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Caravan Disrupts Line 3 Construction Routes

March 15, 2021 Alex Binder and Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Carlton County, MN – On Friday, February 19, a family-friendly caravan disrupted traffic at several Line 3 construction routes. During the event, authorities announced a baseless bomb threat via FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alerts system. The Carlton County Sheriff’s Office also made unsubstantiated connections between the water protectors and the “potential explosive hazard.” Around noon, before the caravan started, a dozen people protested near the pipeline construction just feet away from Camp Migizi on the Fond Du Lac Reservation. The caravan first drove to a choke-point of roads used for construction access, and then to the new Line 3 corridor, where the pipeline has yet to be laid.

Rallies And Marches Mark Anniversary Of Breonna Taylor’s Killing

March 14, 2021 Jake Johnson, Commondreams. , , ,
Hundreds rallied in downtown Louisville, Kentucky and marched through the streets on Saturday to mark the one-year anniversary of the killing of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was gunned down in her own home by city police officers—none of whom have been charged for her death. "This is not a celebration. This is the anniversary of something that should not have happened," one speaker said at a Louisville event, where Taylor's family, racial justice activists, and ordinary members of the community gathered to mourn the loss of Breonna and demand action from lawmakers and police departments beyond the small-scale reforms that followed the March 2020 killing. While Louisville in June banned no-knock raids of the kind that led to Taylor's death, local activists say far more needs to be done to hold the officers responsible for Taylor's death account

Texas County Got Rid Of Cash Bail For Minor Crimes

March 13, 2021 Jolie McCullough, Texas Tribune. , , ,
Eager to resolve a federal civil rights lawsuit, Texas' most populous county over the past two years has stopped requiring most people accused of low-level crimes from putting up cash to get out of jail on bond. Tens of thousands of people accused of misdemeanors not involving some specific circumstances, like domestic abuse or previous bond violations, have been freed without cost while awaiting trial. Letting them out does not appear to increase the chances they will be arrested for new crimes, according to researchers who have been tracking changes made to the Harris County misdemeanor bail system. In fact, the percentage of defendants arrested for new crimes within a year of their original arrest went down after the county changed its bail practices.

Insulting Police Would Be A Crime Under Kentucky Bill

March 11, 2021 Chris Walker, Truthout. , , ,
A committee within the Kentucky State Senate has advanced a bill that would make insulting a police officer a misdemeanor crime. The proposal, which is part of a larger bill that includes a number of other provisions related to criminalizing activists’ behavior during uprisings and protest events, comes in the same week as the one-year anniversary of the police-perpetrated killing of Breonna Taylor, which, along with other unjust killings of Black Americans by police, prompted a number of uprisings over the course of the past year. The portion of the bill that would criminalize statements made to police officers would amend the state statute on “disorderly conduct” in public spaces. Any person who “accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words, or by gestures or other physical contact, that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response” in public would be guilty of disorderly conduct in the second degree, if the bill becomes law.

Documentary Sheds Light On The Role Of Race In Sex Trafficking

March 11, 2021 Ally Markovich, The Oaklandside. , , , ,
On a clear night in February 2016, a group gathered in downtown Oakland for a candlelight vigil. The attendants were dressed in black; one wore a t-shirt that read “The Black Woman is God.” At the vigil, held in honor of the survivors of human trafficking, people spoke about the trauma held in Black women’s bodies.  Six miles away, girls strode in stick-thin heels on a strip of International Boulevard in East Oakland known as “the walk” or “the blade,” where hundreds of teenage girls are trafficked each year. Though sex trafficking happens across the country, Oakland has been identified since the early 2000s as a hub for the exploitation of girls; that exploitation is especially visible on the strip. But the vigil called attention to a fact that’s less widely discussed—Black girls are far and away the most common victims. 

NYPD’s Enforcement Of Marijuana Laws Plagued By Extreme Racial Disparities

March 11, 2021 Jake Offenhartz, Gothamist. , , ,
New York City - On March 4th of last year, Fitzroy Gayle was stopped by a plainclothes police officer in his neighborhood of Canarsie, Brooklyn. Video shows the 20-year-old, who is Black, begging to know why he was being detained. Moments later, close to a dozen NYPD officers sprinted toward the young man, tackling him to the ground as he cried out that he did nothing wrong. An NYPD spokesperson later claimed that Gayle was approached after he was spotted with a "lit marijuana cigarette" inside a nearby park. He was charged with possession of marijuana, resisting arrest, and obstructing governmental administration. The incident, which drew widespread outrage, was one of 437 marijuana arrests made by the NYPD in 2020. That number is a fraction of the tens of thousands of New Yorkers arrested for smoking pot in previous years in New York City.

First Trial For The Police Murder Of George Floyd Opens

March 9, 2021 Trévon Austin, WSWS. , , , ,
The opening of the trial of Derek Chauvin, one of the four former Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officers charged in the death of 46-year-old George Floyd, was delayed for at least a day Monday after Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill postponed jury selection as an appellate court reviews the possible reinstatement of a lesser third-degree murder charge dropped last fall. Currently, Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter for his actions last May. Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while he was handcuffed and pinned to the pavement by two other officers. Legal experts suggest a third-degree murder charge would be easier for the prosecution to prove. Minnesota law defines third-degree murder as “without intent to effect the death of any person, causing the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life.”

