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oct 15, 2019
MICHAEL WOOD: We have a culture that from the beginning has been disproportionate and been oppressive to persons of color, and women, and other minorities. We have a system in which criminal justice is an oxymoron. We have a society that trumps up the second amendment as this big right that we have and that right is to have this weaponry so cops can be killed. That’s literally the purpose of the second amendment. And we have state sanctioned murder all over the country with a blue wall of silence and justice not being done. So I’m completely baffled by why anyone is surprised by all of this.
Why Cops Kill Black People: Research Suggests a Troubling Pattern of 'Retaliatory Violence'
Chauncey DeVega / Salon
The story of race in America is a story of change, and a story of things remaining the same. To measure our progress, or lack thereof, all we need to do is to look at how America's police treat the public, and look in turn at who fills the prison cells -- and all too often the cemeteries.
in the headlines
*Mississippi Sheriff’s Office, ACLU Settle on ‘Unbiased Policing Policy’ to Prevent Discriminatory Traffic Stops, Searches of Black Drivers
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Minneapolis police union pushes ‘Cops for Trump’ T-shirts after department bars uniforms at political events(ARTICLE BELOW)
*North Carolina Detective Was Fired Over Claims That He Hit on Sexual-Assault Victims
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Police enabled 'predator' Ed Buck by ignoring black gay men, victim's mother says
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'Out of control police department': Vallejo faces new claims of racial profiling and brutality(ARTICLE BELOW)
*HOW CHICAGO POLICE CREATED A FALSE NARRATIVE AFTER OFFICERS KILLED HARITH AUGUSTUS
*Cops slammed black man and arrested him over tinted windows on his ‘fancy car’: lawsuit(ARTICLE BELOW)
*FBI monitoring immigration activists as violent "extremists" — though there's been no violence(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Justice comes for the corrupt DEA agent who tried to set up rapper Scarface
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Was a man wrongly identified after police digitally altered his mugshot?
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Bounty Hunters Are a Lethal Weapon in a Justice System Corrupted by Money
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘It's techno-racism’: Detroit is quietly using facial recognition to make arrests
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*NYPD union president insists ‘I have black friends’ after he’s caught promoting a rabidly racist video(ARTICLE BELOW)
*White Cop Who Shot, Killed Alton Sterling Allowed to Resign Even as Baton Rouge Police Chief Says ‘He Should Have Never Been Hired’(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Los Angeles police spied on anti-Trump protesters
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*STATE DRIVERS' LICENSE PHOTOS ARE ROUTINELY USED IN FACIAL RECOGNITION SEARCHES BY ICE, FBI AGENTS TO 'PRESERVE OUR SECURITY'(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GESTAPO USA FUNNIES(below)
Mississippi Sheriff’s Office, ACLU Settle on ‘Unbiased Policing Policy’ to Prevent Discriminatory Traffic Stops, Searches of Black Drivers
By Tanasia Kenney - atlanta black star
October 15, 2019
A central Mississippi sheriff’s office and the state American Civil Liberties Union branch are taking steps to address profiling and discriminatory stops by local police.
Under a proposed agreement in a racial bias lawsuit, the Madison County Sheriff’s Department would adopt a so-called “unbiased policing policy” and establish new rules for traffic checkpoints and police encounters with pedestrians, according to The Associated Press. Attorneys for the sheriff’s office, as well as the African-American plaintiffs, had the decree approved by a judge late September.
“The Court’s order today affirms the simple but fundamental proposition, that in America police must treat everyone the same regardless of race,” Joshua Tom, executive director of the ACLU Mississippi, said in a statement obtained by Atlanta Black Star. “The ACLU of Mississippi looks forward to playing its role in ensuring that MCSD agrees to the terms of the agreement.”
In 2017, the civil rights organization filed a lawsuit accusing officers in the predominately Black Jackson suburb of unconstitutionally targeting Black motorists and pedestrians and subjecting them to searches and seizures at disproportionate rates.
At the time of their complaint, the organization said Black people were nearly five times as likely as whites to be arrested in Madison County. The ACLU also noted that African-Americans account for just 38 percent of the county’s residents, but the sheriff’s department data showed Black residents made up more than 70 percent of citations and arrests between 2012 and 2017.
As part of the proposed agreement, the county sheriff’s department would require its officers to complete implicit bias training, as well as training on cultural diversity and citizen interactions. It would also require the office to track and document the race of those who are arrested.
The plan, which absolves the department of any “illegal” conduct, further states that citizens who come into contact with deputies must be treated in a “fair, impartial, equitable, and objective manner,” no matter their “race, ethnic background, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion,” and so on, AP reported.
Moreover, the agreement calls for the creation of a community advisory board that would serve as an intermediary body for complaints lodged against the sheriff’s department.
Lastly, traffic checkpoints could no longer be conducted within a quarter mile of certain housing complexes where the ACLU’s complaint claimed residents and visitors were disproportionately stopped and searched by police. In its lawsuit, the organization wrote that the plaintiffs had been “unconstitutionally stopped, searched, or arrested … sometimes violently, while they were merely walking to work, driving in their neighborhood, celebrating with family or just spending time in their own homes.”
Their new proposal asserts that police should “conduct checkpoints only for constitutionally acceptable purposes.”
“The settlement contains provisions that will help ensure effective policing coupled with compliance with the protections of the U.S. Constitution,” said attorney Jonathan Youngwood, who represented the plaintiffs along with the ACLU. “This positive resolution illustrates the power of effective federal litigation before an independent judiciary.”
Under a proposed agreement in a racial bias lawsuit, the Madison County Sheriff’s Department would adopt a so-called “unbiased policing policy” and establish new rules for traffic checkpoints and police encounters with pedestrians, according to The Associated Press. Attorneys for the sheriff’s office, as well as the African-American plaintiffs, had the decree approved by a judge late September.
“The Court’s order today affirms the simple but fundamental proposition, that in America police must treat everyone the same regardless of race,” Joshua Tom, executive director of the ACLU Mississippi, said in a statement obtained by Atlanta Black Star. “The ACLU of Mississippi looks forward to playing its role in ensuring that MCSD agrees to the terms of the agreement.”
In 2017, the civil rights organization filed a lawsuit accusing officers in the predominately Black Jackson suburb of unconstitutionally targeting Black motorists and pedestrians and subjecting them to searches and seizures at disproportionate rates.
At the time of their complaint, the organization said Black people were nearly five times as likely as whites to be arrested in Madison County. The ACLU also noted that African-Americans account for just 38 percent of the county’s residents, but the sheriff’s department data showed Black residents made up more than 70 percent of citations and arrests between 2012 and 2017.
As part of the proposed agreement, the county sheriff’s department would require its officers to complete implicit bias training, as well as training on cultural diversity and citizen interactions. It would also require the office to track and document the race of those who are arrested.
The plan, which absolves the department of any “illegal” conduct, further states that citizens who come into contact with deputies must be treated in a “fair, impartial, equitable, and objective manner,” no matter their “race, ethnic background, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion,” and so on, AP reported.
Moreover, the agreement calls for the creation of a community advisory board that would serve as an intermediary body for complaints lodged against the sheriff’s department.
Lastly, traffic checkpoints could no longer be conducted within a quarter mile of certain housing complexes where the ACLU’s complaint claimed residents and visitors were disproportionately stopped and searched by police. In its lawsuit, the organization wrote that the plaintiffs had been “unconstitutionally stopped, searched, or arrested … sometimes violently, while they were merely walking to work, driving in their neighborhood, celebrating with family or just spending time in their own homes.”
Their new proposal asserts that police should “conduct checkpoints only for constitutionally acceptable purposes.”
“The settlement contains provisions that will help ensure effective policing coupled with compliance with the protections of the U.S. Constitution,” said attorney Jonathan Youngwood, who represented the plaintiffs along with the ACLU. “This positive resolution illustrates the power of effective federal litigation before an independent judiciary.”
Minneapolis police union pushes ‘Cops for Trump’ T-shirts after department bars uniforms at political events
October 7, 2019
By Sky Palma - raw story
Just a day after the Minneapolis Police Department banned officers from wearing their uniforms while participating in political events, the Minneapolis police union is getting flak for coming out with a “Cops for Trump” T-shirt, the Star Tribune reports.
According to a post on union head Lt. Bob Kroll’s Facebook page, the shirts are going on sale today for $20 each, and are seemingly a response to the department’s new uniform policy.
“My members are outraged,” Kroll told Fox News on September 29. “A lot of them want to be there; they want to be in the backdrop, have an opportunity to meet him. He’s shown that he’s a very pro-law enforcement president.”
But according to Mayor Jacob Frey, the policy change has been in the works for a long time.
“Politics and the work of the Minneapolis Police Department are separate,” Frey told CBS Minnesota . “They are individuals within our department, certainly have a First Amendment right to support whichever party or whatever individual they choose.”
Nevertheless, Kroll says that he and his members will be at the Trump rally this Thursday to show their support for the President.
“We’re going to be there in full force, in T-shirts, letting people know that off-duty officers do have support for our president,” Kroll said.
According to a post on union head Lt. Bob Kroll’s Facebook page, the shirts are going on sale today for $20 each, and are seemingly a response to the department’s new uniform policy.
“My members are outraged,” Kroll told Fox News on September 29. “A lot of them want to be there; they want to be in the backdrop, have an opportunity to meet him. He’s shown that he’s a very pro-law enforcement president.”
But according to Mayor Jacob Frey, the policy change has been in the works for a long time.
“Politics and the work of the Minneapolis Police Department are separate,” Frey told CBS Minnesota . “They are individuals within our department, certainly have a First Amendment right to support whichever party or whatever individual they choose.”
Nevertheless, Kroll says that he and his members will be at the Trump rally this Thursday to show their support for the President.
“We’re going to be there in full force, in T-shirts, letting people know that off-duty officers do have support for our president,” Kroll said.
North Carolina Detective Was Fired Over Claims That He Hit on Sexual-Assault Victims
Jamie Ross - Reporter
Updated 09.27.19 6:43AM ET
daily beast cheat sheet
A North Carolina police detective was fired after being accused of sending inappropriate texts to women whose sexual-assault cases he had investigated, new documents show. Paul Matrafailo III was fired from the Fayetteville force in May, according to the newly released dismissal letter. In March, police received a complaint that accused Matrafailo of contacting a sexual-assault victim through Instagram and and said he “began a conversation with her that she felt was inappropriate.” Matrafailo was part of the team that investigated the victim’s 2016 case. In total, three women who had been sexually assaulted complained that Matrafailo had sent them inappropriate texts, with one woman saying he sent her messages about lingerie she was planning to buy. No criminal charges have been filed against Matrafailo, but an investigation is reportedly underway.
Police enabled 'predator' Ed Buck by ignoring black gay men, victim's mother says
Gemmel Moore died in 2017 in the home of LA activist accused of forcibly injecting men with deadly doses of drugs
Sam Levin in West Hollywood
the giardian
Wed 25 Sep 2019 22.47 EDT
Ed Buck, a Los Angeles man accused of forcibly injecting black gay men with fatal doses of drugs, targeted his victims for years without facing consequences, authorities have said.
For the mother of one victim, it was clear how he got away with his crimes: LA law enforcement ignored evidence, rejected the stories of the black gay men who tried to speak up, and turned away families fighting for justice.
“I’m a grieving mother, but they treated us like criminals,” LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Gemmel Moore, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “I haven’t been able to recover.”
Buck, a 65-year-old political activist and Democratic donor, was arrested last week, with prosecutors saying he was a “violent sexual predator” who ran a drug den and had at least 11 victims. Authorities said he injected men with deadly doses of methamphetamine, including Moore, 26, who overdosed inside Buck’s West Hollywood apartment in July 2017.
If the Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) and the LA county district attorney, Jackie Lacey, had taken Moore’s death seriously, and arrested and prosecuted him two years ago, Buck would not have been able to harm so many additional people, Nixon said.
“I didn’t ask for nothing special. I just wanted [Lacey] to do her job,” said Nixon, who lives in Texas and was in LA this week, meeting with black LGBT activists and lawyers who have investigated Buck for years and pushed for charges. “We had our proof. We gave her all of the evidence. I don’t know if she ignored it because it was black gay men, or because it was gay men, period. I got the runaround.”
Buck allegedly went after men who were struggling with homelessness and drug addiction, offering to pay them for sex and seeking to inject them. One victim told police he was known locally as “Doctor Kevorkian”.
Buck is accused of giving some men tranquilizers without their knowledge and drugging them while they were unconscious. Some said they woke up to discover they had been sexually assaulted. One victim said Buck threatened him with a power saw.
Timothy Dean, a second fatality, died of an overdose in Buck’s home in January 2019.
