Police violence

Ahmed Erekat Was Executed With The Blessing Of Abbas And The Oslo People

June 30, 2020 By Dr. Amira Abo el-Fetouh, Middle East Today Educate! Israel, Palestine, Police violence, War crimes

Ahmed Erekat was not the first Palestinian to be killed by the Israeli occupation forces in cold blood, nor will he be the last to be killed “because he tried to attack” them. The young man was shot dead as he helped his sister with her wedding preparations. Instead of the bride rejoicing, the Zionists turned her wedding into a funeral for the entire Erekat family, and all Palestinians. Heinous crimes like this are committed on a regular basis, and the Israelis and their supporters try to justify them on every occasion. They tell their pre-packaged “self-defense” claims to the world; defend their presence on occupied land and claim to be fighting against anti-Semitic terrorists who deny the Jewish people a homeland in Israel. They kill and displace the indigenous people and then justify their despicable criminal acts without batting an eyelid. Amazingly, the world not only believes them but also sympathizes with them, as if they are the victims instead of the people they are killing and displacing. It is a cowardly world that sees with only one eye; a world without a conscience that supports the criminals at the expense of the victims.

Police Attack Occupy City Hall As Budget Vote Nears

June 30, 2020 Popular Resistance. Resist! Defund the police, New York City (NYC), Occupy City Hall, Police violence

New York City - Early this morning, New York Police officers swarmed the hundreds of people who have been peacefully occupying the park in front of City Hall for the past week and calling for a $1 billion cut to the NYPD budget. The city council is expected to vote on the budget today. Police pushed people onto the sidewalk, beat people with batons and made arrests. People report a person with a broken arm from being beaten with a baton and another with a broken ankle from being pushed between barricades. People are still in the park despite the attack by police as they wait for the city council to vote. They are calling for a "No" vote because it does not meet their demands.

How Tear Gas Became A Staple Of US Law Enforcement

June 29, 2020 By Lauren Vespoli, JSTOR Daily. Educate! Bonus Army, Chemical Weapons, Police violence, Tear Gas

On July 28, 1932, President Herbert Hoover dispatched federal troops and tanks to disperse the “Bonus Army,” tens of thousands of jobless World War I veterans and their families who’d been protesting in the nation’s capital. The troops used tear gas. Two men and two infants were reported dead. As one of the first major protests in which the American government used tear gas—which is considered a weapon of war—on its own citizens, the Bonus Army incident created public outrage, ruining any chance of Hoover’s reelection. For the chemical companies trying to sell tear gas to law enforcement, however, the Bonus Army was a successful demonstration of their product.

How Palestine Advocates Can Support Black Struggle

June 29, 2020 By Kristian Davis Bailey, The Electronic Intifada. Organize! Black America, Colonialism, Palestine, Police violence

Black people are one of the first and largest victims of Western colonialism and racial capitalism. We have never received justice for 500 years of racist violence and exploitation. The US and most Western countries built their empires through profits from the Atlantic slave trade. As an illegitimate settler colony that was built on the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population and enslavement of Africans, the US requires the continuous subjugation of Black and Indigenous people to maintain its imperial domination abroad. Accordingly, the greatest internal threat to the US empire is that of a Black revolution. This is why the last real moment of Black revolution was so viciously attacked and destroyed between the late 1960s and early 1980s.

Government Attacks Media As People’s Media Reveals The Truth

June 28, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. Newsletter Julian Assange, Media, Police violence, Prosecutorial Abuse, Wikileaks

Government attacks on the media are escalating as the battle for the narrative grows in importance. For the last decade, stories produced and amplified by the democratized media have put the power structure at risk. People saw government documents showing war crimes and violations of international law. We all saw police killing unarmed people and extreme militarized violence in response to nonviolent protests. These stories have been magnified by people realizing they are the media and sharing stories in their networks on a variety of platforms. To maintain control, the power structure needs to stop people from knowing the truth. The recent RAND Report on the future of warfare cites the following concern

US Killer Cops Mastered ‘Fascist Israel’s Technique Proudly Used On Palestinians’

June 28, 2020 Roger Waters, RT. Resistance Report Human Rights, Israel, Palestinians, Police violence

“Thank goodness there’s an uprising,” Waters told RT’s ‘Going Underground’ on Tuesday, referring to the wave of protests and riots sweeping the US since the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis last month. “It’s about time.” The kneeling chokehold that killed Floyd was described by Waters as “an Israeli technique, proudly developed by the IDF in the occupied territories in Palestine.” An Israeli national police spokesman recently denied that his country’s police force uses such a measure on suspects, and added that Israeli counterterrorism officers never taught the move to American police officers in any joint training sessions. However, US police departments do regularly send officers to Israel for training, and such sessions are also held on US soil.

Mathematicians Urge Colleagues To Boycott Police Work In Wake Of Killings

June 28, 2020 Davide Castelvecchi, Nature. Resist! Police abuse, Police violence, Predictive Policing, Scientists

The tide of reckoning on systemic racism and police brutality that has been sweeping through institutions — including scientific ones — has reached universities’ normally reclusive mathematics departments. A group of mathematicians in the United States has written a letter calling for their colleagues to stop collaborating with police because of the widely documented disparities in how US law-enforcement agencies treat people of different races and ethnicities. They concentrate their criticism on predictive policing, a maths-based technique aimed at stopping crime before it occurs. The letter, dated June, 15 is addressed to the trade journal Notices of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), and comes in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in the United States and around the world, sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May. More than 1,400 researchers have now joined the call.

