Wednesday, June 3, 2020
The Mount Vernon Police Tapes: In Secretly Recorded Phone Calls, Officers Say Innocent People Were Framed
As Adam Serwer said of his piece on Twitter today, "American policing is set up to reward officers who commit abuses, and punish those who report them. It’s not a system that can be overcome by the benign intentions of individual cops." Here's how it begins.
—Erika
—Erika
When the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into the back of George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes while Floyd pleaded for help, he was merely following the president’s advice.
“Please don’t be too nice,” Donald Trump told an audience of police officers on Long Island in 2017, in a speech largely focused on the MS-13 gang. The audience laughed. “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’”
Floyd’s killing has sparked nationwide protests, despite the fact that the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million without work, is still killing about 1,000 people a day in the United States. Those Americans who were disproportionately dying from a plague came out in force to protest being murdered by their government. Trump, who ran as the “law and order” candidate, now presides over the very “American carnage” he vowed to end.
A different president might have tried to quell the unrest and unify the nation, but Trump is incapable of that. He cannot rally Americans around a common identity or interest, because his presidency is a rejection of the concept, an affirmation of the conviction that America’s traditional social hierarchies are good and just. He is hardly the first president to embrace those hierarchies as unassailably virtuous, but he is the first in decades to do so openly. Law and order, for this president, simply means that he and his ideological allies are above the law, while others, such as Floyd, are merely subject to it. The chaos sweeping across the United States has many causes, but the one over which the president has the most control is the culture of lawlessness and impunity he has cultivated and embraced. When you attempt to impose “law and order” without justice, you get chaos.
The moral core of the protests is a simple demand: that police who abuse their authority be held accountable, that black Americans be able to live free lives without fearing that they will be cut short by a chance encounter with law enforcement. This demand clashes with the history of the United States, in which the ideal of equal justice coexists uneasily with the tacit understanding of many Americans that guarding the color line is one of law enforcement’s obligations, a commitment that has existed from slavery to the beating of marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. When Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Ronald Reagan blamed the activist for his own murder, hissing that King’s death was the kind of “great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order.”
When a white dog-walker in Central Park threatened to call the police on a black bird-watcher and tell them that “an African American man is threatening my life,” she was leveraging their mutual understanding that the police exist to protect white people from black people. This is why Chauvin and his fellow officers thought nothing of him being videotaped as he dug his knee into Floyd’s neck, and why authorities in Georgia saw no crime in the stalking and killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Integrating police departments was meant to help align law enforcement with its stated ideals, but as in every other area of public policy, correcting centuries of tradition is an arduous task, even if one is sincerely committed to it.
A report on the New Orleans courts by The Lens on how the DA’s office refused to prosecute nearly half of the felony domestic violence cases in 2019.
—Erika
—Erika
A new report by the watchdog group Court Watch NOLA reveals that the Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office refused to prosecute 47 percent of felony domestic violence cases in 2019. Late last year the DA received criticism when it was revealed that the office had dropped 83 percent of misdemeanor domestic violence cases in New Orleans Municipal Court in 2018 and 2019.
Simone Levine, director of Court Watch NOLA, said the refusal rates for both misdemeanor and felony cases reflects a broader disregard for victims of crime in the New Orleans criminal justice system.
“I think it sends a simple message. I think that crime victims are simply not being listened to. I don’t think that they are being involved in the process,” Levine said of the refusal rates. “I think that they’re forgotten. I think that they’re forgotten by everyone.”
The section of the report contends that in general crime victims in New Orleans — specifically victims of domestic violence — are not being provided with adequate resources and are often left out of the criminal justice process that is intended to keep them safe.
George Joseph at Gothamist has obtained secret recordings of police in Mt. Vernon, NY.
—Erika
—Erika
In hours of secretly recorded telephone conversations, police officers in Mount Vernon, New York, reveal widespread corruption, brutality and other misconduct in the troubled Westchester County city just north of the Bronx.
Caught on tape by a whistleblower cop, the officers said they witnessed or took part in alarming acts of police misconduct, from framing and beating residents to collaborating with drug dealers, all as part of a culture of impunity within the department’s narcotics unit.
The Mount Vernon police tapes, obtained exclusively by Gothamist/WNYC, were recorded from 2017 to this year by Murashea Bovell, a 12-year veteran of the department who has been blowing the whistle on misconduct for years.
