Skip to content

Police abuse

French Police Face Probe Over Tear Gas At Climate Protest

July 5, 2019 Deutsche Welle. , , ,
Police in France faced criticism on Monday after a video of officers spraying tear gas on climate protesters staging a sit-in on a bridge emerged online, prompting the French interior minister to call for an investigation. The protest over the French government's environment policies was held by members of the Extinction Rebellion group at the Pont de Sully bridge during sweltering heat on Friday. A video shared on Twitter and since widely broadcast on news channels shows a group of protesters sitting on the ground with their arms linked and heads bowed after they had refused orders to vacate the bridge. When they refuse to move, officers spray them with hand-held tear gas canisters, while the demonstrators try to protect their faces.

Activist, Who Says NYPD Officers Tried To Frame Him, Gets $860,000 Settlement

April 10, 2019 Dean Meminger, Ny1.com , ,
In the summer of 2016, activist Jose LaSalle was arrested after he recorded video of police stopping and frisking two men in the Bronx. On a secret recording provided by LaSalle, NYPD officers in the PSA 7 stationhouse can be heard cheering and accusing him of having committed a felony. But LaSalle, who founded the South Bronx Copwatch Patrol Unit, may be having the last laugh. His lawyer says the city and the NYPD agreed to pay LaSalle $860,000 after he accused the police of false arrest, imprisonment, and conspiracy.

Yellow Vests Hold Protests Across France Despite Bans

March 24, 2019 Staff, RT , , ,
French "yellow vest" demonstrators began their 19th consecutive weekend of protests against President Emmanuel Macron's government Saturday as military units were deployed to assist police. Police and demonstrators clashed sporadically in Paris and other French cities Saturday as "yellow vest" protests against President Emmanuel Macron's government took place. The demonstration in the capital was largely peaceful for most of the day, but later in the afternoon police fired tear gas on protesters near Boulevard de Strasbourg, close to the capital's Gare du Nord and Gare de L'Est railway stations.

The Future Of Climate Authoritarianism Is Now

March 23, 2019 Jacob Sugarman, Truthdig , ,
Climate change is already transforming our politics in ways we never imagined and might not yet grasp. Consider far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s recent meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. “Today, we don’t even have to gaze into the future, or trust that it will be deformed by climate change, to see what that would like,” Wallace-Wells writes. “In the form of tribalism at home and nationalism abroad and terrorism flaming out from the tinder of failed states, that future is here, at least in a preview, already. Now we just wait for the storms.”

Macron To Deploy French Army Against ‘Yellow Vest’ Protests

March 23, 2019 Anthony Torres, WSWS , ,
French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux announced that President Emmanuel Macron would activate army units during this weekend’s “yellow vest” protests. This is the first time since the 1954–1962 war in Algeria that the army is to be mobilized in police operations on French soil against the population. Griveaux announced that the operation would have the task of “securing fixed and static points in conformity with their mission, that is to say principally the protection of official buildings.” He justified his recourse to the armed forces by claiming this was necessary to allow the police forces to “concentrate on protest movements and on the maintenance and re-establishment of public order.”

100+ More Boxes Discovered In The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case

February 1, 2019 Noelle Hanrahan, Prison Radio , ,
A stunning turn of events has hope for Mumia’s freedom rising. Shortly after the discovery of six previously unreleased boxes (from Mumia’s original 1982 trial), the District Attorney has revealed that the storage unit contained an additional 100+ boxes.  These boxes have not yet been inventoried and could contain key evidence in many other cases. Mumia’s attorneys have access to the first set of six boxes, but there has been no report, yet, on what evidence has been found and whether it can be used to argue for a new trial.

Breakthrough For Mumia Abu-Jamal And All Victims Of The Injustice System

January 21, 2019 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
The case of Mumia Abu Jamal, who was framed with the murder of a police officer, has had some important breakthroughs in the last month including allowing him appeal rights and the finding of six previously undisclosed boxes of evidence in his case. This could result in the dismissal of his case and release from prison after 37 years. We talk with Rachel Wolkenstein, who has served as an attorney and advocate for Mumia since 1990. Wolkenstein explains the significance of his case in the context of racist police enforcement, mass incarceration, the myths of US justice and legal lynching and describes evidence showing Mumia was framed because of his political activism. She argues that Mumia will only get justice if a mass movement demands it.