The Radical Practicality Of Community Control Over Policing

March 6, 2021 Pan African Community Action, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
In response to the persistent problem of state-sponsored violence against working class Black communities and the futility of police reforms, the contemporary calls for community control over police (CCOP) have garnered significant attention and support in Black communities. Consequently, the growing grassroots support for the concept of Black communities controlling their own security and safety has come under fire by a number of individuals and organizations advocating for the defunding and abolishing of police. Pan-African Community Action  (PACA), an organization operating in the DC-Maryland-Virginia metropolitan area, supports CCOP, as does the National Alliance Against Racists & Political Repression (NAARPR) and a number of other organizations. PACA’s formation in November 2015 was in response to the killing of DC resident and educator Alonzo Smith at the hands of “special police.”

New Massachusetts Law Paves Way For Police-Free Schools

February 17, 2021 Rachel M. Cohen, The Appeal. , , ,
In Massachusetts, those who want police out of public schools are one step closer to making it happen. Lawmakers recently struck down a requirement that all school districts in the state have at least one “school resource officer”—a moniker for school cops. Now just two states—Florida and Maryland—have laws requiring police in schools, and advocates are pushing them to follow suit. Massachusetts adopted the school police requirement in 2014 in response to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Connecticut where 26 people were killed at school, including 20 young children. Since then, the number of cops assigned to work in Massachusetts schools has steadily grown, as school shootings nationwide have continued.

Cities Sending Mental Health Experts, Not Cops, And It Works

February 15, 2021 Matt Agorist, Free Thought Project. , ,
As TFTP reported last week, Christian Joseph Hall, 19, was in the midst of a mental health crisis. He positioned himself on top of an overpass on I-80 leading to police closing off the road and engaging with him. Moments after police arrived, however, Hall would be dead. Video would prove he had his hands in the air and had surrendered when cops opened fire. Hall has now become one of over 1,400 people in a mental health crisis to lose their lives to police since 2015. As TFTP has pointed out, even cops who voluntarily attend Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), have shown that they are quick to the trigger when dealing with the mentally ill.

California Must Lead The Way In Abolishing School And University Campus Police

February 2, 2021 Angela Davis, Melina Abdullah and Robin D. G. Kelley, Sacramento Bee. , , ,
The first days of 2021 — which will surely be remembered for police officers in Washington, D.C. removing barricades in order for white supremacists to storm the United States Capitol, confederate flag in hand — ask us to continue learning from the unprecedented uprisings of 2020, in which hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest anti-Black police violence. The 2020 uprisings articulated transformative visions of a world without anti-Black violence, a world without hyper-funded police forces and thus a world with deep community safety and care. In response to this sweeping vision, some of our employers within California’s public university systems have deemed calls for the removal of police from campuses a “non-starter.”

Court Orders Quebec Government To Exempt Homeless People From Curfew

January 29, 2021 Christopher Curtis, Ricochet. , , ,
Police in Quebec can no longer fine people for being homeless after eight o’clock. In a cutting decision delivered late Tuesday, Superior Court judge Chantal Masse ordered the provincial government to exempt people without housing from a curfew that subjected them to fines of up to $6,000 for being outside after 8 p.m. Masse said the curfew put the lives of homeless people at risk and that the province’s network of shelters doesn’t have the capacity to provide a warm bed for all its unhoused people. She also rejected the government’s argument that police were only ticketing those who refused help, citing evidence from the plaintiffs that showed a lack of discretion from officers.

Against A Domestic Terrorism Law

January 15, 2021 Alex Pareene, The New Republic. , , ,
On Monday, Opposite Office, an “activistic architecture studio” based in Munich, released design materials for what it called “Capitol Castle,” a plan that would encircle the entire U.S. Capitol with 36-feet-thick brick walls. The concept was not serious—or, at least, it was “serious” but not intended to be built. It was, depending on how charitable you feel about “activistic architecture studios,” a design meant to spark a debate on democracy and division, or one meant to get written up by the architecture press and shared widely on social media. But even if these German architects don’t sincerely propose physically walling off the Capitol after right-wing insurrectionaries stormed the building on January 6, it is far too easy to...

Black Cops Warned About Racist Capitol Police Officers For Years

January 15, 2021 Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien, Pro Publica. , , ,
When Kim Dine took over as the new chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in 2012, he knew he had a serious problem. Since 2001, hundreds of Black officers had sued the department for racial discrimination. They alleged that white officers called Black colleagues slurs like the N-word and that one officer found a hangman’s noose on his locker. White officers were called “huk lovers” or “FOGs” — short for “friends of gangsters” — if they were friendly with their Black colleagues. Black officers faced “unprovoked traffic stops” from fellow Capitol Police officers. One Black officer claimed he heard a colleague say, “Obama monkey, go back to Africa.”

Capitol Police Show Why We Need To Defund The Police

January 13, 2021 D. A. Bullock, In These Times. , , ,
On January 6, we witnessed the vast double standard for how Black Lives Matter protest is treated versus how white-supremacy-as-mob is treated. This wasn’t just a matter of police refraining from mass beating and arresting participants in the pro-Trump storming of the Capitol: Numerous police appear to have actively supported the mob, and to have defended it after the fact. First, it’s important to clarify that what happened on January 6 was not a protest. Protest is about seeking redress for wrongdoing — this was backlash. Redress was the November 3 democratic process and recrimination of a criminal president. January 6 was payback and mob rule.
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