The arrest last week came after a third victim, a 37-year-old man identified as Joe Doe, overdosed non-fatally inside his West Hollywood home this month. In that case, Buck refused to render aid and thwarted the victim’s attempts to get help, forcing him to flee and call 911, police said.
The LA district attorney charged Buck with drug felonies related to that overdose, but the DA filed no charges in the deaths of Moore and Dean. In Moore’s case, federal prosecutors charged Buck with administering meth to a victim who died. Activists have advocated for murder charges.
“I wanted everybody to know what this man did to my child, so he couldn’t hurt anyone else’s kid or family member. I had to say something,” Nixon said, recounting her decision to speak publicly after her son’s death. “Timothy Dean’s death could’ve been prevented if they had listened to us. But they didn’t.”
‘They were not taken seriously’
Nixon said Moore was a jokester who loved to cook for others, especially chicken parmesan: “Gemmel had a lot of aspirations … He was adventurous. He was loving. He was caring. He was nurturing. He spoke his mind.”
She said her son told her about Buck in 2016, telling her “he was held in this man’s house for a few days and that he shot him up with something and he didn’t know what it was”. She urged him to report him to police, and he told her police wouldn’t help.
Jasmyne Cannick, an activist who has led the effort to get Buck arrested and conducted her own investigations into him, said that multiple victims tried to report Buck to the sheriff’s office and were “turned away”, adding: “Numerous other Joe Does were not taken seriously.”
“Because they were black gay men, the county didn’t care to listen to their stories. The county didn’t care to follow up,” said Hussain Turk, an attorney for Moore’s family.
The most recent overdose victim told reporters this week that he was homeless and trying to get his life back together. Advocates have been raising funds for him and other survivors and victims’ families and have argued that local authorities should be providing support to the victims and witnesses.
Nixon said there were numerous times officials mistreated her in the wake of her son’s death. The coroner’s office sent her a $300 bill for the cost of removing her son’s body from his home, she said: “Send it to Ed Buck. He killed my son. Why are you sending me the bill?”
She said the coroner also publicly released a report that failed to redact her home address, forcing her to move from her home: “I didn’t feel safe.” The DA’s office also turned her away when she showed up in person, she said.
A coroner’s office spokeswoman confirmed it bills for “transportation” and said the address was “public record”. A spokesman for Lacey said the DA’s office “is legally and ethically required and committed to only bring charges that have sufficient, admissible evidence” and that there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue homicide charges.
Buck’s lawyers did not respond to inquiries.
‘I need to see this through, then I can mourn’
Advocates gathered with Nixon at a West Hollywood auditorium on Wednesday and said the fight for justice was far from over.
Jerome Kitchen, a local activist, said people needed to stand up for the black LGBT community in LA: “There are a lot of Ed Bucks out here right in this community. They prey on us.”
He added: “White men have been given a free pass in society to do as they want … and inflict pain and hurt on minority communities. We are fighting back against that.”
Turk, the local attorney, said the problem of meth in the gay community had become a “public health epidemic” that was disproportionately affecting LGBT people of color.
Nixon said there were black gay men who thought “no one cares about them” and she wanted them to know there were people who were there for them: “You can never know the extent a mother would go for her child.”
She said she hadn’t had an opportunity to properly grieve for her son’s loss with the continuing fight to hold Buck accountable.
“I’m numb, to be honest. I just picture him here in California. I haven’t processed the fact that he’s dead. I need to see this through and then I can mourn,” Nixon said, adding: “When all the cameras go away, I have to deal with the fact that my child is not here. I can’t see him. I can’t talk to him. All I have left is memories. I’m dying on the inside. A piece of me died.”
For the mother of one victim, it was clear how he got away with his crimes: LA law enforcement ignored evidence, rejected the stories of the black gay men who tried to speak up, and turned away families fighting for justice.
“I’m a grieving mother, but they treated us like criminals,” LaTisha Nixon, the mother of Gemmel Moore, told the Guardian on Wednesday. “I haven’t been able to recover.”
Buck, a 65-year-old political activist and Democratic donor, was arrested last week, with prosecutors saying he was a “violent sexual predator” who ran a drug den and had at least 11 victims. Authorities said he injected men with deadly doses of methamphetamine, including Moore, 26, who overdosed inside Buck’s West Hollywood apartment in July 2017.
If the Los Angeles sheriff’s department (LASD) and the LA county district attorney, Jackie Lacey, had taken Moore’s death seriously, and arrested and prosecuted him two years ago, Buck would not have been able to harm so many additional people, Nixon said.
“I didn’t ask for nothing special. I just wanted [Lacey] to do her job,” said Nixon, who lives in Texas and was in LA this week, meeting with black LGBT activists and lawyers who have investigated Buck for years and pushed for charges. “We had our proof. We gave her all of the evidence. I don’t know if she ignored it because it was black gay men, or because it was gay men, period. I got the runaround.”
Buck allegedly went after men who were struggling with homelessness and drug addiction, offering to pay them for sex and seeking to inject them. One victim told police he was known locally as “Doctor Kevorkian”.
Buck is accused of giving some men tranquilizers without their knowledge and drugging them while they were unconscious. Some said they woke up to discover they had been sexually assaulted. One victim said Buck threatened him with a power saw.
Timothy Dean, a second fatality, died of an overdose in Buck’s home in January 2019.
The arrest last week came after a third victim, a 37-year-old man identified as Joe Doe, overdosed non-fatally inside his West Hollywood home this month. In that case, Buck refused to render aid and thwarted the victim’s attempts to get help, forcing him to flee and call 911, police said.
The LA district attorney charged Buck with drug felonies related to that overdose, but the DA filed no charges in the deaths of Moore and Dean. In Moore’s case, federal prosecutors charged Buck with administering meth to a victim who died. Activists have advocated for murder charges.
“I wanted everybody to know what this man did to my child, so he couldn’t hurt anyone else’s kid or family member. I had to say something,” Nixon said, recounting her decision to speak publicly after her son’s death. “Timothy Dean’s death could’ve been prevented if they had listened to us. But they didn’t.”
‘They were not taken seriously’
Nixon said Moore was a jokester who loved to cook for others, especially chicken parmesan: “Gemmel had a lot of aspirations … He was adventurous. He was loving. He was caring. He was nurturing. He spoke his mind.”
She said her son told her about Buck in 2016, telling her “he was held in this man’s house for a few days and that he shot him up with something and he didn’t know what it was”. She urged him to report him to police, and he told her police wouldn’t help.
Jasmyne Cannick, an activist who has led the effort to get Buck arrested and conducted her own investigations into him, said that multiple victims tried to report Buck to the sheriff’s office and were “turned away”, adding: “Numerous other Joe Does were not taken seriously.”
“Because they were black gay men, the county didn’t care to listen to their stories. The county didn’t care to follow up,” said Hussain Turk, an attorney for Moore’s family.
The most recent overdose victim told reporters this week that he was homeless and trying to get his life back together. Advocates have been raising funds for him and other survivors and victims’ families and have argued that local authorities should be providing support to the victims and witnesses.
Nixon said there were numerous times officials mistreated her in the wake of her son’s death. The coroner’s office sent her a $300 bill for the cost of removing her son’s body from his home, she said: “Send it to Ed Buck. He killed my son. Why are you sending me the bill?”
She said the coroner also publicly released a report that failed to redact her home address, forcing her to move from her home: “I didn’t feel safe.” The DA’s office also turned her away when she showed up in person, she said.
A coroner’s office spokeswoman confirmed it bills for “transportation” and said the address was “public record”. A spokesman for Lacey said the DA’s office “is legally and ethically required and committed to only bring charges that have sufficient, admissible evidence” and that there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue homicide charges.
Buck’s lawyers did not respond to inquiries.
‘I need to see this through, then I can mourn’
Advocates gathered with Nixon at a West Hollywood auditorium on Wednesday and said the fight for justice was far from over.
Jerome Kitchen, a local activist, said people needed to stand up for the black LGBT community in LA: “There are a lot of Ed Bucks out here right in this community. They prey on us.”
He added: “White men have been given a free pass in society to do as they want … and inflict pain and hurt on minority communities. We are fighting back against that.”
Turk, the local attorney, said the problem of meth in the gay community had become a “public health epidemic” that was disproportionately affecting LGBT people of color.
Nixon said there were black gay men who thought “no one cares about them” and she wanted them to know there were people who were there for them: “You can never know the extent a mother would go for her child.”
She said she hadn’t had an opportunity to properly grieve for her son’s loss with the continuing fight to hold Buck accountable.
“I’m numb, to be honest. I just picture him here in California. I haven’t processed the fact that he’s dead. I need to see this through and then I can mourn,” Nixon said, adding: “When all the cameras go away, I have to deal with the fact that my child is not here. I can’t see him. I can’t talk to him. All I have left is memories. I’m dying on the inside. A piece of me died.”
'Out of control police department': Vallejo faces new claims of racial profiling and brutality
Behind the killing of Willie McCoy lies a pattern of discrimination and brutality exhibited by police, allege residents suing the city
Darwin BondGraham in Oakland
the guardian
Fri 20 Sep 2019 09.09 EDT
The Vallejo police department has been under intensifying scrutiny since the fatal shooting of Willie McCoy, the 20-year-old who had been sleeping in his car when police unleashed a barrage of 55 shots.
But behind the 6 March killing lies a pattern of racial discrimination and brutality routinely exhibited by police, allege a group of Vallejo residents who are suing the city. These incidents don’t make international headlines, but they amount to constitutional violations by the California city’s police force, say civil rights attorneys.
On Thursday, attorneys for the residents filed multiple new lawsuits that they hope will lead to a systematic reform program.
“Frankly we are disgusted with the city of Vallejo Police Department,” said civil rights attorney John Burris, who is representing three people who claim they were recently beaten and wrongfully arrested. “In our view, it is an out of control police department.”
Delon Thurston, a massage therapist, is one of those suing. She says she was driving home from work last October when a Vallejo police officer pulled her over for allegedly making “an abrupt left turn,” and then along with another officer “dragged” her out of her car and threatened her with a Taser. The officers then forcibly searched her body, touching her breasts and genitals, she alleges
“I honestly felt like it was a Sandra Bland moment,” Thurston said, referring to the 28-year-old black woman who died of apparent suicide in a Texas jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop in 2015. “I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and I had to breath all the way through it and be antagonized all the way to the station and I never got read my rights as they were pushing my face to the cement.”
Deyana Jenkins, another plaintiff, alleges that on 15 April a group of officers pulled her over at gunpoint for no apparent reason, then forced her from her vehicle and shocked her with a Taser before arresting her.
Jenkins is the niece of Willie McCoy. She said she feared that during her encounter with police, she would also be killed. “I was thinking, don’t do any sudden movements because I don’t want his to be the last moment of my life,” she said.
Adrian Burrell, meanwhile, alleges that he was standing on his porch on 22 January and filming a Vallejo police officer who had stopped his cousin Michael Walton and was holding Walton at gunpoint in the driveway. The officer, Ryan McLaughlin, then demanded Burrell stop filming and go inside. According to video taken by Burrell, when he declined to stop filming, McLaughlin handcuffed him and threw him against a wooden post where he hit his head.
“These are not new issues, these are decades old issues,” said Melissa Nold, an attorney who is also representing Jenkins, Thurston, Burrell, and several other Vallejo residents.
Nold, who grew up in Vallejo and still resides there, said it has been “an unwritten rule that the Vallejo Police Department is enforcing a policy that it’s illegal to be Black in Vallejo”.
She said the department’s culture of condoning brutality and racial profiling hasn’t changed because of a flawed internal affairs system that rarely disciplines officers.
“There’s been a long pattern of failing to discipline police officers when they engage in this 1950s-style policing where African American people, men and women, on their way home from work, are being stopped and questioned by officers on fishing expeditions.”
Nold said Jenkins, Thurston and Burrell have no criminal records and that officers were abusing their authority and breaking the law when they arrested them.
Burrell said he’s moved out of Vallejo because he fears being harassed by the police. A US Marine veteran, he is currently living in Palo Alto where he’s starting school at Stanford in a few days.
Vallejo’s city manager and mayor did not respond to questions about the new lawsuits, or the idea of having their police force placed under court oversight.
“The City of Vallejo has not received the lawsuits referenced today by a plaintiffs’ attorney,” Vallejo city attorney Claudia Quintana told the Guardian. “We cannot comment on pending litigation, but we will review any filings made and will then respond as required by court procedures. We are confident the fact-based litigation process will determine the truth in these cases.”
Earlier this year, Vallejo residents and civil rights attorneys, including Burris and Nold, asked California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to conduct a civil rights investigation of the Vallejo police and consider using his powers to reform the department. However it is unknown whether his office will act. “To protect its integrity, we are unable to comment on, even to confirm or deny, a potential or ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson for the attorney general told the Guardian.
