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NY Muslims Reach Settlement With NYPD In Surveillance Lawsuit

January 8, 2016 Hina Shamsi, www.aclu.org , ,
By Hina Shamsi for ACLU - A settlement in our challenge to NYPD surveillance of New York Muslims was announced today, heralding new safeguards to protect against bias-based and unjustified investigations of Muslim and other minority communities. The settlement was announced in Raza v. City of New York, a lawsuit on behalf of three New York Muslims, two mosques, and a Muslim non-profit organization, who alleged they were swept up in the NYPD’s dragnet surveillance of Muslims. The ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the CLEAR project at CUNY School of Law filed the suit in 2013.

Office In Sandra Bland Case Fired After Indicted For Perjury

January 7, 2016 Staff, www.bigstory.ap.org , , ,
By Staff of Associated Press - HEMPSTEAD, Texas (AP) — A Texas state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland after a contentious traffic stop last summer was fired Wednesday after being charged with perjury for allegedly lying about his confrontation with the black woman who died three days later in jail. Trooper Brian Encinia claimed in an affidavit that Bland was "combative and uncooperative" after he pulled her over and ordered her out of her car. The grand jury identified that affidavit in charging Encinia with perjury, special prosecutor Shawn McDonald said Wednesday night.

NAACP In Ohio Seeks Grand Jury Docs In Tamir Rice Case

January 7, 2016 Staff, www.bigstory.ap.org , , ,
By Staff of Associated Press - CLEVELAND (AP) -- The local NAACP wants to see documents from the grand jury that decided not to indict two Cleveland police officers in the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who had a pellet gun. Members of the Cleveland NAACP are seeking transcripts of witness testimony before the grand jury that heard evidence in the 2014 shooting. WJW-TV reports the group voted Tuesday night to push for the documents' release. Members say they want to see and analyze everything that grand jurors heard in the case.

Police Agent-Provocateurs Exposed At Anti-Austerity Protest

January 7, 2016 Carl Bronski, www.wsws.org , , ,
By Carl Bronski for WSWS - Further information has come to light concerning the Montreal Police Department’s use of agent-provocateurs disguised as “Black Bloc” protestors at a December 18 demonstration against police violence and the anti-austerity policies of the Quebec Liberal government. Initially the police refused to admit that they had infiltrated the protest. But now they are strongly defending the actions of an undercover cop who drew his revolver and threatened protesters who had “outed” him as a police agent provocateur.

New Year’s Eve Protest Demands Police Reforms In 2016

January 3, 2016 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us , , ,
By John Zangas for DC Media Group. Washington, DC — Hundreds rallied in the Chinatown district on New Year’s Eve in protest of police killings of Black women and men over the past year. Protesters briefly shut down intersections as they walked along the 14th and U Street corridors. They ended at the African-American Civil War Memorial on U Street. The rally was organized by Black Lives Matter DMV, Stop Police Terror Project-DC, Black Youth Project 100 and several other groups. Organizers demanded changes to the justice system which permits police to walk away from shootings, often without any charges being filed by prosecutors. Activists focused on several recent high-profile cases where police have killed Blacks under questionable circumstances.

Which Lives Matter?

January 3, 2016 Beth Maschinot, www.ncronline.org , ,
By Beth Maschinot for National Catholic Reporter. Groups deemed ungrievable "are made to bear the burden of starvation, underemployment, legal disenfranchisement, and differential exposure to violence and death." 2015 may well be seen as the year that many whites were introduced in an immediate and visceral way to the precariousness of black life in America, thanks to the work of Black Lives Matter. Each tweet, every video harnessed and circulated by the movement shows fragments of white abuse and black pain that is often hidden from the majority of the white public. Before Black Lives Matter, we would not have heard of the incidents that end this year: Quintonio LeGrier, the agitated 19-year-old man who was shot by a police officer in his home in Chicago, and his neighbor Bettie Jones, dead for answering her door for that officer.