In 2014 and 2015, Bovell reported his colleagues’ alleged corruption and brutality in confidential complaints to the city and a lawsuit against the city, which was dismissed on procedural grounds. But he saw little change, so he began quietly recording his colleagues to substantiate his own claims.
“I need to have something tangible,” he told Gothamist/WNYC. “Something to prove that what I was saying is true, and wouldn’t fall on deaf ears if the time came.”
The tapes are just the latest in a series of public corruption scandals that have rocked the city in recent years. The police department itself has gone through at least five different commissioners since 2015. Bovell sued the city again last year, alleging retaliation for his activities.
LINK
RSN: Barack Obama | How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
03 June 20
Barack Obama | How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
Barack Obama, Medium
Obama writes: "As millions of people across the country take to the streets and raise their voices in response to the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing problem of unequal justice, many people have reached out asking how we can sustain momentum to bring about real change."
Barack Obama, Medium
Obama writes: "As millions of people across the country take to the streets and raise their voices in response to the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing problem of unequal justice, many people have reached out asking how we can sustain momentum to bring about real change."
Ultimately, it’s going to be up to a new generation of activists to shape strategies that best fit the times. But I believe there are some basic lessons to draw from past efforts that are worth remembering.
First, the waves of protests across the country represent a genuine and legitimate frustration over a decades-long failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system in the United States. The overwhelming majority of participants have been peaceful, courageous, responsible, and inspiring. They deserve our respect and support, not condemnation — something that police in cities like Camden and Flint have commendably understood.
On the other hand, the small minority of folks who’ve resorted to violence in various forms, whether out of genuine anger or mere opportunism, are putting innocent people at risk, compounding the destruction of neighborhoods that are often already short on services and investment and detracting from the larger cause. I saw an elderly black woman being interviewed today in tears because the only grocery store in her neighborhood had been trashed. If history is any guide, that store may take years to come back. So let’s not excuse violence, or rationalize it, or participate in it. If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves.
Second, I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.
Moreover, it’s important for us to understand which levels of government have the biggest impact on our criminal justice system and police practices. When we think about politics, a lot of us focus only on the presidency and the federal government. And yes, we should be fighting to make sure that we have a president, a Congress, a U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it. But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels.
It’s mayors and county executives that appoint most police chiefs and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with police unions. It’s district attorneys and state’s attorneys that decide whether or not to investigate and ultimately charge those involved in police misconduct. Those are all elected positions. In some places, police review boards with the power to monitor police conduct are elected as well. Unfortunately, voter turnout in these local races is usually pitifully low, especially among young people — which makes no sense given the direct impact these offices have on social justice issues, not to mention the fact that who wins and who loses those seats is often determined by just a few thousand, or even a few hundred, votes.
So the bottom line is this: if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn’t between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform.
Finally, the more specific we can make demands for criminal justice and police reform, the harder it will be for elected officials to just offer lip service to the cause and then fall back into business as usual once protests have gone away. The content of that reform agenda will be different for various communities. A big city may need one set of reforms; a rural community may need another. Some agencies will require wholesale rehabilitation; others should make minor improvements. Every law enforcement agency should have clear policies, including an independent body that conducts investigations of alleged misconduct. Tailoring reforms for each community will require local activists and organizations to do their research and educate fellow citizens in their community on what strategies work best.
But as a starting point, here’s a report and toolkit developed by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and based on the work of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing that I formed when I was in the White House. And if you’re interested in taking concrete action, we’ve also created a dedicated site at the Obama Foundation to aggregate and direct you to useful resources and organizations who’ve been fighting the good fight at the local and national levels for years.
I recognize that these past few months have been hard and dispiriting — that the fear, sorrow, uncertainty, and hardship of a pandemic have been compounded by tragic reminders that prejudice and inequality still shape so much of American life. But watching the heightened activism of young people in recent weeks, of every race and every station, makes me hopeful. If, going forward, we can channel our justifiable anger into peaceful, sustained, and effective action, then this moment can be a real turning point in our nation’s long journey to live up to our highest ideals.
Let’s get to work.
George Floyd's niece Angel Buechner speaks during a protest outside the residence of governor of Minnesota Tim Walz, over his death, an unarmed black man, who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes on June 1, 2020 in Minneapolis. (photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images)
State of Minnesota Files Civil Rights Charge Against Minneapolis Police After George Floyd's Death
Nancy Dillon, New York Daily News
Dillon writes: "Minnesota has filed a civil rights complaint against the Minneapolis Police Department to investigate racism 'that is generations deep,' Governor Tim Walz announced Tuesday."