Burris has succeeded before in having police agencies placed under federal court oversight, even without the help of the state attorney general or federal justice department. In 2000, he and another Oakland civil rights attorney, James Chanin, sued the Oakland police on behalf of 119 Black men who alleged the department engaged in a pattern and practice of civil rights violations.
The city settled the case in 2003 by agreeing to have a court-appointed monitor watch over a list of institutional reforms. This reform effort is still ongoing and has cost Oakland millions, but the city’s police force went from having one of the highest rates of police shootings in the state, to one of the lowest.
Thurston said she hopes her lawsuit helps make the case for a systematic reform push so that things change in Vallejo.
“It’s gang-type of behavior that has to stop.”
But behind the 6 March killing lies a pattern of racial discrimination and brutality routinely exhibited by police, allege a group of Vallejo residents who are suing the city. These incidents don’t make international headlines, but they amount to constitutional violations by the California city’s police force, say civil rights attorneys.
On Thursday, attorneys for the residents filed multiple new lawsuits that they hope will lead to a systematic reform program.
“Frankly we are disgusted with the city of Vallejo Police Department,” said civil rights attorney John Burris, who is representing three people who claim they were recently beaten and wrongfully arrested. “In our view, it is an out of control police department.”
Delon Thurston, a massage therapist, is one of those suing. She says she was driving home from work last October when a Vallejo police officer pulled her over for allegedly making “an abrupt left turn,” and then along with another officer “dragged” her out of her car and threatened her with a Taser. The officers then forcibly searched her body, touching her breasts and genitals, she alleges
“I honestly felt like it was a Sandra Bland moment,” Thurston said, referring to the 28-year-old black woman who died of apparent suicide in a Texas jail cell after being arrested during a traffic stop in 2015. “I didn’t know what was going to happen to me and I had to breath all the way through it and be antagonized all the way to the station and I never got read my rights as they were pushing my face to the cement.”
Deyana Jenkins, another plaintiff, alleges that on 15 April a group of officers pulled her over at gunpoint for no apparent reason, then forced her from her vehicle and shocked her with a Taser before arresting her.
Jenkins is the niece of Willie McCoy. She said she feared that during her encounter with police, she would also be killed. “I was thinking, don’t do any sudden movements because I don’t want his to be the last moment of my life,” she said.
Adrian Burrell, meanwhile, alleges that he was standing on his porch on 22 January and filming a Vallejo police officer who had stopped his cousin Michael Walton and was holding Walton at gunpoint in the driveway. The officer, Ryan McLaughlin, then demanded Burrell stop filming and go inside. According to video taken by Burrell, when he declined to stop filming, McLaughlin handcuffed him and threw him against a wooden post where he hit his head.
“These are not new issues, these are decades old issues,” said Melissa Nold, an attorney who is also representing Jenkins, Thurston, Burrell, and several other Vallejo residents.
Nold, who grew up in Vallejo and still resides there, said it has been “an unwritten rule that the Vallejo Police Department is enforcing a policy that it’s illegal to be Black in Vallejo”.
She said the department’s culture of condoning brutality and racial profiling hasn’t changed because of a flawed internal affairs system that rarely disciplines officers.
“There’s been a long pattern of failing to discipline police officers when they engage in this 1950s-style policing where African American people, men and women, on their way home from work, are being stopped and questioned by officers on fishing expeditions.”
Nold said Jenkins, Thurston and Burrell have no criminal records and that officers were abusing their authority and breaking the law when they arrested them.
Burrell said he’s moved out of Vallejo because he fears being harassed by the police. A US Marine veteran, he is currently living in Palo Alto where he’s starting school at Stanford in a few days.
Vallejo’s city manager and mayor did not respond to questions about the new lawsuits, or the idea of having their police force placed under court oversight.
“The City of Vallejo has not received the lawsuits referenced today by a plaintiffs’ attorney,” Vallejo city attorney Claudia Quintana told the Guardian. “We cannot comment on pending litigation, but we will review any filings made and will then respond as required by court procedures. We are confident the fact-based litigation process will determine the truth in these cases.”
Earlier this year, Vallejo residents and civil rights attorneys, including Burris and Nold, asked California’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to conduct a civil rights investigation of the Vallejo police and consider using his powers to reform the department. However it is unknown whether his office will act. “To protect its integrity, we are unable to comment on, even to confirm or deny, a potential or ongoing investigation,” a spokesperson for the attorney general told the Guardian.
Burris has succeeded before in having police agencies placed under federal court oversight, even without the help of the state attorney general or federal justice department. In 2000, he and another Oakland civil rights attorney, James Chanin, sued the Oakland police on behalf of 119 Black men who alleged the department engaged in a pattern and practice of civil rights violations.
The city settled the case in 2003 by agreeing to have a court-appointed monitor watch over a list of institutional reforms. This reform effort is still ongoing and has cost Oakland millions, but the city’s police force went from having one of the highest rates of police shootings in the state, to one of the lowest.
Thurston said she hopes her lawsuit helps make the case for a systematic reform push so that things change in Vallejo.
“It’s gang-type of behavior that has to stop.”
parked while black!!!
Cops slammed black man and arrested him over tinted windows on his ‘fancy car’: lawsuit
September 16, 2019
By Sky Palma - raw story
After Tennessee police pulled over Timothy Hamilton for having tinted windows that were too dark, he ended up in a jail cell. Now, Hamilton, who is black, is suing the Franklin Police Department for using what he claims was excessive force.
According to the Atlanta Black Star, the incident took place on September 2018 and Hamilton filed his suit in August. The incident began when Hamilton was sitting in his parked car in the parking lot of the church where he’s a member when officers cited him for the tinted windows. Officers allege that before Hamilton parked his car, he was parked illegally in the street while visiting a family member, and made an illegal U-turn when he left.
Hamilton’s suit alleged that police grabbed him “by his arms and jerked him back and forth” before slamming him on the hood of his vehicle. He was then arrested.
Police then brought in a K9 unit to search the car for drugs, but found nothing. They did however seized three cellphones, $1,300 in cash and two sealed packages addressed to Hamilton, which turned out to contain speakers, the Tennessean reports. Hamilton was ultimately charged with “improper passing; resisting stop, halt and frisk; and stopping, standing or parking outside a business or residential district.” Those charges were later dropped and expunged from his record.
Speaking to WZTV, Hamilton’s attorney said that the way his client was treated by police was completely unnecessary.
“All they had to do was tell him he violated traffic law and give him a ticket and go on, but that wasn’t their purpose, their purpose was to pick on a young man in a fancy car,” Richard Brooks said. “They said he can’t have this fancy car and be Black in Franklin unless he’s a drug dealer.”
According to the Atlanta Black Star, the incident took place on September 2018 and Hamilton filed his suit in August. The incident began when Hamilton was sitting in his parked car in the parking lot of the church where he’s a member when officers cited him for the tinted windows. Officers allege that before Hamilton parked his car, he was parked illegally in the street while visiting a family member, and made an illegal U-turn when he left.
Hamilton’s suit alleged that police grabbed him “by his arms and jerked him back and forth” before slamming him on the hood of his vehicle. He was then arrested.
Police then brought in a K9 unit to search the car for drugs, but found nothing. They did however seized three cellphones, $1,300 in cash and two sealed packages addressed to Hamilton, which turned out to contain speakers, the Tennessean reports. Hamilton was ultimately charged with “improper passing; resisting stop, halt and frisk; and stopping, standing or parking outside a business or residential district.” Those charges were later dropped and expunged from his record.
Speaking to WZTV, Hamilton’s attorney said that the way his client was treated by police was completely unnecessary.
“All they had to do was tell him he violated traffic law and give him a ticket and go on, but that wasn’t their purpose, their purpose was to pick on a young man in a fancy car,” Richard Brooks said. “They said he can’t have this fancy car and be Black in Franklin unless he’s a drug dealer.”
FBI monitoring immigration activists as violent "extremists" — though there's been no violence
Memo from FBI's Phoenix office claims "anarchist extremists" may seek "armed conflict," citing almost no evidence
IGOR DERYSH - salon
SEPTEMBER 6, 2019 10:00AM (UTC)
An FBI document obtained by Yahoo News shows that the bureau is monitoring groups that protest the Trump administration immigration policies as “extremists.”
An FBI “external intelligence note” that was sent to law enforcement and government agencies by the bureau’s Phoenix field office in May warns that immigration activists are “increasingly arming themselves and using lethal force to further their goals,” although it offered no evidence of violence.
The memo alleges that “anarchist extremists” are “very likely” increasing the “targeting” of immigration enforcement officers and detention facilities and pose the “risk of armed conflict.” The memo acknowledges that the claims were made with “medium” and “low confidence.”
Even though nearly all evidence cited in the memo refers to nonviolent protests and statements, the document alleges that the “threat” to Arizona “likely will grow” and may be “emboldened” if given an “opportunity for an escalation to violence.”
The memo further claims that some of the groups it described as “anarchist extremists” have “banned firearms or [are] carrying loaded weapons.” No specific evidence that this had actually happened was cited.
“These indicators, if found to be accurate, could cause a change in the confidence levels or in the assessments in general,” the document says.
The evidence cited for the FBI's claims largely refers to activist websites and social media accounts calling for “disruptions” near ICE facilities.
The allegation that immigration activists are arming themselves appears to refer to comments from "antifa" groups about training members to use firearms. There have been no instances of shootings linked to antifa members. The document also cites a single human source to claim a group planned to provide “armed support of the migrant caravans” in December 2018. There has been no evidence that any group or any individuals actually did so.
Despite this general lack of hard evidence, the memo states that agents assessed that it was “likely” that immigration activists planned to use firearms against the government and right-wing groups, rather than arming themselves for self-defense, even though sources had told the FBI that these groups have “summarily banned the use of firearms.”
The memo was produced by the FBI Phoenix field office and distributed to other agencies. A bureau spokesperson told Yahoo News that the contents of the document offered only the perspective of the Phoenix field office and included nuanced qualifiers.
“These products are intended to be informative in nature,” the spokesperson said, “and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”
Mike German, a former FBI special agent, told Yahoo News that the memo is evidence of the bureau’s post-9/11 “overreach” in classifying protest groups as terror threats.
“It’s been a feature of the post-9/11 counterterrorism effort by the FBI to focus on nonviolent civil disobedience and to prioritize it,” German said. “For several years after 9/11, the FBI called environmental activists the No. 1 domestic terror threat, even though there’s not a single homicide related to environmental ‘terrorists’ in the United States.”
A 2010 FBI inspector general report criticized the bureau for targeting groups like PETA and Greenpeace, noting that some investigations were “factually weak,” and showed no indication of federal criminal activity.
“In some cases, the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis, and in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information about the groups in its files,” the report said. “The FBI also classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification, which resulted in the watchlisting of subjects during the investigation.”
German told Yahoo News that even groups like antifa, which have been involved in violent street clashes with far-right groups, would not qualify as terror threats.
“Congress passed a definition of domestic terrorism. It requires illegal activities harmful to human life,” German said. “I’m not aware of any fatal attacks committed by somebody associated with an antifascist movement.”
Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security and Justice Department official, told Yahoo News that the FBI also erred in linking antifa to anarchist groups and immigration activists.
“Those are three very different groups,” he said.
This federal scrutiny is apparently not limited to activist groups. An NBC San Diego investigation earlier this year found that government authorities are tracking journalists who have covered migrant caravans at the border.
Snyder called the memo a “head scratcher.” In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that domestic terror cases are on the rise, but that most of them involve “white supremacist violence.”
Despite Wray's testimony, Yahoo News reported last month that the Justice Department had suppressed a report showing that white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The Trump administration has also shifted resources and staff away from investigating white supremacist violence, while increasing DHS investigations that have targeted Muslims and other minority groups.
“There are people out there actually harming other people, and that’s where the counterterrorism resources should be devoted,” German told Yahoo News, “not toward people who are simply challenging government policy,”
An FBI “external intelligence note” that was sent to law enforcement and government agencies by the bureau’s Phoenix field office in May warns that immigration activists are “increasingly arming themselves and using lethal force to further their goals,” although it offered no evidence of violence.
The memo alleges that “anarchist extremists” are “very likely” increasing the “targeting” of immigration enforcement officers and detention facilities and pose the “risk of armed conflict.” The memo acknowledges that the claims were made with “medium” and “low confidence.”
Even though nearly all evidence cited in the memo refers to nonviolent protests and statements, the document alleges that the “threat” to Arizona “likely will grow” and may be “emboldened” if given an “opportunity for an escalation to violence.”
The memo further claims that some of the groups it described as “anarchist extremists” have “banned firearms or [are] carrying loaded weapons.” No specific evidence that this had actually happened was cited.
“These indicators, if found to be accurate, could cause a change in the confidence levels or in the assessments in general,” the document says.