Bipartisan Crimes Against Humanity In The United States

June 27, 2020 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Human Rights, Police violence

Hundreds of people are unnecessarily dying every day with African Americans representing a disproportionate number of those deaths. Eighty million people are now without health coverage, millions are unemployed, over the next two months evictions will resume with an expected explosion of homelessness. And what is the response from the state that is tasked with the responsibility to promote and protect the fundamental human rights of its population? While trillions of dollars were transferred to the corporate sector though the CARES Act meant to support the economy through the crisis, the state continues to ignore the existential crisis faced by millions of workers.

Police Under Pressure To End Training Programmes With Israel

June 27, 2020 Sharen Khalel, Middle East Monitor. Resist! Chemical Weapons, Israel, Police violence, Policing

The video of a white police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed African American, for nearly nine minutes as he slowly died, gasping for air, has struck a familiar chord with many Palestinians and anti-occupation activists. Since his death in late May, footage of Floyd pleading: "I can't breathe" and "they're going to kill me," has emerged alongside videos and stills of Israeli security forces taking similar positions over the necks of unarmed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip. The Israeli police force has tried to distance itself from any perceived similarities, issuing statements denouncing what happened and stating that its officers are not trained to use knee-to-neck techniques. But photographs taken as recently as March have shown Israeli forces using the same restraint on unarmed protesters just yards from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City.

ACLU Files Federal Lawsuit Over Police Use Of Force During Anti-Racism Protests

June 27, 2020 Esteban L. Hernandez, Denverite. Resist! ACLU, Colorado, Legal System, Police violence

Denver - The ACLU of Colorado has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Black Lives Matter 5280 and other protesters against the City and County of Denver over police use of force during the protests against racism and police violence that erupted in the city last month after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The complaint alleges the use of force by Denver police, Denver sheriffs and Colorado State Patrol effectively “restricted, frustrated, and deterred” the First Amendment right of protesters in the city. The ACLU said police responded, “repeatedly with an overwhelming and unconstitutional use of force” during protests from May 28 to June 2. “Plaintiffs have been-and still want to be-part of the movement to protect Black lives,” the complaint reads.

Chicago School Board Votes To Keep Police Contract — For Now

June 26, 2020 Nader Issa, Chicago Sun Times. Educate! Chicago, Education, Police in Schools, Police violence

Chicago’s school board has voted against ending a program that puts police officers in public schools, following the wishes of the mayor and top Chicago Public Schools leadership while rejecting the demands of students and activists who for years have called for police-free schools. While the narrow 4-3 vote, the most suspenseful by the Board of Education in years, keeps intact a scrutinized $33-million contract between the school system and the Chicago Police Department, another vote is likely in the next two months on whether to renew the contract that’s set to expire at the end of August. Ahead of the highly anticipated vote that for now leaves more than 200 officers in about 70 schools, students and activists held protests across the city, including in front of the board president’s house, to give one final push toward dumping the contract.

Journalist Blinded By Cops Speaks Out

June 26, 2020 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. Educate! Freedom of the Press, Health Care, Journalism, Police violence, White Supremacy

Journalist and photographer Linda Tirado was standing near a police line in Minneapolis May 29, covering the George Floyd protests engulfing the city. All of a sudden, her face “exploded” in her own words. She had been shot from close range in the eye, permanently blinding her. Her goggles shattered and tear gas entered the wound, causing even more pain. The police had shot her. Protestors pulled her away from her attackers, put her into a vehicle and drove her to the hospital where they were unable to save her eye, but were able to give her a $58,000 bill, likely the first of many. Now, in a wide-ranging interview with writer Luke O’Neil, she spoke out about the ordeal, brutal policing, and the state of America today.

Massive Uprisings Confront White Supremacy

June 25, 2020 Marjorie Cohn, Jurist. Educate! Injustice, Police violence, Rebellion2020, Transformation

On May 25, a Minneapolis police officer tortured George Floyd to death in what his brother, Philonise Floyd, called “a modern-day lynching in broad daylight.” Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in all 50 states and Washington D.C.; the anti-racist uprisings continue. Why do a majority of people in this country now support the Movement for Black Lives? Why have calls to defund and abolish the police entered the mainstream discourse? Why are people risking the deadly coronavirus to join the protests? And why are we seeing what may be the broadest popular movement in the history of the United States? More than 400 years after the first Africans were kidnapped, forcibly brought to this country and enslaved, White supremacy continues to infect our society.

Firing Police For Excessive Use Of Force Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

June 25, 2020 Martha Bellisle, AP News. Educate! Accountability, Police violence, Unions, Worker Rights

Seattle - An Oregon police officer lost his job and then returned to work after fatally shooting an unarmed Black man in the back. A Florida sergeant was let go six times for using excessive force and stealing from suspects, while a Texas lieutenant was terminated five times after being accused of striking two women, making threatening calls and committing other infractions. These officers and hundreds of others across the country were fired, sometimes repeatedly, for violating policies but got their jobs back after appealing their cases to an arbitrator who overturned their discipline — an all-too-common practice that some experts in law and in policing say stands in the way of real accountability. “Arbitration inherently undermines police decisions,” said Michael Gennaco, a police reform expert and former federal civil rights prosecutor who specialized in police misconduct cases.

Mapping Police Violence Across The USA

June 24, 2020 Amnesty International. Educate! First Amendment, Police abuse, Police violence, United States

Police forces across the United States have committed widespread and egregious human rights violations in response to largely peaceful assemblies protesting systemic racism and police violence, including the killing of Black people. Amnesty International has documented 125 separate incidents of police violence against protesters in 40 states and the District of Columbia between 26 May and 5 June 2020. These acts of excessive force were committed by members of state and local police departments, as well as by National Guard troops and security force personnel from several federal agencies. Among the abuses documented are beatings, the misuse of tear gas and pepper spray, and the inappropriate and, at times, indiscriminate firing of less-lethal projectiles, such as sponge rounds and rubber bullets.

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