READ MORE
Nancy Dillon, New York Daily News
Dillon writes: "Minnesota has filed a civil rights complaint against the Minneapolis Police Department to investigate racism 'that is generations deep,' Governor Tim Walz announced Tuesday."
READ MORE
New York governor Andrew Cuomo is joined by Rosie Perez and Chris Rock at a press conference where the two performers helped to promote coronavirus testing, social distancing, and the use of a face mask on May 28, 2020 in New York City. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
David Harvey | Capitalism Is Not the Solution to Urban America's Problems - Capitalism Itself Is the Problem
David Harvey, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a fresh round of soul-searching in establishment media outlets about the problems of urban America. Unless we address the root cause of those problems in the structure of our economic system, we'll never be able to solve them."
David Harvey, Jacobin
Excerpt: "The COVID-19 crisis has triggered a fresh round of soul-searching in establishment media outlets about the problems of urban America. Unless we address the root cause of those problems in the structure of our economic system, we'll never be able to solve them."
EXCERPT:
Ronald Reagan famously remarked that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Until we realize that “capital is not the solution to our problem, capital is the problem,” we will be lost. Capital builds Hudson Yards and not affordable housing for those who are trying to live on less than $40,000 a year. Until capital can do the latter, all attempts at reform, however well-meaning, are sure to be coopted into the cycles of endless capital accumulation for the benefit of the few. Capital will continue to function in this way irrespective of the social and ecological consequences, while leaving the mass of the population to scrimp and save — if that is even possible — just to get by.
A woman holds an anti-Zero Tolerance policy sign at a protest outside the White House in 2018. (photo: Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call)
Homeland Security Grossly Understated Family Separations, Watchdog Says
Tanvi Misra, Roll Call
Misra writes: "Customs and Border Protection separated dozens more migrant children at ports of entry in 2018 than it publicly attested to at the height of the Trump administration's so-called zero tolerance policy, according to a new report published Tuesday by the Homeland Security Department's internal watchdog."
READ MORE
Tanvi Misra, Roll Call
Misra writes: "Customs and Border Protection separated dozens more migrant children at ports of entry in 2018 than it publicly attested to at the height of the Trump administration's so-called zero tolerance policy, according to a new report published Tuesday by the Homeland Security Department's internal watchdog."
READ MORE
Police begin to clear demonstrators gathered June 1, 2020, near the White House in Washington as they protest the death of George Floyd. Floyd died May 25 after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP)
Ahead of Trump Bible Photo Op, Police Forcibly Expelled Priest From St. John's Church Near White House
Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service
Jenkins writes: "Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church's patio."
READ MORE
Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service
Jenkins writes: "Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church's patio."
READ MORE
A rally for Black Lives Matter. (photo: Noah Berger/AP)
White Supremacist Group Identity Evropa Posed as Antifa on Twitter and Called for Looting and Violence
David Gilbert, VICE
Gilbert writes: "A white supremacist group linked to deadly right-wing violence in Charlottesville in 2017 used a fake Twitter account to pose as 'Antifa' and incite violence during the current wave of protests against police brutality."
READ MORE
David Gilbert, VICE
Gilbert writes: "A white supremacist group linked to deadly right-wing violence in Charlottesville in 2017 used a fake Twitter account to pose as 'Antifa' and incite violence during the current wave of protests against police brutality."
READ MORE
A farmer walked through a burned area of Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Brazil, last year. (photo: Carl De Souza/AFP/Getty Images)
Mass Extinctions Are Accelerating, Scientists Report
Rachel Nuwer, The New York Times
Nuwer writes: "We are in the midst of a mass extinction, many scientists have warned - this one driven not by a catastrophic natural event, but by humans."
Rachel Nuwer, The New York Times
Nuwer writes: "We are in the midst of a mass extinction, many scientists have warned - this one driven not by a catastrophic natural event, but by humans."
On Monday, there was more bad news: We are racing faster and closer toward the point of collapse than scientists previously thought, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The extinction rate among terrestrial vertebrate species is significantly higher than prior estimates, and the critical window for preventing mass losses will close much sooner than formerly assumed — in 10 to 15 years.
“We’re eroding the capabilities of the planet to maintain human life and life in general,” said Gerardo Ceballos, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and lead author of the new study.
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