The evidence cited for the FBI's claims largely refers to activist websites and social media accounts calling for “disruptions” near ICE facilities.
The allegation that immigration activists are arming themselves appears to refer to comments from "antifa" groups about training members to use firearms. There have been no instances of shootings linked to antifa members. The document also cites a single human source to claim a group planned to provide “armed support of the migrant caravans” in December 2018. There has been no evidence that any group or any individuals actually did so.
Despite this general lack of hard evidence, the memo states that agents assessed that it was “likely” that immigration activists planned to use firearms against the government and right-wing groups, rather than arming themselves for self-defense, even though sources had told the FBI that these groups have “summarily banned the use of firearms.”
The memo was produced by the FBI Phoenix field office and distributed to other agencies. A bureau spokesperson told Yahoo News that the contents of the document offered only the perspective of the Phoenix field office and included nuanced qualifiers.
“These products are intended to be informative in nature,” the spokesperson said, “and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”
Mike German, a former FBI special agent, told Yahoo News that the memo is evidence of the bureau’s post-9/11 “overreach” in classifying protest groups as terror threats.
“It’s been a feature of the post-9/11 counterterrorism effort by the FBI to focus on nonviolent civil disobedience and to prioritize it,” German said. “For several years after 9/11, the FBI called environmental activists the No. 1 domestic terror threat, even though there’s not a single homicide related to environmental ‘terrorists’ in the United States.”
A 2010 FBI inspector general report criticized the bureau for targeting groups like PETA and Greenpeace, noting that some investigations were “factually weak,” and showed no indication of federal criminal activity.
“In some cases, the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis, and in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information about the groups in its files,” the report said. “The FBI also classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification, which resulted in the watchlisting of subjects during the investigation.”
German told Yahoo News that even groups like antifa, which have been involved in violent street clashes with far-right groups, would not qualify as terror threats.
“Congress passed a definition of domestic terrorism. It requires illegal activities harmful to human life,” German said. “I’m not aware of any fatal attacks committed by somebody associated with an antifascist movement.”
Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security and Justice Department official, told Yahoo News that the FBI also erred in linking antifa to anarchist groups and immigration activists.
“Those are three very different groups,” he said.
This federal scrutiny is apparently not limited to activist groups. An NBC San Diego investigation earlier this year found that government authorities are tracking journalists who have covered migrant caravans at the border.
Snyder called the memo a “head scratcher.” In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that domestic terror cases are on the rise, but that most of them involve “white supremacist violence.”
Despite Wray's testimony, Yahoo News reported last month that the Justice Department had suppressed a report showing that white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The Trump administration has also shifted resources and staff away from investigating white supremacist violence, while increasing DHS investigations that have targeted Muslims and other minority groups.
“There are people out there actually harming other people, and that’s where the counterterrorism resources should be devoted,” German told Yahoo News, “not toward people who are simply challenging government policy,”
Justice comes for the corrupt DEA agent who tried to set up rapper Scarface
Self-described "White Devil" Chad Scott was convicted of using his task force to buy himself a $43,000 truck.
ALAN PYKE - Thinkprogress
AUG 30, 2019, 2:04 PM
A drug enforcement task force operating along the Gulf of Mexico became a rip-and-run criminal enterprise over a seven-year period, federal prosecutors revealed this week.
When jurors convicted the ringleader of the alleged scheme on Wednesday, they also vindicated some longstanding claims leveled by Houston’s hip-hop royalty.
Drug Enforcement Agency special agent Chad Scott — who now faces years in prison after a jury found him guilty of seven charges — had for years been accused of corrupt conduct toward Geto Boys legend Scarface and the Rap-A-Lot Records label.
Court documents in Scott’s case suggest his badge-bearing scammers grew bolder and greedier after early successes stealing from drug dealers.
Scott eventually decided he’d like to have a free Ford F-150. So he had a Houston-based drug dealer who’d been suborned by the crooked police cell buy one, then seized it as part of an asset forfeiture. Rather than hand it over to the task force, court documents say he falsified paperwork about the seizure to say he’d picked it up in Louisiana rather than Texas.
The change allowed Scott to start driving the $43,000 brand-new truck as his work vehicle — rendering it, in effect, his personal chariot whether on duty or off.
Scott was convicted Wednesday of multiple counts of perjury and related crimes of falsification related to the truck swindle and other rip-and-run scams. His co-conspirators — including multiple deputies from sheriff’s departments around the New Orleans area who’d scored plum assignments to the federal task force alongside him — will face trial on related charges later this year, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
An indictment alleges the corruption ran from at least 2009 to 2016. But some Houstonians have had their eyes on Scott and his pals for much longer.
Scott and another DEA agent named Jack Schumacher led a probe of J. Prince’s Rap-A-Lot Records starting in the 1990s. Though the label’s main prodigies are most famous for their hit “Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangster” (it was featured in the movie Office Space), Scarface and other artists on the label have enjoyed prolific and rich careers outside of that hit.
Scott and Schumacher, however, were convinced Rap-A-Lot was a front for a major trafficking network, and used their probe to build cases against numerous people associated with the label.
Neither J. Prince nor Scarface were charged in the sweep. But Schumacher and Scott sought to portray Prince as the button-man behind a murder that was successfully prosecuted around that same time. The man jailed for that crime — Lamar Burks — has maintained his innocence in the killing, which occurred during a dice game in the city’s 5th Ward.
The rap moguls weren’t shy about telling the public that they saw in Scott and Schumacher a dirty operation — years before the current federal investigation says was the beginning of the corrupt activity. Scarface even named Scott and Schumacher directly in two songs from his 2000 release “The Last of a Dying Breed.”
Nineteen years later, court documents in Scott’s case substantiate much of what the Houston rap scene had been saying about the local DEA.
The patterns of illegal behavior described in the papers will be all too familiar to longtime residents of major cities where police have made similar heel-turns. Similar cop gangs have brought down once-prestigious drug war divisions in the Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Bakersfield, and Los Angeles police departments, to name just a few. Distinct from the legal abuse of asset forfeiture rules to goose department budgets, these cartel-like police cells put confiscated cash in their own pockets, charge drug dealers a protection “tax,” and commit home-invasion robberies targeting traffickers they know are unlikely to report them to internal affairs.
As in those other cases, the kingpin of this latest crooks-with-badges microcartel had garnered a flashy reputation in the local press before prosecutors took him in.
“Star DEA agent finds himself at center of sprawling probe as drug task force comes under scrutiny,” read the headline in the New Orleans Advocate when the federal probe first broke three years ago. Scott was described in the story as a “legend [that] extended to the world of drug traffickers, where Scott styled himself the ‘white devil,’ a ruthless cop who strong-armed informants and boasted to suspects that he was ‘the baddest (mother)’ along the Interstate 12 corridor.”
Scott’s two convictions for falsifying records and the three for obstructing justice carry maximum sentences of 20 years each. The two convictions for perjury confer statutory maximum penalties of five years in prison.
He will almost certainly not face the theoretical maximum of 110 years served consecutively that those statutory limits imply, however. U.S. District Judge Jane Milazzo will determine how to apply federal sentencing guidelines to the specific facts of Scott’s case and announce his final sentence at a hearing on December 4.
That means Scott will learn his fate almost 19 years to the day since the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform held public hearings to review Scott and Schumacher’s disastrous crusade against Rap-A-Lot.
When jurors convicted the ringleader of the alleged scheme on Wednesday, they also vindicated some longstanding claims leveled by Houston’s hip-hop royalty.
Drug Enforcement Agency special agent Chad Scott — who now faces years in prison after a jury found him guilty of seven charges — had for years been accused of corrupt conduct toward Geto Boys legend Scarface and the Rap-A-Lot Records label.
Court documents in Scott’s case suggest his badge-bearing scammers grew bolder and greedier after early successes stealing from drug dealers.
Scott eventually decided he’d like to have a free Ford F-150. So he had a Houston-based drug dealer who’d been suborned by the crooked police cell buy one, then seized it as part of an asset forfeiture. Rather than hand it over to the task force, court documents say he falsified paperwork about the seizure to say he’d picked it up in Louisiana rather than Texas.
The change allowed Scott to start driving the $43,000 brand-new truck as his work vehicle — rendering it, in effect, his personal chariot whether on duty or off.
Scott was convicted Wednesday of multiple counts of perjury and related crimes of falsification related to the truck swindle and other rip-and-run scams. His co-conspirators — including multiple deputies from sheriff’s departments around the New Orleans area who’d scored plum assignments to the federal task force alongside him — will face trial on related charges later this year, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
An indictment alleges the corruption ran from at least 2009 to 2016. But some Houstonians have had their eyes on Scott and his pals for much longer.
Scott and another DEA agent named Jack Schumacher led a probe of J. Prince’s Rap-A-Lot Records starting in the 1990s. Though the label’s main prodigies are most famous for their hit “Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangster” (it was featured in the movie Office Space), Scarface and other artists on the label have enjoyed prolific and rich careers outside of that hit.
Scott and Schumacher, however, were convinced Rap-A-Lot was a front for a major trafficking network, and used their probe to build cases against numerous people associated with the label.
Neither J. Prince nor Scarface were charged in the sweep. But Schumacher and Scott sought to portray Prince as the button-man behind a murder that was successfully prosecuted around that same time. The man jailed for that crime — Lamar Burks — has maintained his innocence in the killing, which occurred during a dice game in the city’s 5th Ward.
The rap moguls weren’t shy about telling the public that they saw in Scott and Schumacher a dirty operation — years before the current federal investigation says was the beginning of the corrupt activity. Scarface even named Scott and Schumacher directly in two songs from his 2000 release “The Last of a Dying Breed.”
Nineteen years later, court documents in Scott’s case substantiate much of what the Houston rap scene had been saying about the local DEA.
The patterns of illegal behavior described in the papers will be all too familiar to longtime residents of major cities where police have made similar heel-turns. Similar cop gangs have brought down once-prestigious drug war divisions in the Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Bakersfield, and Los Angeles police departments, to name just a few. Distinct from the legal abuse of asset forfeiture rules to goose department budgets, these cartel-like police cells put confiscated cash in their own pockets, charge drug dealers a protection “tax,” and commit home-invasion robberies targeting traffickers they know are unlikely to report them to internal affairs.
As in those other cases, the kingpin of this latest crooks-with-badges microcartel had garnered a flashy reputation in the local press before prosecutors took him in.
“Star DEA agent finds himself at center of sprawling probe as drug task force comes under scrutiny,” read the headline in the New Orleans Advocate when the federal probe first broke three years ago. Scott was described in the story as a “legend [that] extended to the world of drug traffickers, where Scott styled himself the ‘white devil,’ a ruthless cop who strong-armed informants and boasted to suspects that he was ‘the baddest (mother)’ along the Interstate 12 corridor.”
Scott’s two convictions for falsifying records and the three for obstructing justice carry maximum sentences of 20 years each. The two convictions for perjury confer statutory maximum penalties of five years in prison.
He will almost certainly not face the theoretical maximum of 110 years served consecutively that those statutory limits imply, however. U.S. District Judge Jane Milazzo will determine how to apply federal sentencing guidelines to the specific facts of Scott’s case and announce his final sentence at a hearing on December 4.
That means Scott will learn his fate almost 19 years to the day since the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform held public hearings to review Scott and Schumacher’s disastrous crusade against Rap-A-Lot.
Was a man wrongly identified after police digitally altered his mugshot?
ACLU says case ‘raises big questions’ after Oregon authorities removed facial tattoos before showing image to witnesses
Abené Clayton in Oakland, California
The Guardian
Tue 20 Aug 2019 01.00 EDT
The difference between Tyrone Lamont Allen’s booking photo and the photo seen by bank robbery witnesses is striking, and the image has sparked a national controversy.
Portland police digitally altered the suspect’s mugshot before showing it to witnesses. Now, a federal judge in Oregon is considering whether that is grounds to have the witnesses’ identification thrown out of the case, in a ruling that could set a precedent for the legality of this and other digitally altered mugshots.
“The revelations raise big questions about how many people may have been falsely identified by eyewitnesses in recent years based on changes [to their photo],” said Mat do Santos, the legal director of Oregon’s ACLU chapter.
The alterations date back to April 2017, when Oregon police were searching for the bank robber dubbed the “Foul Mouth Bandit”.
During the search, police described the man who robbed four banks as a middle-aged black man who usually wore a hoodie, baseball cap and sunglasses. The description, based on witness accounts, did not mention tattoos.
Rebecca J. Kavanagh
@DrRJKavanagh
Police decided they would arrest Tyrone Allen for a series of bank robberies. Problem – he didn’t fit the suspect’s description. He has prominent facial tattoos. The suspect had none. Solution – the police digitally erased his tattoos from his mugshot. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/08/the-case-of-the-missing-tattoos-altered-photo-lineup-by-portland-police-draws-objection.html …
Police came to suspect Allen in the case. They organized a photo array, showing multiple profile pictures to witnesses in the robberies. But the photo of Allen they used in the photo lineup did not show Allen’s tattoos, including one above both eyebrows.
