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Nonviolent Security And Cop-Free Schools Are Not A Utopian Dream

July 28, 2021 Rivera Sun, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
At a school in North Minneapolis, the school day starts with a team of four peacekeepers escorting teachers and staff into the building. Then the team watches out for the students as they get off the bus and enter the schoolyard. Throughout the day, they’re on hand to de-escalate fights and aid the students in conflict resolution. They’re not volunteers. This is their job. They have replaced police (resource officers) in this school. This is not a fairy tale or a utopia story. Two blocks away is a hub of drug dealing. Gun violence is frequent in this neighborhood. These four peacekeepers are part of EMERGE, a program which provides internships, jobs and mentorship for youth who live amidst a cycle of violence, trauma, gangs and/or the justice system.

Non-Police Mental Health Program Reduces Unnecessary Hospitalizations

July 24, 2021 NBC New York. , ,
The Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division, or "B-HEARD" program, which started in a portion of Harlem a month ago, has already responded to about 110 calls where there was no weapon or imminent risk of violence, according to summary data provided by the city on Thursday. Instead of cops and paramedics responding to 911 mental health calls, three-person teams of social workers and paramedics respond instead. In 95 percent of those cases, the city said, the subject of the call accepted the team's offer of assistance.

Preserving A People’s History Through Quilts

July 21, 2021 Loretta Graceffo, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
More than 600,000 people in the United States have died of coronavirus since the pandemic began, a number that is incomprehensible. Few people understand the magnitude of this loss more than 14-year-old Madeleine Fugate. Since April 2020, the eighth grader from California has spent her weekends constructing the Covid Memorial Quilt, a tribute to the casualties of the virus.

Oregon Bill Bans Police From Lying To Youth During Interrogations

July 17, 2021 Innocence Project. , , ,
Portland, OR –  On Wednesday, Governor Kate Brown signed legislation into law prohibiting law enforcement officers from using deception while interrogating people under the age of 18. The law bans commonly used deceptive interrogation tactics, including false promises of leniency and false claims about the existence of incriminating evidence. Both of these tactics have long been identified as significantly increasing the risk of false confessions, which have played a role in about 30% of all wrongful convictions overturned by DNA. False confessions are also the most frequent contributing factor in wrongful conviction cases involving homicides. And recent studies suggest that children under 18 are between two and three times more likely to falsely confess than adults.

Report Calls For Reparations For Victims Of Racist Police Violence

July 13, 2021 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , ,
On June 28, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet released a stunning 23-page report accompanied by a 95-page conference room paper for the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) documenting systemic racism and human rights violations by police forces against Africans and people of African descent throughout the world. The report considered more than 340 interviews and more than 100 written submissions from civil society organizations. Bachelet grounded her analysis in “the long-overdue need to confront the legacies of enslavement, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism and to seek reparatory justice.” She took aim at “misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism” and subsequent reforms have eliminated “the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices and created equal societies.”

Career Cop Admits Police Are Trained To Lie In Reports

July 11, 2021 Jack Burns, The Freethought Project. , , ,
Before the age of computers and body cameras, citizens were forced into court proceedings with an attitude of, “It was my side of the story against the cops. Who do you think the jury is going to believe?” In the age of technology in which we are presently, however, the word of police officers can be called into question. But it is not enough, according to one ex-cop, who says cops are taught precisely how to manipulate police reports for deceptive purposes. Thomas Nolan spent 27 years on the force as a cop and says he was not a very good beat cop but could write police reports bar none. He was so good at craftily wording police reports other officers inside the Boston Police Department would seek out his assistance in their own reporting.

Democrats Cover Up Links Between Fascist Police ‘Trainers’

July 10, 2021 Jacob Crosse, World Socialist Web Site. , , ,
The World Socialist Web Site has uncovered evidence that police departments across the United States have paid thousands of dollars for “training” by a fascistic private military contractor, Northern Red Inc. Former trainers at the company who have since left and founded their own ventures have continued to train police departments in the death squad tactics honed in the course of US neo-colonial wars overseas. Last month, during a congressional hearing on the January 6 coup attempt that took testimony from US Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton, it was revealed that in 2018 and 2019 the US Capitol Police paid Northern Red Inc. $90,075 to train its Containment Emergency Response Team, or CERT.

Police Should Release Information On British WikiLeaks Journalists

July 9, 2021 Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly. , , ,
A journalist is taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police after it refused to release correspondence with the US about three WikiLeaks journalists under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on terrorism and national security grounds. Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi argued in a tribunal yesterday that terrorism legislation should not be used to “clamp down” on journalists working in the public interest to report on national security. The Metropolitan Police, which is backed by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), claims that the release of the information, which it exchanged with the US Department of Justice, will harm counter-terrorism initiatives and damage the UK’s relationships with the US.

