on camera. Even so, he remains free to cower in his house and order delivery while demonstrators protest outside. And thanks to the tangled auspices of union affiliation, he’s also someone who technically counts as my “union brother.”

Health Care Workers Call On Labor Movement To Take Action

May 30, 2020 Left Voice. , , ,
As health care workers, we condemn the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers as an act of racist violence. We condemn the murder of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police officers as an act of racist violence. We condemn the murder of Tony McDade by Tallahassee police officers as an act of racist violence. Their killings are just a handful of countless examples of police brutality responsible for the early deaths of many Black people in the United States. Black people are three times more likely than white people to die by police violence. As health care workers, we witness first-hand how widespread racist police brutality harms Black and brown people. We understand the anti-Black, racist origins of the institution of policing, initially created to patrol and entrap people who had escaped enslavement.

Justice For George Floyd Requires Power To The People

May 30, 2020 Danny Haiphong, AH Tribune. , , ,
Black America is heartbroken and angered by the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police. Floyd’s murder occurred in the third month of a pandemic that has taken over 100,000 lives overall and a disproportionate number of Black Americans. The Black masses in Minnesota have taken to the streets to not only call for justice for Floyd and his family but also to stand up to centuries of state sanctioned white supremacist violence. If George Floyd teaches us anything, it is that COVID-19 is not the only contagion in the U.S. that needs to be eradicated. Floyd’s close friend and former NBA player Stephen Jackson shared his heartfelt response to the tragedy, the content of which should spark a conversation about the kind of power that is needed to eradicate the centuries-old contagion of white supremacy.

Against Police Violence And Capitalism, To Rebel Is Justified

May 30, 2020 Monica Moorehead, Workers.org. , , ,
Workers World salutes all the brave protesters in Minneapolis, currently ground zero against police terror. We also salute those activists in Los Angeles, Memphis and other cities who are organizing protests and braving the pandemic to be in the streets or in car caravans to show solidarity with the demand: Justice for George Floyd and all victims of police violence. The corporate media call the May 27 protest in Minneapolis a “riot.” In a speech on March 14, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. defined that term, saying, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Following his assassination less than a month later,  Black people rose up in hundreds of cities in righteous protest. They were heard.

Minneapolis Protests Police Murder Of George Floyd: Day 2

May 29, 2020 Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Protesters are continuing to gather outside the Minneapolis Police (MPD) 3rd Precinct building today after extended protests and clashes with police yesterday. The Twin Cities is still engulfed in mass outrage after MPD officer Derek Chauvin was filmed choking a black man named George Floyd to death in a disturbing video that went viral Monday night. On Wednesday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called on Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman to file criminal charges against Officer Chauvin. Chauvin and three other officers involved in Floyd’s were fired on Tuesday. Such a quick firing of officers after a police killing is unprecedented in Minneapolis history. More evidence continues to emerge that suggest police lied when they claimed that George Floyd was resisting arrest at the time Officer Chauvin started choking him out with a knee on his neck.

Minneapolis Natives Condemn Man’s Death In Custody, ‘Racist Ideologies’

May 29, 2020 Eddie Chuculate, Indian-Country Today. , , ,
The death of a handcuffed black man in police custody in Minneapolis has stoked anger and frustration among many Native people in the city. Leaders say relations with law enforcement have remained strained in more than 50 years since the American Indian Movement was founded here in response to alleged police brutality. The Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors Group, a collaborative of 30 Native organizations operating in the Twin Cities, released a scathing public letter Wednesday condemning George Floyd's death, along with the "ongoing and systemic racist ideologies that continue to run strongly" through the Minneapolis Police Department. The letter cites the department’s “long history of violence against Indigenous people and people of color,” including the 2011 shooting of an Alaska Native man at a Native American housing complex.

Police Leader Defending George Floyd’s Killers Tied To ‘White Power’-Linked Biker Gang

May 29, 2020 Sarah Lazare, The Grayzone. , , ,
The head of the Minneapolis Police Officer’s Federation has claimed that activists from the city’s Black Lives Matter movement comprises a “terrorist organization.” But a closer look at Lieutenant Bob Kroll’s record indicates that he is the one who poses a danger to the public, with a past marred in accusations of racist violence and attitudes, including charges from fellow police officers that he once wore a “white power” badge on his motorcycle jacket. Kroll’s outrageous statement about local civil rights protesters is part of a wider of pattern of incorporating war on terror-style rhetoric to demonize local African-American activists and politicians, even comparing them to the Islamic extremists who attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Nationwide Rebellion Against Police Violence Demands Justice For George Floyd

May 28, 2020 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Minneapolis - The horrific killing of George Floyd in broad daylight with people watching and videotaping the incident while yelling at the police to stop is being described as a public lynching. It showed contempt for the lives of Black people by the police involved. It is one event of many that show police violence is a major national problem that people have seen too often, a police culture of violence. This is a pattern and practice of US policing especially in black and brown communities. While four officers have been fired over the murder, none have yet been arrested despite the overwhelming evidence that they lied in their police report. They killed Floyd who did not resist the police and who cried out that he could not breathe.
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