The forensic criminalist Mark Weber testified during Allen’s trial that he used Photoshop to paint over Allen’s tattoos, as he’s done with other mugshots.
Officials have said the alterations were meant to ensure that Allen did not “stand out” because of his tattoos. The lead investigator, Detective Brett Hawkinson, who is also part of the FBI’s taskforce on bank robberies, testified that he had ordered the tattoo removal and argued that the tattoos could distract witnesses.
“There are times it has been appropriate to make those small subtle changes. The main purpose is not to make the suspect stand out,” Hawkins said.
Legal experts, and Allen’s lawyer, however, worry that the digital erasure could contribute to unreliable witness testimony. The lawyer, Mark Ahlenmeyer, has filed a motion to throw out the positive witness identifications based on the mugshot controversy.
“This is a very, very slippery slope given the advent of technology,’’ he told Oregon Live, which first reported the case. “We don’t know where this may end.’’
Subtly altering mugshot photos is legal, but the US justice department, in a January 2017 memo, implored law enforcement to document the occasions and reasons behind any changes.
In Allen’s case, that didn’t happen. Weber testified he did not keep track of the changes he made..
Do Santos of the ACLU said that it was troubling law enforcement didn’t document any changes to the photograph and argued the Portland police bureau should proactively disclose similar cases.
“If you can’t do a good photo lineup, the answer isn’t to change the photo, the answer is that a photo lineup just can’t be done,” he said.
Portland police digitally altered the suspect’s mugshot before showing it to witnesses. Now, a federal judge in Oregon is considering whether that is grounds to have the witnesses’ identification thrown out of the case, in a ruling that could set a precedent for the legality of this and other digitally altered mugshots.
“The revelations raise big questions about how many people may have been falsely identified by eyewitnesses in recent years based on changes [to their photo],” said Mat do Santos, the legal director of Oregon’s ACLU chapter.
The alterations date back to April 2017, when Oregon police were searching for the bank robber dubbed the “Foul Mouth Bandit”.
During the search, police described the man who robbed four banks as a middle-aged black man who usually wore a hoodie, baseball cap and sunglasses. The description, based on witness accounts, did not mention tattoos.
Rebecca J. Kavanagh
@DrRJKavanagh
Police decided they would arrest Tyrone Allen for a series of bank robberies. Problem – he didn’t fit the suspect’s description. He has prominent facial tattoos. The suspect had none. Solution – the police digitally erased his tattoos from his mugshot. https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/08/the-case-of-the-missing-tattoos-altered-photo-lineup-by-portland-police-draws-objection.html …
Police came to suspect Allen in the case. They organized a photo array, showing multiple profile pictures to witnesses in the robberies. But the photo of Allen they used in the photo lineup did not show Allen’s tattoos, including one above both eyebrows.
The forensic criminalist Mark Weber testified during Allen’s trial that he used Photoshop to paint over Allen’s tattoos, as he’s done with other mugshots.
Officials have said the alterations were meant to ensure that Allen did not “stand out” because of his tattoos. The lead investigator, Detective Brett Hawkinson, who is also part of the FBI’s taskforce on bank robberies, testified that he had ordered the tattoo removal and argued that the tattoos could distract witnesses.
“There are times it has been appropriate to make those small subtle changes. The main purpose is not to make the suspect stand out,” Hawkins said.
Legal experts, and Allen’s lawyer, however, worry that the digital erasure could contribute to unreliable witness testimony. The lawyer, Mark Ahlenmeyer, has filed a motion to throw out the positive witness identifications based on the mugshot controversy.
“This is a very, very slippery slope given the advent of technology,’’ he told Oregon Live, which first reported the case. “We don’t know where this may end.’’
Subtly altering mugshot photos is legal, but the US justice department, in a January 2017 memo, implored law enforcement to document the occasions and reasons behind any changes.
In Allen’s case, that didn’t happen. Weber testified he did not keep track of the changes he made..
Do Santos of the ACLU said that it was troubling law enforcement didn’t document any changes to the photograph and argued the Portland police bureau should proactively disclose similar cases.
“If you can’t do a good photo lineup, the answer isn’t to change the photo, the answer is that a photo lineup just can’t be done,” he said.
Bounty Hunters Are a Lethal Weapon in a Justice System Corrupted by Money
Shaun King - The Intercept
August 18 2019, 6:00 a.m.
TODAY, I LIVE in Brooklyn, but I didn’t grow up in New York. I’m country. I grew up in a small Kentucky town and was a part of a church that taught us a verse from the Bible that says “the love of money is the root of all evil.” For my whole life, even as my faith has struggled, I’ve held on to that verse and have believed that wherever we find evil, we’ll always find a money trail somewhere nearby.
And I have long since believed that profit, jobs, and wealth are at the center of the explosive growth of America’s mass incarceration crisis – and not just with jails, prisons, and police, but with the offshoot industries that survive and thrive on the back of our crooked legal system. One of these crooked industries involves bounty hunters, and there’s been an incredible injustice with a group of them killing an innocent man in Tennessee and avoiding any real punishment for it.
Jalen Johnson Milan was a beloved 24-year-old father of three young children in Clarksville, Tennessee, about an hour north of Nashville. Two years ago, on a spring evening in April of 2017, Jalen and some buddies, including his cousin, Jaden Hogan, who was driving, took a trip to the local Walmart where they ended up parking next to a car that had a drug informant inside named Kirsten Mahon.
When I say “drug informant,” am I right that your first assumption is that this is about to be a story on a police sting gone awry? You’d think so, but this was something altogether different.
According to surveillance video from the Walmart, within seconds of pulling into that parking spot, their car was surrounded by seven men who frantically yelled from every side, telling Jalen and his friends to get out of their car. The seven men had guns drawn. One of the men who surrounded the vehicle smashed open a window. Freaking out, Jaden Hogan, the driver, backed out of the parking spot, and then mashed the gas to the floor, so that he could get them all away from these men with guns.
They didn’t know if it was a gang, robbers, or police surrounding them, but it was clear their lives were in danger. Put yourself in that position, and imagine your car being surrounded by seven rough-looking dudes with guns drawn who did not identify themselves as police. What would you do?
When Jaden sped away, two of the seven men who surrounded the car, Joshua Young and Roger West Jr., unloaded their guns, firing shot after shot. Jaden, the driver, was hit in the neck, and Jalen was mortally wounded, with a bullet ripping through his heart and lungs. Investigators later tested every bullet at the scene and determined that they all appeared to have been fired by Young and West, according to reporting by The Leaf Chronicle, a newspaper in Clarksville that has provided consistent coverage of the case.
Those seven men got into their car, and for nearly seven miles they chased their prey through Clarksville. Jaden Hogan, the wounded driver, frantically called 911 from the parking lot before the chase was even fully underway, telling the operator that they had been surrounded and shot by a group of men, and that they were fleeing for their lives, speeding down a local road. But here’s the weird thing: The shooters also called 911 saying that they were in an emergency situation as they claimed to be chasing down a local drug dealer named William Ellis.
With both parties on the phone with 911, one of the dispatch operators advised the injured men to pull their car over and surrender to the men who just shot them. But remember this: The shooters weren’t police officers. They weren’t FBI officials or from the Drug Enforcement Administration. They hadn’t been to anybody’s police academy, and they damn sure weren’t supervised by any serious government agency.
They were a ragtag group of bounty hunters and bail bondsmen who were searching for a man named William Ellis who owed them a lot of money because he had skipped bail on two different occasions — leaving debts of thousands of dollars to the bail bondsmen. They had paid a desperate local sex worker, Kirsten Mahon, who struggled with drug addiction, to set up a fake drug deal with Ellis so that they could perform what they called a routine “snatch and grab,” possibly squeeze some money out of him, and then turn him over to authorities. This is routine work for bail bondsmen and bounty hunters.
Except William Ellis wasn’t in the car they had shot and chased; Kirsten Mahon later testified that she tipped Ellis off in advance that people were looking for him. By the time Jaden Hogan finally pulled his car over, his cousin Jalen was already dead. The bullets recklessly fired at the car seven miles prior had ripped his insides all up. The bounty hunters and bail bondsmen would eventually swear under oath that the men in the car shot at them too, but not a single gun was found on their prey, not a single shell casing found in their car, and investigators determined that every bullet fired appeared to be fired at the victims — not from them.
Nine days later, county prosecutors threw the book at the bounty hunters and bail bondsmen — charging them with a slew of crimes ranging from first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping, reckless endangerment, and damn near every other charge you can think of. It took two years for the case to finally come to trial. It was complicated as hell with 50 different witnesses, hundreds of pieces of evidence — and two of the seven defendants had flipped, agreeing to testify against the other five. Altogether, the five remaining men faced a combined 80 charges.
In the end, earlier this month, a jury found the five men not guilty on 79 different charges — only convicting one man, Joshua Young, with recklessly firing his gun in the Walmart parking lot. He might not even go to jail.
Listen, I’m a prison abolitionist. I’d like to see the whole legal system torn down and rebuilt from scratch. But how in hell a group of pissed off bounty hunters and bail bondsmen can kill an innocent man, in what at very best has to be described as a case of mistaken identity, and get away with it, is beyond me. Defense attorneys basically suggested 101 conspiracy theories, effectively planting doubts in the mind of the jury, that William Ellis really was in that car and disappeared somewhere — even though nobody ever saw any such thing happen. The attorneys also suggested that the victims really did have guns and fired them, even though no evidence whatsoever showed such a thing. Their ploy worked — in great part, I believe, because the jurors treated the bail bondsmen and bounty hunters like they would have treated law enforcement officers, giving them respect and deferring to their storyline.
In the end, it’s gun violence run amok. Jalen Milan was one of the nearly 40,000 people shot and killed that year in our country – which more and more resembles the Wild West. And at the center of these past few years, which have been some of the deadliest years ever measured for gun violence, with almost no progress whatsoever on substantive gun reform, is money. It’s always money. Money for campaigns from the NRA. Profits for the firearms industry. Money for lobbyists. And again, right at the center of the shooting death of an innocent young father, were bounty hunters and bail bondsmen so determined to get back their money from a man that they shot a stranger, thinking it was him. Guns are a problem, but dammit, the money trail is never far behind.
And I have long since believed that profit, jobs, and wealth are at the center of the explosive growth of America’s mass incarceration crisis – and not just with jails, prisons, and police, but with the offshoot industries that survive and thrive on the back of our crooked legal system. One of these crooked industries involves bounty hunters, and there’s been an incredible injustice with a group of them killing an innocent man in Tennessee and avoiding any real punishment for it.
Jalen Johnson Milan was a beloved 24-year-old father of three young children in Clarksville, Tennessee, about an hour north of Nashville. Two years ago, on a spring evening in April of 2017, Jalen and some buddies, including his cousin, Jaden Hogan, who was driving, took a trip to the local Walmart where they ended up parking next to a car that had a drug informant inside named Kirsten Mahon.
When I say “drug informant,” am I right that your first assumption is that this is about to be a story on a police sting gone awry? You’d think so, but this was something altogether different.
According to surveillance video from the Walmart, within seconds of pulling into that parking spot, their car was surrounded by seven men who frantically yelled from every side, telling Jalen and his friends to get out of their car. The seven men had guns drawn. One of the men who surrounded the vehicle smashed open a window. Freaking out, Jaden Hogan, the driver, backed out of the parking spot, and then mashed the gas to the floor, so that he could get them all away from these men with guns.
They didn’t know if it was a gang, robbers, or police surrounding them, but it was clear their lives were in danger. Put yourself in that position, and imagine your car being surrounded by seven rough-looking dudes with guns drawn who did not identify themselves as police. What would you do?
When Jaden sped away, two of the seven men who surrounded the car, Joshua Young and Roger West Jr., unloaded their guns, firing shot after shot. Jaden, the driver, was hit in the neck, and Jalen was mortally wounded, with a bullet ripping through his heart and lungs. Investigators later tested every bullet at the scene and determined that they all appeared to have been fired by Young and West, according to reporting by The Leaf Chronicle, a newspaper in Clarksville that has provided consistent coverage of the case.
Those seven men got into their car, and for nearly seven miles they chased their prey through Clarksville. Jaden Hogan, the wounded driver, frantically called 911 from the parking lot before the chase was even fully underway, telling the operator that they had been surrounded and shot by a group of men, and that they were fleeing for their lives, speeding down a local road. But here’s the weird thing: The shooters also called 911 saying that they were in an emergency situation as they claimed to be chasing down a local drug dealer named William Ellis.
