Police accountability

Body Cameras Were Sold As A Tool Of Police Reform

December 18, 2023 Umar Farooq, ProPublica. Educate! Body Cameras, Police, Police abuse, Police accountability

In the last 10 years, taxpayers have spent millions to outfit police officers across the country with body-worn cameras in what was sold as a new era of transparency and accountability. But a survey by ProPublica shows that when civilians die at the hands of police, the public usually never sees the footage. At least 1,201 people were killed in 2022 by law enforcement officers, about 100 deaths a month, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit research group that tracks police killings. ProPublica examined the 101 deaths that occurred in June 2022, a time frame chosen because enough time had elapsed that investigations could reasonably be expected to have concluded. The cases involved 131 law enforcement agencies in 34 states.

Policing The Police In The East Bay Area

August 25, 2023 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Resist! California, mental health, Police, Police accountability

If you think the San Francisco Bay Area is “woke,” you probably don’t know about East Contra Costa County, in the East Bay, where nearly half the City of Antioch’s police department are now on leave for police misconduct that includes exchanging racist, homophobic, and misogynist text messages, some of which include the n-word and references to Black people as gorillas and monkeys. In one instance it was revealed that one cop had sent another a text image depicting the Black police chief, who had been on the job for about a year, as a gorilla . The chief resigned shortly thereafter without saying why.

Mapping The Police: Citizen Control Of The Security Forces In Buenos Aires

August 2, 2022 Arg Medios, People's Dispatch. Create! Argentina, Community Control, Police, Police accountability

Last week, Ofelia Fernández, a member of the Buenos Aires legislature, announced on her social media the launch of a Map of the City’s Police, a collaborative webpage whose objective is to highlight, identify, and denounce situations of police violence within the territory of Buenos Aires; consequently allowing citizens to hold local security forces to account. This tool of citizen participation was designed in conjunction with a network of individuals and organizations. Those behind the initiative include Fernández, the representative from Frente Patria Grande alliance of the ruling Frente de Todos coalition, the Center for Legal and Social Studies, the Association Against Institutional Violence, The Shout from the South, and the magazine Crisis, who are all looking to construct novel strategies in the fight for human rights.

Cops Thought They Could Arrest Them For Protesting In Public

August 2, 2022 Taya Graham and Stephen Janis, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Baltimore, Cop Watch, Police, Police accountability

The growing and eclectic brand of activism known as cop watching continues to invent creative ways to confront overpolicing across the country. In this episode, Police Accountability Report hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis examine the arrest of two Youtube activists and how they responded in light of recent pushback from police departments across the country. The story illustrates how the grassroots movement of holding cops accountable continues to evolve in ways both unexpected and productive. A series of arrests that you are seeing here, which show just how hard it is to fight a system that has overwhelming power and is often able to bend the law. But we are also going to show you this: a fake protest staged by cop watchers to prove my former point about how the system is biased towards police and against the preservation of our Constitutional rights.

One Way To Deal With Cops Who Lie? Blacklist Them

June 9, 2020 By Justin George and Eli Hager, The Marshall Project. Resist! Courts, Police abuse, Police accountability, Police lying

Kim Gardner has dropped more than 100 cases that relied on statements from the 29 officers who got on the list for alleged lying, abuse or corruption. And she won’t accept new cases or search-warrant requests from them, either. From Philadelphia to Houston to Seattle, district attorneys recently elected on platforms of criminal justice reform are building similar databases of their own. Often known as “do not call” lists, they are also called “exclusion lists” or “Brady lists” after a famous Supreme Court decision requiring prosecutors to disclose to defense lawyers information about unreliable police officers or other holes in their cases. The goal is to help prosecutors avoid bringing cases built on evidence from officers who are likely to be challenged in court, these new DAs say. Having a centralized list at a district attorney’s office, they say, allows for the gathering of institutional knowledge, so that if one prosecutor on staff knows about a bad cop, all the prosecutors do.

NYPD Discipline Review Panel Found Dozens Of Cops Deserved More Serious Punishment

June 9, 2020 By Yoav Gonen, Peter Senzamici, and Carson Kessler, The City. Educate! Police, Police abuse, Police accountability, Violence

These were among the 45 cases of disciplinary action taken by the NYPD over a 12-month period in which a little-known anti-corruption panel determined the punishments should have been more severe. In 11 instances, the panel found the cops should have been fired. The annual reports by the city’s Commission to Combat Police Corruption offer a rare peek into an opaque disciplinary system that critics say for years has protected bad cops — and whose outcomes Mayor Bill de Blasio asserts city government is prohibited from sharing publicly under state law. State legislative leaders say they’re moving to repeal or amend that law, known as 50-a, as early as next week. In all 45 cases — none of which identifies the officer by name — the commission found the actions were too egregious or the officer’s employment history too checkered to warrant the modest level of punishment meted out by the NYPD.

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