Baltimore To Stop Prosecuting ‘Nonviolent’ Crimes

July 8, 2021 Ella Fassler, Truthout. , , ,
The pandemic, in the midst of its many horrors, has temporarily slowed the number of arrests across some U.S. cities. With pressure from advocates and incarcerated organizers, District Attorney Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg in Seattle, State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in Cook County, Illinois, and City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore pledged to curb or stop prosecuting “low level” crimes in attempts to minimize the spread of COVID-19. By 2018, newly reelected Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had already directed his office to stop prosecuting sex work, marijuana possession and marijuana drug paraphernalia. Most of these prosecutors have strictly tied their commitments to the duration of the pandemic.

Five Things We Should Fight For This Pride

June 28, 2021 Tatiana Cozzarelli and Ezra Brain, Left Voice. , , ,
Trans youth are under attack around the country. Though we are only halfway through 2021, it has already become the worst year in recent history for legislative attacks on trans youth. 33 states have introduced anti-trans laws across the country, many of which ban trans students from playing sports. Arkansas recently became the first state to ban trans youth from accessing gender-affirming health care, and many other states have either passed or are debating similar bills. All of these laws must be repealed, and we need to build a militant trans rights movement to defend against these right-wing attacks. The results of efforts to oppress and dehumanize trans people hit trans youth the hardest. The American Journal of Psychiatry reports that trans people are about six times more likely to suffer from mood and anxiety disorders, and over half of trans and nonbinary youth in the U.S. reported having seriously contemplated suicide in 2020.

Strikers Across Colombia Are Demanding Transformational Change

June 28, 2021 Tom Power and Cruz Bonlarron Martínez, Labor Notes. , , ,
What started as a Colombian protest against a regressive tax bill has become a national strike against police brutality and poverty. The administration of President Ivan Duque has already pulled back the tax reform and the finance minister has resigned, but people are angry and marches and road blocks continue. Unions, student groups, and other organizations have formed a National Strike Committee which is negotiating with the government, demanding transformational change. Among the strike committee’s demands are guaranteed health care during the pandemic, a universal basic income, and a commitment to protecting domestic industries. Protesters are blocking roads and commerce to create leverage, which the government claims is causing shortages of basic goods.

Community Control Of Public Safety: A Transitional Program For Power

June 22, 2021 Netfa Freeman, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
That Community Control Over Police campaigns (CCOP) are essentially neocolonialism is a rather wild claim that avowed abolitionist activists, like Dubian Ade applies to the articulation of CCOP by advocate Max Rameau, an organizer in Pan-African Community Action (PACA) to which this author also belongs. Understandably Ade avoids the rabbit hole of condemning the Black Panther Party as neocolonialist, the progenitors of CCOP. While the Democratic Party claims championship over congressional approval of police reform in the name of George Floyd, now awaiting a Senate vote, some Black circles are still debating the virtues or lack thereof in CCOP. Corporate media theater aids and abets the lopsided focus by blitzing the public with coverage of a partisan struggle over the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 .

Switzerland Adopts Draconian Police Law

June 21, 2021 Marianne Arens, World Socialist Website. , , ,
The new anti-terror law adopted by Switzerland last weekend is one of the harshest police laws in all of Europe. Its adoption in a referendum highlights the urgency of building a genuine workers’ party in Switzerland that defends as a matter of principle the democratic rights of working people. The “Federal Law on Police Measures to Combat Terrorism” (PMT) blatantly disregards the principles of the so-called “democratic rule of law.” For example, it flouts the civil-democratic separation of powers because it allows the federal police to intervene against so-called “dangerous persons” even without sufficient evidence for criminal proceedings and without an order from a judge. The law also disregards the principle of personal data protection, allowing police officers to retrieve and exchange “particularly sensitive personal data” amongst themselves.

To End Racial Capitalism, We Will Need To Take On Policing

June 20, 2021 Henry A. Giroux, Truthout. , , ,
Police in the United States act with impunity in targeted neighborhoods, public schools, college campuses, hospitals, and almost every other public sphere. Not only do the police view protesters, Black and Indigenous people, and undocumented immigrants as antagonists to be controlled, they are also armed with military-grade weapons. This police militarization is a process that dates at least as far back as President Lyndon Johnson when he initiated the 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act, which supplied local police forces with weapons used in the Vietnam War. The public is now regarded as dangerous and suspect; moreover, as the police are given more military technologies and weapons of war, a culture of punishment, resentment and racism intensifies as Black people, in particular, are viewed as a threat to law and order.

Abolishing The United States’ Empire Of Policing

June 17, 2021 Joshua Makalintal, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
In the early morning of 30 December 2020, joint police-military units embarked on two simultaneous operations in the mountainous regions of Panay Island in the Philippines. Their assignment was to quell the spread of firearms allegedly proliferating across the region’s provinces by capturing 28 supposed members of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). What the police described as a “regular law enforcement activity” ended up in the brutal killings of nine Indigenous community leaders. Council members of the Tumandok tribe were reportedly asleep when they were gunned down in front of their families, yet police claimed that they fought back and resisted arrest. Days later, residents of the town where the killings took place fled their homes in fear of more state violence.
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