With both parties on the phone with 911, one of the dispatch operators advised the injured men to pull their car over and surrender to the men who just shot them. But remember this: The shooters weren’t police officers. They weren’t FBI officials or from the Drug Enforcement Administration. They hadn’t been to anybody’s police academy, and they damn sure weren’t supervised by any serious government agency.
They were a ragtag group of bounty hunters and bail bondsmen who were searching for a man named William Ellis who owed them a lot of money because he had skipped bail on two different occasions — leaving debts of thousands of dollars to the bail bondsmen. They had paid a desperate local sex worker, Kirsten Mahon, who struggled with drug addiction, to set up a fake drug deal with Ellis so that they could perform what they called a routine “snatch and grab,” possibly squeeze some money out of him, and then turn him over to authorities. This is routine work for bail bondsmen and bounty hunters.
Except William Ellis wasn’t in the car they had shot and chased; Kirsten Mahon later testified that she tipped Ellis off in advance that people were looking for him. By the time Jaden Hogan finally pulled his car over, his cousin Jalen was already dead. The bullets recklessly fired at the car seven miles prior had ripped his insides all up. The bounty hunters and bail bondsmen would eventually swear under oath that the men in the car shot at them too, but not a single gun was found on their prey, not a single shell casing found in their car, and investigators determined that every bullet fired appeared to be fired at the victims — not from them.
Nine days later, county prosecutors threw the book at the bounty hunters and bail bondsmen — charging them with a slew of crimes ranging from first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated kidnapping, reckless endangerment, and damn near every other charge you can think of. It took two years for the case to finally come to trial. It was complicated as hell with 50 different witnesses, hundreds of pieces of evidence — and two of the seven defendants had flipped, agreeing to testify against the other five. Altogether, the five remaining men faced a combined 80 charges.
In the end, earlier this month, a jury found the five men not guilty on 79 different charges — only convicting one man, Joshua Young, with recklessly firing his gun in the Walmart parking lot. He might not even go to jail.
Listen, I’m a prison abolitionist. I’d like to see the whole legal system torn down and rebuilt from scratch. But how in hell a group of pissed off bounty hunters and bail bondsmen can kill an innocent man, in what at very best has to be described as a case of mistaken identity, and get away with it, is beyond me. Defense attorneys basically suggested 101 conspiracy theories, effectively planting doubts in the mind of the jury, that William Ellis really was in that car and disappeared somewhere — even though nobody ever saw any such thing happen. The attorneys also suggested that the victims really did have guns and fired them, even though no evidence whatsoever showed such a thing. Their ploy worked — in great part, I believe, because the jurors treated the bail bondsmen and bounty hunters like they would have treated law enforcement officers, giving them respect and deferring to their storyline.
In the end, it’s gun violence run amok. Jalen Milan was one of the nearly 40,000 people shot and killed that year in our country – which more and more resembles the Wild West. And at the center of these past few years, which have been some of the deadliest years ever measured for gun violence, with almost no progress whatsoever on substantive gun reform, is money. It’s always money. Money for campaigns from the NRA. Profits for the firearms industry. Money for lobbyists. And again, right at the center of the shooting death of an innocent young father, were bounty hunters and bail bondsmen so determined to get back their money from a man that they shot a stranger, thinking it was him. Guns are a problem, but dammit, the money trail is never far behind.
‘It's techno-racism’: Detroit is quietly using facial recognition to make arrests
Critics in the majority-black city point out that the technology is flawed and often misidentifies people of color and women
Tom Perkins in Detroit
The Guardian
Sat 17 Aug 2019 02.00 EDT
For the last two years, Detroit police have been quietly utilizing controversial and unreliable facial recognition technology to make arrests in the city.
The news, revealed in May in a Georgetown University report , has shocked many Detroiters and sparked a public debate in the city that is still raging and mirrors similar battles playing out elsewhere in America and across the world. Among other issues, critics in the majority-black city point out that flawed facial recognition software misidentifies people of color and womenat much higher rates.
Detroit also now has the capability to use the technology to monitor residents in real time, though Detroit’s police chief claims it won’t.
Willie Burton, a black member of the civilian Detroit Police Commission that oversees the department, noted Detroit’s population is 83% black and that made using the technology especially worrying.
“This should be the last place police use the technology because it can’t identify one black man or woman to another,” he said. “Every black man with a beard looks alike to it. Every black man with a hoodie looks alike. This is techno-racism.”
At a July meeting on the issue held by the police commission, arguments got so heated over facial recognition that officers arrested and temporarily jailed Burton as he loudly objected to its use.
The technology presents obvious questions over whether police are violating residents’ privacy protections. Detroit’s facial recognition software makes it much easier for the city to track people’s movements across time while efficiently and secretly gathering personal information, said Clare Garvie, an author of the report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology.
“It can betray information about sensitive locations – who someone is as a person, if they’re going to church, an HIV clinic, and the supreme court has said we have a right to privacy even if we are in public,” she said.
Garvie conservatively estimates that a quarter of the nation’s 18,000 police agencies now use facial recognition technology, and over half of American adults’ photos are available for investigation.
Chicago runs a similar program as that in Detroit, while the Los Angeles police department may be operating a small number of cameras that track the public in real time.
Meanwhile, some local governments are proposing regulations to limit it. San Francisco and Oakland in California and Cambridge and Sommerville in Massachusetts have recently banned the technology. Florida’s Orlando scrapped a pilot real-time surveillance program after the software proved to be unreliable, and New York governor Andrew Cuomo is attempting to implement facial recognition software in New York City with no success, so far.
At the federal level, Congress in May held hearings on the issue. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, whose district includes parts of Detroit, recently introduced legislation that would prohibit its use at public housing.
“Policing our communities has become more militarized and flawed,” Tlaib said during the 22 May hearing. “Now we have for-profit companies pushing so-called technology that has never been tested in communities of color, let alone been studied enough to conclude that it makes our communities safer.”
But facial recognition software is just the latest in Detroit’s development of a comprehensive public surveillance apparatus that includes multiple camera programs.
As part of its Project Green Light, the city installed nearly 600 high definition cameras at intersections, schools, churches, public parks, immigration centers, addiction treatment centers, apartment buildings, fast food restaurants, and other businesses around the city.
Police pull still images from those and thousands of other private cameras, then use facial recognition software to cross-reference them with millions of photos pulled from a mugshot database, driver’s license photos, and images scraped from social media.
Were Detroit to start using the software in real time, it could continually scan those entering any location covered by its cameras, or motorists and pedestrians traveling through an intersection, for example.
Though there’s no oversight, Detroit police chief James Craig insists the department won’t use real time software and only runs still images as an “investigative tool” for violent crimes.
Police say any match requires “sufficient corroboration” before an arrest can be made. But Garvie notes the software has already lead to false arrests elsewhere in the country.
Facial recognition technology’s premise “flips on its head” the idea of innocent until proven guilty, Garvie said at a recent Detroit forum on the topic.
“Biometrically identifying everyone and checking them against a watch list or their criminal history assumes they’re guilty until they prove they’re innocent by not having a record,” she said. “That’s not going to make us more secure. It’s going to make us more afraid.”
A Detroit police spokesperson couldn’t say how many arrests involved the technology, though Craig told the Guardian no false arrests have been made. He acknowledged issues with accuracy, but stressed that matches are treated as a lead and go through a rigorous review process.
“Facial recognition is only part of methodical investigation to identify and confirm that the suspect is involved in that crime,” he said.
Some residents say the technology is already sowing more distrust in Detroit as civil rights advocates accuse the city of intentionally muddying the waters. Georgetown’s report noted police did not mention on the Green Light website that cameras would be used with facial recognition software, and property owners who installed them weren’t made aware of it.
“There’s been no transparency and we won’t stand for it,” Burton said. “We don’t want it here, and we are going to fight back because we deserve better.”
The news, revealed in May in a Georgetown University report , has shocked many Detroiters and sparked a public debate in the city that is still raging and mirrors similar battles playing out elsewhere in America and across the world. Among other issues, critics in the majority-black city point out that flawed facial recognition software misidentifies people of color and womenat much higher rates.
Detroit also now has the capability to use the technology to monitor residents in real time, though Detroit’s police chief claims it won’t.
Willie Burton, a black member of the civilian Detroit Police Commission that oversees the department, noted Detroit’s population is 83% black and that made using the technology especially worrying.
“This should be the last place police use the technology because it can’t identify one black man or woman to another,” he said. “Every black man with a beard looks alike to it. Every black man with a hoodie looks alike. This is techno-racism.”
At a July meeting on the issue held by the police commission, arguments got so heated over facial recognition that officers arrested and temporarily jailed Burton as he loudly objected to its use.
The technology presents obvious questions over whether police are violating residents’ privacy protections. Detroit’s facial recognition software makes it much easier for the city to track people’s movements across time while efficiently and secretly gathering personal information, said Clare Garvie, an author of the report from the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology.
“It can betray information about sensitive locations – who someone is as a person, if they’re going to church, an HIV clinic, and the supreme court has said we have a right to privacy even if we are in public,” she said.
Garvie conservatively estimates that a quarter of the nation’s 18,000 police agencies now use facial recognition technology, and over half of American adults’ photos are available for investigation.
Chicago runs a similar program as that in Detroit, while the Los Angeles police department may be operating a small number of cameras that track the public in real time.
Meanwhile, some local governments are proposing regulations to limit it. San Francisco and Oakland in California and Cambridge and Sommerville in Massachusetts have recently banned the technology. Florida’s Orlando scrapped a pilot real-time surveillance program after the software proved to be unreliable, and New York governor Andrew Cuomo is attempting to implement facial recognition software in New York City with no success, so far.
At the federal level, Congress in May held hearings on the issue. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, whose district includes parts of Detroit, recently introduced legislation that would prohibit its use at public housing.
“Policing our communities has become more militarized and flawed,” Tlaib said during the 22 May hearing. “Now we have for-profit companies pushing so-called technology that has never been tested in communities of color, let alone been studied enough to conclude that it makes our communities safer.”
But facial recognition software is just the latest in Detroit’s development of a comprehensive public surveillance apparatus that includes multiple camera programs.
As part of its Project Green Light, the city installed nearly 600 high definition cameras at intersections, schools, churches, public parks, immigration centers, addiction treatment centers, apartment buildings, fast food restaurants, and other businesses around the city.
Police pull still images from those and thousands of other private cameras, then use facial recognition software to cross-reference them with millions of photos pulled from a mugshot database, driver’s license photos, and images scraped from social media.
Were Detroit to start using the software in real time, it could continually scan those entering any location covered by its cameras, or motorists and pedestrians traveling through an intersection, for example.
Though there’s no oversight, Detroit police chief James Craig insists the department won’t use real time software and only runs still images as an “investigative tool” for violent crimes.
Police say any match requires “sufficient corroboration” before an arrest can be made. But Garvie notes the software has already lead to false arrests elsewhere in the country.
Facial recognition technology’s premise “flips on its head” the idea of innocent until proven guilty, Garvie said at a recent Detroit forum on the topic.
“Biometrically identifying everyone and checking them against a watch list or their criminal history assumes they’re guilty until they prove they’re innocent by not having a record,” she said. “That’s not going to make us more secure. It’s going to make us more afraid.”
A Detroit police spokesperson couldn’t say how many arrests involved the technology, though Craig told the Guardian no false arrests have been made. He acknowledged issues with accuracy, but stressed that matches are treated as a lead and go through a rigorous review process.
“Facial recognition is only part of methodical investigation to identify and confirm that the suspect is involved in that crime,” he said.
Some residents say the technology is already sowing more distrust in Detroit as civil rights advocates accuse the city of intentionally muddying the waters. Georgetown’s report noted police did not mention on the Green Light website that cameras would be used with facial recognition software, and property owners who installed them weren’t made aware of it.
“There’s been no transparency and we won’t stand for it,” Burton said. “We don’t want it here, and we are going to fight back because we deserve better.”
NYPD union president insists ‘I have black friends’ after he’s caught promoting a rabidly racist video
August 14, 2019
By Sky Palma - Raw Story
The president of New York City’s second largest police union says his sharing of a racist video was just an “honest mistake” and that he shouldn’t be disciplined for it.
As the New York Post first reported, the video was emailed to thousands of police sergeants by Sergeants Benevolent Association president Ed Mullins. Along with the video, Mullins included a message that read, “Pay close attention to every word. You will hear what goes through the mind of real policemen every single day on the job. This is the best video I’ve ever seen telling the public the absolute truth.”
From the NY Post:
The roughly 15-minute video kicks off with footage from a fatal Los Angeles police shooting as someone raps, “Don’t make the blacks kids angry.”
“One of the most astonishing aspects of police work in an urban environment is that almost literally no one has a job,” the unnamed narrator says, descending into one of several racist rants during the nearly 15-minute video.