Grand Jury Could Still Snare Trooper Who Arrested Sandra Bland

December 27, 2015 Michael McLaughlin, www.huffingtonpost.com , ,
By Michael McLaughlin for the Huffington Post. ​A Texas grand jury next month may consider whether the state trooper who threatened Sandra Bland with a stun gun during a routine traffic stop last July should face charges related to the incident. After the same grand jury chose this week not to indict any officials from the sheriff's department or county jail where Bland died, her family's attorney, Cannon Lambert, called on federal prosecutors Tuesday to seek charges against the trooper. The special prosecutor handling the case said that trooper Brian Encinia's conduct during the violent altercation could be the focus of the grand jury when it meets again next month. Encinia, who is white, was filmed on his patrol car's dashcam threatening Bland, an African American, with a stun gun during her arrest on July 10. Bland's family and supporters called Tuesday for federal charges against Encinia.

Chicago Cop Shoots Dead Teen, 55-Year-Old Woman

December 27, 2015 Sebastian Murdock, www.huffingtonpost.com , , ,
By Sebastian Murdock for Huffington Post. A Chicago officer responding to a domestic disturbance call fatally shot a teenager being treated for a mental illness, along with a 55-year-old woman. Officers responded to the call at an apartment complex early Saturday, after the father of 19-year-old Quintonio Legrier called police to say his son was acting erratic and carrying a metal baseball bat. "He was having a mental situation," Legrier's mother, Janet Cooksey, told ABC 7. "Sometimes he will get loud, but not violent." The officer, who has not yet been identified, fatally shot Legrier seven times, the teen's family said. “We’re thinking the police are going to service us, take him to the hospital," Cooksey told the Chicago Tribune. "They took his life.” A second victim, who has been identified as 55-year-old Bettie Jones, was a downstairs tenant and bystander. Her daughter, Latisha Jones, told the Tribune she found her mother dead with a gunshot wound to her neck. “She wasn’t saying anything,” Latisha Jones told the publication.

#BlackLives Matter MN At Mall Of America, Transit & Airport

December 23, 2015 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , ,
By Staff, Popular Resistance. Black Lives Matter Minnesota raised its voice in multiple locations December 23rd, disrupting shopping, the metro system and the airport to protest the November killing of Jamar Clark, a black man by Minneapolis police. Their demands: -#ReleaseTheTapes of his killing -Prosecute the police involved without a grand jury by a special prosecutor -Federal domestic terrorism charges against white supremacists who shot 5 protestors -Institute a safety plan to protect our communities from Police violence -Disinvest from police and reinvest in Black futures There was litigation by Mall of America, which feared a repeat of last year's Black Lives Matter protest. While media reports were confused the court did not block a protest at Mall of America.

Meet The NYPD’s Specially Trained Protest Police

December 21, 2015 Scott Heins, www.gothamist.com , ,
By Scott Heins for Gothamist. Heavily-armored and standing at rapt attention, over a hundred members of the NYPD's newly-rebuilt Strategic Response Group conducted drills on Randall's Island Wednesday as Commissioner Bill Bratton and other top brass looked on. Officers conducted maneuvers in unison on an expanse of empty blacktop and also donned hazmat suits to demonstrate bomb detection technology, all of which are key elements of the department's accelerated anti-terrorism efforts. The SRG has already been deployed to suppress multiple Black Lives Matter protests in the past year and on multiple occasions police have used a military-grade LRAD noise cannon and aggressive arrest tactics against demonstrators, as well as members of the press. Early this year, facing outcry over the conflation of terrorism and constitutionally protected protests, Chief O'Neill pledged to separate the functions and not use the Group to police demonstrations, but the department evidently never followed through on that. "SRG seems to be the unit assigned to police protests throughout all of NYC, which is extremely problematic," activist and writer Keegan Stephan told Gothamist via email.