How Advocates Convinced Police Chiefs To Dump Israel Junket

December 25, 2018 By Nora Barrows-Friedman, Electronic Intifada , ,
About two years ago, Jewish Voice for Peace launched the Deadly Exchange campaign which seeks to end ties between US police forces and Israel’s military-industrial complex. Activists have highlighted the harm those collaborations do to people fighting for their rights in Palestine and across the US. Police departments in the United States are listening and some are refusing the be "educated" by a police force that is a brutal occupying army that violates human rights. How did activists accomplish this?

What Border Security And Police Violence Have In Common

December 1, 2018 Tanvi Misra, City Lab. , ,
The photo of Esequiel Hernández Jr. circulated in the media shows a typical high school sophomore in a white cowboy hat, with a smile that goes all the way to his eyes. It was from his yearbook from 1997—the year a camouflaged Marine shot the 18-year-old near his home in the small border town of Redford, Texas. The Marines were a part of an anti-drug push overseen by President Bill Clinton, although news reports place them at the border as far back as the 1980s. Hernández, a U.S. citizen, has been herding his father’s goats.

NY Times Is Blind To Police Problems With White Supremacists

November 11, 2018 By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept , ,
The New York Times tells a story about law enforcement failing and struggling to deal with white supremacy. The elephant in the room, unmentioned by reporter Janet Reitman or any of the sources she chose to cite, is that U.S. law enforcement doesn’t do enough about violent racists because as an institution, U.S. law enforcement is violently racist and contains explicit white supremacists in its ranks.

ACLU Sues San Francisco For Targeting African-Americans In Drug Arrests

October 11, 2018 Phil Smith, Drug Reporter , ,
San Francisco's Tenderloin is a heavily populated, racially mixed neighborhood in the heart of one of America's iconic progressive cities. Yet when the San Francisco Police Department and the DEA targeted the neighborhood to crack down on drug dealing between 2013 and 2015 as part of "Operation Safe Schools," the only people they managed to roll up were black. When 37 black defendants—and no defendants of any other race—got hauled away, nobody noticed. That is, until the defendants started showing up looking for federal public defenders. The federal public defenders noticed, and they began making noise about racial disparities and selective enforcement of the drug laws.

During Gas Emergency, Mass. State Police Monitor Activist Groups

September 16, 2018 Max Larkin, WBUR ,
On Thursday evening, the Massachusetts State Police took to social media to share the extent of the gas emergency spreading across the Merrimack Valley. But in so doing, they also shared the bookmarks bar at the top of the browser window — with some surprising entries. The bookmarks raised more than a few eyebrows on Twitter, since they included the virtual meeting-places of several activist groups. Some activists felt it offered proof the police conduct unwarranted surveillance, particularly of organizations on the political left.

The Other Side Of School Safety

September 9, 2018 Rebecca Klein, HuffPost. , , ,
Jalijah Jones, then a freshman at Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan, remembers the punch of thousands of volts hitting his slight frame. At 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighing 120 pounds, he was small for his age. He remembers four school security guards officers pushing him up against a hallway wall before a school police officer arrived and Tasered him. He remembers a feeling of intense cold as if his high school hallway had just turned into a walk-in freezer. He remembers falling to the ground, his muscles betraying his mind’s desire to stand.

Baltimore’s Girls Are Being Pushed Out Of Schools

August 19, 2018 Dr. Khalilah M. Harris, The Real News. , , ,
As the new school year approaches, The Real News Network will continue to explore the intersections of equity, race, and access to opportunities for quality, safe, and supportive public school environments. In early summer 2018, we attended a town hall event hosted in partnership with Not Without Black Women, the University of Maryland School of Law, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in advance of the release of the LDF’s new study Our Girls, Our Future. The two organizations held this discussion during Say Her Name Week 2018, a national week of action targeted at ending violence against all black women, girls, and femmes.

Liberals Go Mum On Israel’s Apartheid Law

July 31, 2018 The Black Alliance for Peace. , , ,
Did you notice? Liberals didn’t bother to condemn the new Israeli apartheid law. Nor did they say a word about that settler-colonial state’s recent attacks on Gaza. We must be clear racist settler-colonial assault happening anywhere affects oppressed folks everywhere. Israelis have been training police forces in every state of the United States on their brutal methods of suppression they have practiced on the long-suffering Palestinians. The increased militarization of U.S. society makes allowances for white violence on oppressed peoples on this stolen land. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, already notorious for protecting George Zimmerman when he killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, is now shielding another white supremacist who has a history of harassment.
«12345678910»