“A presidential administration succeeded in forever vilifying its nation’s police while simultaneously granting blacks crime as their new entitlement,” the narrator says later.
Speaking to Gothamist, Mullins said he didn’t watch the video and therefore didn’t know its contents before sending it out.
“I have black friends, white friends, Asian friends—I wouldn’t want to insult anyone,” he said. “I don’t think one incident defines who I am.”
The police union Mullins represents has faced criticism for its online behavior before. As Gothamist points out, this past May the SBA tweeted a video showing a graphic sex act in an attempt to conflate congestion pricing and “quality of life” crimes. In another tweet from April, the SBA declared that “Ferguson Missouri was a lie.”
According to Anne Oredeko of The Legal Aid Society, Mullins racism is “no secret.”
“SBA members should question why someone like that has been selected to represent them and what that says about their organization and the values that their members hold,” she told Gothamist.
As the New York Post first reported, the video was emailed to thousands of police sergeants by Sergeants Benevolent Association president Ed Mullins. Along with the video, Mullins included a message that read, “Pay close attention to every word. You will hear what goes through the mind of real policemen every single day on the job. This is the best video I’ve ever seen telling the public the absolute truth.”
From the NY Post:
The roughly 15-minute video kicks off with footage from a fatal Los Angeles police shooting as someone raps, “Don’t make the blacks kids angry.”
“One of the most astonishing aspects of police work in an urban environment is that almost literally no one has a job,” the unnamed narrator says, descending into one of several racist rants during the nearly 15-minute video.
“A presidential administration succeeded in forever vilifying its nation’s police while simultaneously granting blacks crime as their new entitlement,” the narrator says later.
Speaking to Gothamist, Mullins said he didn’t watch the video and therefore didn’t know its contents before sending it out.
“I have black friends, white friends, Asian friends—I wouldn’t want to insult anyone,” he said. “I don’t think one incident defines who I am.”
The police union Mullins represents has faced criticism for its online behavior before. As Gothamist points out, this past May the SBA tweeted a video showing a graphic sex act in an attempt to conflate congestion pricing and “quality of life” crimes. In another tweet from April, the SBA declared that “Ferguson Missouri was a lie.”
According to Anne Oredeko of The Legal Aid Society, Mullins racism is “no secret.”
“SBA members should question why someone like that has been selected to represent them and what that says about their organization and the values that their members hold,” she told Gothamist.
White Cop Who Shot, Killed Alton Sterling Allowed to Resign Even as Baton Rouge Police Chief Says
‘He Should Have Never Been Hired’
By Lauren Floyd - Atlanta Black Star
August 4, 2019
The Baton Rouge police chief said a white police officer who shot and killed Alton Sterling shortly after the cop accosted the man for selling homemade CDs outside a convenience store three years ago “should have never been hired.”
“We’re sorry, Baton Rouge,” Chief Murphy Paul said during a news conference Thursday. “I want to apologize to the family of Alton Sterling and also to his kids.”
Officials announced at the recent press conference that Blane Salamoni, who was fired in March 2018 for his role in Sterling’s death, was allowed to undo the termination and resign instead as part of an agreement.
Body-camera video released last year shows a policeman later identified as Salamoni threatening to shoot Sterling, cursing at him, ordering a Taser be used on him and firing the fatal shots July 5, 2016.
The incident sparked protests across the nation.
Attorney Leo Hamilton, who represented the police department in coming to an agreement with Salamoni, said he did not receive any back pay or financial compensation and dismissed his claims against the police department.
Hamilton also said at the press conference that Salamoni had a prior arrest on his record related to a domestic incident, which he didn’t disclose when he applied to the Baton Rouge Police Department.
“Mr. Salamoni’s ill temperament and disregard of rules was evident before his employment with BRPD,” Hamilton said.
Tommy Dewey, Salamoni’s attorney, rebutted Hamilton’s claim that Salamoni didn’t disclose his prior arrest Friday in a statement on behalf of the union supporting Salamoni.
“Blane Salamoni fully disclosed his past during his interview process, which resulted in a 7-0 unanimous decision to hire him,” Dewey said in the statement WAFB obtained. “Blaine Salamoni finished 1 st overall in his academy class and successfully completed the FTO program.”
Dewey said his client was “very offended” by the police chief’s remarks.
Chief Paul went on to say Thursday:
“Our past requires that we see this Alton Sterling incident not as an isolated one, but what it truly represents. It’s an example of a well documented pattern of behavior by a man who should have never ever worn this uniform. Period. We have to call it for what it is. We have some who believe that Salamoni’s behavior was acceptable because he encountered an armed individual. There’s a reason we train officers on how to respond to certain situations and it’s our job to make sure he’s behaving in the way he was trained.”
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said in a statement released after the press conference that public servants should be held to a high standard from which “no one is exempt.”
She said she stands behind the city’s officers.
“However, our department no longer has room for individuals who can’t live up to its high standards or have shown a pattern of unprofessional behavior,” Broome said.
“We’re sorry, Baton Rouge,” Chief Murphy Paul said during a news conference Thursday. “I want to apologize to the family of Alton Sterling and also to his kids.”
Officials announced at the recent press conference that Blane Salamoni, who was fired in March 2018 for his role in Sterling’s death, was allowed to undo the termination and resign instead as part of an agreement.
Body-camera video released last year shows a policeman later identified as Salamoni threatening to shoot Sterling, cursing at him, ordering a Taser be used on him and firing the fatal shots July 5, 2016.
The incident sparked protests across the nation.
Attorney Leo Hamilton, who represented the police department in coming to an agreement with Salamoni, said he did not receive any back pay or financial compensation and dismissed his claims against the police department.
Hamilton also said at the press conference that Salamoni had a prior arrest on his record related to a domestic incident, which he didn’t disclose when he applied to the Baton Rouge Police Department.
“Mr. Salamoni’s ill temperament and disregard of rules was evident before his employment with BRPD,” Hamilton said.
Tommy Dewey, Salamoni’s attorney, rebutted Hamilton’s claim that Salamoni didn’t disclose his prior arrest Friday in a statement on behalf of the union supporting Salamoni.
“Blane Salamoni fully disclosed his past during his interview process, which resulted in a 7-0 unanimous decision to hire him,” Dewey said in the statement WAFB obtained. “Blaine Salamoni finished 1 st overall in his academy class and successfully completed the FTO program.”
Dewey said his client was “very offended” by the police chief’s remarks.
Chief Paul went on to say Thursday:
“Our past requires that we see this Alton Sterling incident not as an isolated one, but what it truly represents. It’s an example of a well documented pattern of behavior by a man who should have never ever worn this uniform. Period. We have to call it for what it is. We have some who believe that Salamoni’s behavior was acceptable because he encountered an armed individual. There’s a reason we train officers on how to respond to certain situations and it’s our job to make sure he’s behaving in the way he was trained.”
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said in a statement released after the press conference that public servants should be held to a high standard from which “no one is exempt.”
She said she stands behind the city’s officers.
“However, our department no longer has room for individuals who can’t live up to its high standards or have shown a pattern of unprofessional behavior,” Broome said.
Los Angeles police spied on anti-Trump protesters
Case is one of several across the US of police targeting anti-Trump and anti-fascist groups with monitoring and criminal trials
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
The Guardian
Fri 19 Jul 2019 23.09 BST
The Los Angeles police department has revealed in court that it infiltrated an activist group planning anti-Trump protests, in the latest case of US law enforcement spying on leftwing organizers.
A confidential informant working with the LAPD secretly recorded multiple meetings of a group called Refuse Fascism in 2017, according to newly disclosed police documents. The LAPD transcripts, first reported by the Los Angeles Times and reviewed by the Guardian, were submitted in a criminal case against activists who blocked a California freeway during an anti-Trump demonstration.
Police equipped an informant with a hidden recording device and had the individual attend Refuse Fascism gatherings at a local church “in an attempt to elicit information regarding the closure” of the freeway and to express interest in being involved “in any such future activities”, police wrote.
Miguel Antonio, one of the activists who was monitored and recorded by the informant, and then subsequently charged with misdemeanors for shutting down the freeway, told the Guardian on Friday that he would not let the surveillance stop him from organizing.
“We’re not scared. We’re not going to back down in the face of repression,” the 28-year-old said, adding that this kind of spying was meant to discourage activists. “You’re in a church, and you’re meeting about organizing a peaceful protest, and you’re running the risk of being charged with conspiracy or these petty crimes.”
The LA case is one of several across the country of law enforcement aggressively targeting anti-Trump and anti-fascist groups with monitoring and criminal trials.
In Sacramento, police worked with neo-Nazis to pursue cases against leftwing activists, including seeking charges against anti-fascist protesterswho were stabbed at a white supremacist rally. In Berkeley, police collaborated with a violent pro-Trump demonstrator to prosecute a leftwing group last year, and there have been similar controversies in Washington DC, Oregon and other states.
The LAPD surveillance was particularly striking given that there was documented evidence of violence involving far-right groups in southern California around the same time, and that those white supremacist organizations do pose a serious threat, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and expert on local extremist groups.
“This case seems to fall into a pattern of police agencies viewing anti-fascist organizing as terrorism, while overlooking the far more deadly and frequent violence perpetrated by white supremacists and other far-right militants,” he said.
LAPD did not conduct a similar spying operation on far-right groups while it targeted Refuse Fascism, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In a statement released late Friday, LAPD said the agency’s chief, Michel Moore, had “ordered a top-to-bottom review to determine whether the department’s stringent requirements for the use of confidential informants were followed”.
The department was “steadfastly committed to constitutional policing”, and would “take all necessary and appropriate steps to investigate any potential concerns raised”, the statement added.
The city attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the activists, declined to comment.
On 27 September 2017, Antonio and a group of activists shut down a freeway in downtown LA to protest Trump, one year after his election. After they were arrested, LAPD sent the informant, who has not been identified, to monitor the group’s meetings at the Echo Park United Methodist Church.
During an 11 October meeting, the informant approached Antonio and said, “Are we gonna do like any freeway things again…or major things like that?”, according to a transcript of a secret recording.
“I’m not sure,” Antonio responded.
The informant then said he was interested in joining future activities: “I thought the freeway thing was pretty good.”
Antonio then explained to the informant his thinking behind disrupting people’s morning commutes and raising awareness about Trump’s attacks on Muslims, LGBTQ people, immigrants and others.
The informant attended multiple meetings after that and coordinated with an LAPD detective. In one case, police noted in a write-up that one of the activists was caught on the recording making a joke about the president, saying, “That’s an awfully hot coffeepot, should I drop it on Donald Trump?”
Antonio was eventually charged with several misdemeanors, including obstructing public movement on a highway, failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly and failure to comply with a law enforcement order. A jury recently deadlocked in the case, and a new trial is scheduled to begin later this month.
Damon Alimouri, Antonio’s lawyer, said the LAPD surveillance was “unjust and outrageous”, adding that he suspected this type of spying was likely to escalate across the country.
“The further left that younger people go, we will continue to see law enforcement infiltrating these groups secretly,” he said, adding, “To a certain extent, it might intimidate some, and I think that’s the intention of the LAPD.”
Frank Wulf, the pastor of the church where the LAPD was conducting the surveillance, said it was “offensive” for police to “infiltrate a group whose purposes are clearly non-violent”.
“The government is interfering with the rights of protest in America,” he said, adding that he worried about a chilling effect: “You never know if the person sitting next to you is a police informant or not.”
By permitting this type of surveillance, the LAPD also appeared to be violating its own standards meant to protect against unconstitutional monitoring, said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
“The target for them was a group organizing in a church where there was no indication of any criminal activity that was afoot,” he said, adding, “What this story demonstrates is that the agency is frankly rogue.”
News of the infiltration was a reminder that the politically motivated surveillance that was common decades earlier in the US has not stopped, said Antonio, who also organizes with a group called the Revolution Club.
He said that freeway demonstrations were meant to inspire people to get involved in organizing and remind them that the threats on people’s rights are urgent – and that they can’t wait until 2020.
“There are concentration camps at the border, they are stripping women’s rights to control their body, they are threatening war with Iran and they are destroying the planet,” he said. “We want people to act.”
A confidential informant working with the LAPD secretly recorded multiple meetings of a group called Refuse Fascism in 2017, according to newly disclosed police documents. The LAPD transcripts, first reported by the Los Angeles Times and reviewed by the Guardian, were submitted in a criminal case against activists who blocked a California freeway during an anti-Trump demonstration.
Police equipped an informant with a hidden recording device and had the individual attend Refuse Fascism gatherings at a local church “in an attempt to elicit information regarding the closure” of the freeway and to express interest in being involved “in any such future activities”, police wrote.