The Logic Of The Police State

December 21, 2015 Matthew Harwood, www.tomdispatch.com ,
By Matthew Harwood for Tom Dispatch. What is taking place and what the police and their supporters are largely reacting to is a modest push for sensible law enforcement reforms from groups as diverse as Campaign Zero, Koch Industries, the Cato Institute, The Leadership Conference, and the ACLU (my employer). Unfortunately, as the rhetoric ratchets up, many police agencies and organizations are increasingly resistant to any reforms, forgetting whom they serve and ignoring constitutional limits on what they can do. Indeed, a closer look at law enforcement arguments against commonsense reforms like independently investigating police violence, demilitarizing police forces, or ending “for-profit policing” reveals a striking disregard for concerns of just about any sort when it comes to brutality and abuse. What this “debate” has revealed, in fact, is a mainstream policing mindset ready to manufacture fear without evidence and promote the belief that American civil rights and liberties are actually an impediment to public safety. In the end, such law enforcement arguments subvert the very idea that the police are there to serve the community and should be under civilian control. And that, when you come right down to it, is the logic of the police state.

US Jury Sentences Rapist Cop To Over 100 Years In Prison

December 12, 2015 Staff, www.telesurtv.net , ,
By Staff of Tele Sur - Oklahoma City cop Daniel Holtzclaw was charged with 36 counts of sexual assault involving more than a dozen women. A jury in the U.S. state of Oklahoma late Thursday sentenced former police Officer Daniel Holtzclaw to more than 200 years in prison for charges up to and including rape. Holtzclaw was publicly accused by 13 women of assaulting them while he was on patrol. “He didn’t choose CEOs or soccer moms,” said prosecutor Lori McConnell. “He chose women he could count on not telling what he was doing. He counted on the fact no one would believe them and no one would care.”

Rural Alabama Cops Accused Of Mass False Arrests Of Blacks

December 3, 2015 Steven Rosenfeld, www.alternet.org , , , ,
By Steven Rosenfeld for AlterNet - Another explosive report of institutional racism by white police and prosecutors who willfully targeted black youths has emerged from one of the most remote regions of Alabama, the deep southeastern city of Dothan, where for years a handful of officers apparently planted drugs on hundreds of black youths and railroaded them into prison. The documentary trail of these arrests dating back to the late 1990s and a subsequent coverup by high-ranking county law enforcement officials was firstreported on HenryCountyReport.com. Reporter Jon B. Carroll describes how a handful of powerful officers and prosecutors targeted the youths for several years:

#BlackLivesMatter Thanksgiving Dinner Outside MN Precinct

November 27, 2015 Staff, , www.ruptly.tv , , ,
By Staff for Ruptly. Black Lives Matter activists gathered outside a Police station in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Thursday, to enjoy a Thanksgiving Day meal as protesters continue to demand justice for 24-year-old Jamar Clark, who was killed by a police officer on 15 November. The protesters, who have been blocking the streets outside the Fourth Precinct Police Department on Plymouth Avenue for the 12th day in a row, spent the holiday at the protest encampment with neighbours and supporters donating food in solidarity with the movement. Hundreds of people passed by the camp to receive their Thanksgiving day meal offered by volunteers despite the cold temperatures and snow. Ongoing protests, organised by the 'Black Lives Matter' movement, have been held daily outside the Minneapolis Police Department's Fourth Precinct building since the killing of Jamar Clark. Witnesses say the 24-year-old black man was shot by police execution-style while handcuffed, an account which the Minneapolis Police Department disputes.

New App For Police Encounters By The ACLU

November 8, 2015 the ACLU of Maryland, www.aclu-md.org , , ,
By the ACLU of Maryland. Denial is over. Videos of police encounters are changing perceptions about biased policing and police brutality and sparking reform of police practices. That's why the ACLU has launched Mobile Justice, an app that makes it easy for you to record interactions with police. It'll be available for download in Maryland, as well as 10 more states on Friday, November 13! The Mobile Justice app (for iPhone and Android) will allow you to take secure video of police interactions and send it to the ACLU so it cannot be deleted or lost if your phone is confiscated by police. It will also have an intake survey where you can describe the details of the incident, and a Know Your Rights section that offers an overview of your rights when stopped by law enforcement.
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