Miguel Antonio, one of the activists who was monitored and recorded by the informant, and then subsequently charged with misdemeanors for shutting down the freeway, told the Guardian on Friday that he would not let the surveillance stop him from organizing.
“We’re not scared. We’re not going to back down in the face of repression,” the 28-year-old said, adding that this kind of spying was meant to discourage activists. “You’re in a church, and you’re meeting about organizing a peaceful protest, and you’re running the risk of being charged with conspiracy or these petty crimes.”
The LA case is one of several across the country of law enforcement aggressively targeting anti-Trump and anti-fascist groups with monitoring and criminal trials.
In Sacramento, police worked with neo-Nazis to pursue cases against leftwing activists, including seeking charges against anti-fascist protesterswho were stabbed at a white supremacist rally. In Berkeley, police collaborated with a violent pro-Trump demonstrator to prosecute a leftwing group last year, and there have been similar controversies in Washington DC, Oregon and other states.
The LAPD surveillance was particularly striking given that there was documented evidence of violence involving far-right groups in southern California around the same time, and that those white supremacist organizations do pose a serious threat, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and expert on local extremist groups.
“This case seems to fall into a pattern of police agencies viewing anti-fascist organizing as terrorism, while overlooking the far more deadly and frequent violence perpetrated by white supremacists and other far-right militants,” he said.
LAPD did not conduct a similar spying operation on far-right groups while it targeted Refuse Fascism, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In a statement released late Friday, LAPD said the agency’s chief, Michel Moore, had “ordered a top-to-bottom review to determine whether the department’s stringent requirements for the use of confidential informants were followed”.
The department was “steadfastly committed to constitutional policing”, and would “take all necessary and appropriate steps to investigate any potential concerns raised”, the statement added.
The city attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the activists, declined to comment.
On 27 September 2017, Antonio and a group of activists shut down a freeway in downtown LA to protest Trump, one year after his election. After they were arrested, LAPD sent the informant, who has not been identified, to monitor the group’s meetings at the Echo Park United Methodist Church.
During an 11 October meeting, the informant approached Antonio and said, “Are we gonna do like any freeway things again…or major things like that?”, according to a transcript of a secret recording.
“I’m not sure,” Antonio responded.
The informant then said he was interested in joining future activities: “I thought the freeway thing was pretty good.”
Antonio then explained to the informant his thinking behind disrupting people’s morning commutes and raising awareness about Trump’s attacks on Muslims, LGBTQ people, immigrants and others.
The informant attended multiple meetings after that and coordinated with an LAPD detective. In one case, police noted in a write-up that one of the activists was caught on the recording making a joke about the president, saying, “That’s an awfully hot coffeepot, should I drop it on Donald Trump?”
Antonio was eventually charged with several misdemeanors, including obstructing public movement on a highway, failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly and failure to comply with a law enforcement order. A jury recently deadlocked in the case, and a new trial is scheduled to begin later this month.
Damon Alimouri, Antonio’s lawyer, said the LAPD surveillance was “unjust and outrageous”, adding that he suspected this type of spying was likely to escalate across the country.
“The further left that younger people go, we will continue to see law enforcement infiltrating these groups secretly,” he said, adding, “To a certain extent, it might intimidate some, and I think that’s the intention of the LAPD.”
Frank Wulf, the pastor of the church where the LAPD was conducting the surveillance, said it was “offensive” for police to “infiltrate a group whose purposes are clearly non-violent”.
“The government is interfering with the rights of protest in America,” he said, adding that he worried about a chilling effect: “You never know if the person sitting next to you is a police informant or not.”
By permitting this type of surveillance, the LAPD also appeared to be violating its own standards meant to protect against unconstitutional monitoring, said Mohammad Tajsar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.
“The target for them was a group organizing in a church where there was no indication of any criminal activity that was afoot,” he said, adding, “What this story demonstrates is that the agency is frankly rogue.”
News of the infiltration was a reminder that the politically motivated surveillance that was common decades earlier in the US has not stopped, said Antonio, who also organizes with a group called the Revolution Club.
He said that freeway demonstrations were meant to inspire people to get involved in organizing and remind them that the threats on people’s rights are urgent – and that they can’t wait until 2020.
“There are concentration camps at the border, they are stripping women’s rights to control their body, they are threatening war with Iran and they are destroying the planet,” he said. “We want people to act.”
STATE DRIVERS' LICENSE PHOTOS ARE ROUTINELY USED IN FACIAL RECOGNITION SEARCHES BY ICE, FBI AGENTS TO 'PRESERVE OUR SECURITY'
BY BRENDAN COLE - Newsweek
ON 7/8/19 AT 7:54 AM EDT
The images on millions of Americans' driving licenses are routinely being used by U.S. state agencies as a way to bolster their facial recognition databases without government approval, it has been reported.
According to The Washington Post, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been using photos from Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) registries to boost state surveillance infrastructure.
The revelation comes following public records requests made by Georgetown Law researchers, which provided thousands of internal documents, emails and facial recognition requests from the past five years.
Police frequently access fingerprints and biometric data from criminal suspects, but DMV data contains the photos of most of a state's residents, the majority of whom have never been charged with a crime.
There are 21 states in which data can accessed without a court order or warrant, Techspot reported.
In a statement, chairman of the house oversight committee, Elijah Cummings said he was worried that these searches were being done without the authorization of either Congress or state legislatures.
"Law enforcement's access of state databases is often done in the shadows with no consent," he said.
Meanwhile Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, the House Oversight Committee's ranking Republican, said that no citizen getting their driver's license would have known that their personal details could be used for surveillance purposes.
"No individual signed off on that when they renewed their driver's license, got their driver's licenses. They didn't sign any waiver saying, 'Oh, it's okay to turn my information, my photo, over to the FBI.' No elected officials voted for that to happen," he said.
The FBI has good links with the DMV, whose databases it has used to carry out more than 390,000 facial recognition searches since 2011, the Post reported.
The paper said that public records requests of internal documents and emails over the past five years also highlight the discrepancy between state and federal laws over the push to find and deport undocumented migrants.
In several states, undocumented immigrants can still get drivers' licenses. However they would not realize that the data they provided to get the permits were also being accessed by ICE agents.
Clare Garvie, a senior associate with Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, described it as an "insane breach of trust" for the state to encourage undocumented migrants to provide their details "then turn around and allow ICE access to that."
However an ICE spokesman has said its "investigative techniques are generally considered law-enforcement sensitive."
Asked to comment, the FBI referred to congressional testimony by deputy assistant director, Kimberly J. Del Greco, who said last month that facial recognition technology was critical "to preserve our nation's freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected, and preserve our security."
"Further, there is value in searching all available external databases, which have enabled the FBI to develop investigative leads, further investigations, and help solve crimes, she added.
According to The Washington Post, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been using photos from Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) registries to boost state surveillance infrastructure.
The revelation comes following public records requests made by Georgetown Law researchers, which provided thousands of internal documents, emails and facial recognition requests from the past five years.
Police frequently access fingerprints and biometric data from criminal suspects, but DMV data contains the photos of most of a state's residents, the majority of whom have never been charged with a crime.
There are 21 states in which data can accessed without a court order or warrant, Techspot reported.
In a statement, chairman of the house oversight committee, Elijah Cummings said he was worried that these searches were being done without the authorization of either Congress or state legislatures.
"Law enforcement's access of state databases is often done in the shadows with no consent," he said.
Meanwhile Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, the House Oversight Committee's ranking Republican, said that no citizen getting their driver's license would have known that their personal details could be used for surveillance purposes.
"No individual signed off on that when they renewed their driver's license, got their driver's licenses. They didn't sign any waiver saying, 'Oh, it's okay to turn my information, my photo, over to the FBI.' No elected officials voted for that to happen," he said.
The FBI has good links with the DMV, whose databases it has used to carry out more than 390,000 facial recognition searches since 2011, the Post reported.
The paper said that public records requests of internal documents and emails over the past five years also highlight the discrepancy between state and federal laws over the push to find and deport undocumented migrants.
In several states, undocumented immigrants can still get drivers' licenses. However they would not realize that the data they provided to get the permits were also being accessed by ICE agents.
Clare Garvie, a senior associate with Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, described it as an "insane breach of trust" for the state to encourage undocumented migrants to provide their details "then turn around and allow ICE access to that."
However an ICE spokesman has said its "investigative techniques are generally considered law-enforcement sensitive."
Asked to comment, the FBI referred to congressional testimony by deputy assistant director, Kimberly J. Del Greco, who said last month that facial recognition technology was critical "to preserve our nation's freedoms, ensure our liberties are protected, and preserve our security."
"Further, there is value in searching all available external databases, which have enabled the FBI to develop investigative leads, further investigations, and help solve crimes, she added.
The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops
June 4, 2019
By The Conversation - Raw Story
Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new.
There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest.
I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged.
Slave patrols
There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.
Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.
The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.
Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.
The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
The first police forces were overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime.
As Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Gary Potter explains, officers were expected to control a “dangerous underclass” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. Through the early 20th century, there were few standards for hiring or training officers.
Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.
Jim Crow laws
Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.
For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live.
The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. But within two decades, Jim Crow laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.
For about 80 years, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spacesfor blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality.
Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs.
Reverberating today
For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.
The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American.
Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.
In addition, the police disproportionately target black drivers.
When a Stanford University research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic racial profiling, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver’s complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.
This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.
There is greater understanding within the police that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are becoming more diverse.
What’s more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take “diversity in criminal justice” courses. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.
In addition, law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to recognize and minimize their own biases in New York City and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.
But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.
But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new.
There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
The precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. Those riots happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest.
I’m a criminal justice researcher who often focuses on issues of race, class and crime. Through my research and from teaching a course on diversity in criminal justice, I have come to see how the roots of racism in American policing – first planted centuries ago – have not yet been fully purged.
Slave patrols
There are two historical narratives about the origins of American law enforcement.
Policing in southern slave-holding states had roots in slave patrols, squadrons made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery. They located and returned enslaved people who had escaped, crushed uprisings led by enslaved people and punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules.
The first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s. As University of Georgia social work professor Michael A. Robinson has written, by the time John Adams became the second U.S. president, every state that had not yet abolished slavery had them.
Members of slave patrols could forcefully enter anyone’s home, regardless of their race or ethnicity, based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.
The more commonly known precursors to modern law enforcement were centralized municipal police departments that began to form in the early 19th century, beginning in Boston and soon cropping up in New York City, Albany, Chicago, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
The first police forces were overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime.
As Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Gary Potter explains, officers were expected to control a “dangerous underclass” that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor. Through the early 20th century, there were few standards for hiring or training officers.
Police corruption and violence – particularly against vulnerable people – were commonplace during the early 1900s. Additionally, the few African Americans who joined police forces were often assigned to black neighborhoods and faced discrimination on the job. In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans.
Jim Crow laws
Slave patrols formally dissolved after the Civil War ended. But formerly enslaved people saw little relief from racist government policies as they promptly became subject to Black Codes.
For the next three years, these new laws specified how, when and where African Americans could work and how much they would be paid. They also restricted black voting rights, dictated how and where African Americans could travel and limited where they could live.
The ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 quickly made the Black Codes illegal by giving formerly enslaved blacks equal protection of laws through the Constitution. But within two decades, Jim Crow laws aimed at subjugating African Americans and denying their civil rights were enacted across southern and some northern states, replacing the Black Codes.
For about 80 years, Jim Crow laws mandated separate public spacesfor blacks and whites, such as schools, libraries, water fountains and restaurants – and enforcing them was part of the police’s job. Blacks who broke laws or violated social norms often endured police brutality.
Meanwhile, the authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs.
Reverberating today
For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.
The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American.
Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy.
In addition, the police disproportionately target black drivers.
When a Stanford University research team analyzed data collected between 2011 and 2017 from nearly 100 million traffic stops to look for evidence of systemic racial profiling, they found that black drivers were more likely to be pulled over and to have their cars searched than white drivers. They also found that the percentage of black drivers being stopped by police dropped after dark when a driver’s complexion is harder to see from outside the vehicle.
This persistent disparity in policing is disappointing because of progress in other regards.
There is greater understanding within the police that brutality, particularly lethal force, leads to public mistrust, and police forces are becoming more diverse.
What’s more, college students majoring in criminal justice who plan to become future law enforcement officers now frequently take “diversity in criminal justice” courses. This relatively new curriculum is designed to, among other things, make future police professionals more aware of their own biases and those of others. In my view, what these students learn in these classes will make them more attuned to the communities they serve once they enter the workforce.
In addition, law enforcement officers and leaders are being trained to recognize and minimize their own biases in New York City and other places where people of color are disproportionately stopped by the authorities and arrested.
But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.
gestapo usa funnies
Reasonable Force
The everyday assault on Blue Lives.
By Khalil Bendib ~ Other Words.com
