01 April 21
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We Obtained New FBI Documents on How and Why Fred Hampton Was Murdered
Aaron J. Leonard and Conor A. Gallagher, Jacobin
Excerpt: "These discoveries, while adding to the historical record, also give a clearer picture of the thinking behind the FBI's measures in their efforts to destroy the Left."
FBI files related to the 1969 murder of Fred Hampton, newly obtained by Jacobin, shed light on two key aspects of the bureau’s anti–Black Panthers operation: one, FBI informant William O’Neal was more vital — beyond helping murder Hampton — than previously understood. Two, sabotaging the Panthers’ ability to work with other organizations was an explicit FBI goal.
he release of Judas and the Black Messiah has once again put the spotlight on the Chicago police and the FBI’s culpability in the murder of Fred Hampton, a rising leader in the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the pivotal year of 1969. In our previous Jacobin article, we documented the bureau’s efforts specifically aimed at Hampton and stressed the need for more information to better understand the circumstances surrounding his murder.
Since then, we have obtained 433 pages of the FBI’s official “COINTELPRO” files on the Chicago Black Panther Party (BPP). Along with this, the FBI, pursuant to a Freedom of Information request by Aaron Leonard, released another 490 pages on their employee, and handler of FBI informant and Black Panther William O’Neal, Special Agent Roy Martin Mitchell.
With this new information, two things come more clearly into focus. First, the FBI counterintelligence operations against the Chicago BPP were particularly focused on sabotaging the group’s ability to join and work with other organizations. Second, bureau informant William O’Neal, who had garnered a leading position in the Chicago chapter, was a far more vital resource — beyond complicity in the murder of Fred Hampton — than has been understood.
These discoveries, while adding to the historical record, also give a clearer picture of the thinking behind the FBI’s measures in their efforts to destroy the Left. A fuller understanding of this thinking and methodology matters for a new left aiming to avoid the bureau’s efforts at disruption in the twenty-first century.
Students for a Democratic Society
In 1969, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the largest radical student organization of the sixties, broke apart, a result both of the group’s own internal divisions and efforts by the FBI to head off the group from evolving beyond its “big tent” inclusiveness into a more disciplined, radical organization. Given that, it is not surprising the bureau would also expend serious effort to sabotage relations between SDS, whose national office was then in Chicago, and the Chicago Black Panther Party.
To that end, there were two COINTELPROs – official disruptive operations that were proposed, approved, and executed in the FBI hierarchy — leveled at SDS documented in the files. The first scheme aimed to disrespect the BPP in relation to SDS. As the head of the Chicago FBI wrote to the FBI director, “Through BPP informants and other Black Nationalist informants plant the idea that SDS is exploiting the BPP by trying to use them as ‘cannon fodder’ for a white revolution.”
The idea was to use the racial and class differences of the two groups against each other. This comes through in the ”COINTELPRO-NEW LEFT” memo of May 1, 1969: “The concept of white students studying in universities while Black Panthers are going to jail or being killed in the ghetto would be encouraged.” The FBI was optimistic about the success of this undertaking, writing, “It is felt that BPP will be receptive to charges of white exploitation, and may react strongly to it, thus weakening or dissolving the alliance with SDS.”
Hedging their bets, the bureau wrote that if that plan did not work, they could also undermine SDS by amplifying the student radicals’ already considerable defensiveness in regard to the Panthers.
If the BPP accepts the above, but does not break with SDS they can be encouraged to “exploit” SDS by making further demands on them to “prove their loyalty.” Increased demand for funds and free printing of BPP literature could place pressure on the strained finances of SDS.
This COINTELPRO was approved, with the FBI cannily instructing that “sources should be given different arguments so that this does not look like a plan.” As they explained:
Under present circumstances, SDS is giving complete, almost slavish support to the BPP, which would jeopardize the standing of any SDS informant who criticized BPP. If there is any wavering of the SDS support of BPP, informants would be used to aggravate any developing split.
The FBI was wading into a complex situation in 1969, where SDS was riven by acrimonious debate between one faction who supported the BPP unilaterally, and another embodied in the Progressive Labor Party’s “Worker-Student Alliance” faction, which sided against the BPP, putting forward the slogan that “all nationalism is reactionary.”
In that context, what is striking about this scheme is how closely it corresponded to one event that played out. Jeremy Varon in his book Bringing the War Home documenting the rise and fall of the Weather Underground, a splinter of SDS that ended up undertaking political violence, Varon recounts an incident where the BPP needed logistical support from SDS in the aftermath of the killing of Panther associate Jake Winters:
In [Weatherman Russell] Neufeld’s recollection, the Panthers had wanted Weatherman to print their memorial poster for him; but Weatherman, lacking money for the materials, was unable to provide that help. So the Panthers, led by Hampton, stormed the Weatherman office and beat members with two-by-fours, while muttering lines from Stalin. The Weathermen were stunned by the Panthers’ eruption, attributing it to the immense pressure the Panthers were under. Neufeld was clubbed by Hampton and bears the scar on his head to this day.
While we cannot say with certainty that the FBI’s scheming had an impact on the Panthers’ actions, it is notable how it tracks with the bureau’s aims outlined in their COINTELPRO proposal. In this they were seizing on actual existing divisions between both groups.
The Weathermen in particular were consumed with the idea of their middle-class “white skin privilege” and were loath to alienate the Panthers. For their part the Panthers had FBI “sources” whispering to them that SDS was disrespecting them.
Nation of Islam
Chicago was also the headquarters of the Nation of Islam (NOI), whose leader Elijah Muhammad was named in the bureau’s March 1968 COINTELPRO memo, which outlined a program to undermine and destroy Black nationalist organizations. In that memo, Muhammad is singled out as a potential “messiah” who could “electrify the militant black nationalist movement.” His mention in the FBI memos in regard to the Chicago BPP, however, has more to do with another stated aim of the “Black Hate” COINTELPRO: “Prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups.”
Specifically, in a June 1969 memo, the FBI suggested placing a cartoon in the NOI’s newspaper “Muhammad Speaks.” The aim was to “appeal to the vanity of ELIJAH MUHAMMAD, in the sense that the BPP would be depicted as yet another black group which has either sold out to or is dominated by whites.” While the cartoons are not included in the released file, a memo detailing the scheme, suggests an image of “a white radical mounted on a black panther.”
In preparing this proposal, the bureau gave permission to the Chicago office “to delicately explore with CG 6896-R, [an informant code where CG means Chicago, 6896 is their unique number and R means Racial Informant] associated with the Nation of Islam (NOI) publication ‘Muhammad Speaks’ the possibility of attempting to have these cartoons, or a cartoon, utilized by this publication to obtain a widespread dissemination.”
The FBI abandoned the scheme, not out of distaste for the idea, but in order to keep their informant’s identity secret. As they wrote in July 1969:
Chicago definitely feels that this source, who occupies a very delicate and sensitive position with the NOI [though not a member], should not in any way be pressured or persuaded to take or initiate any action which in any way would compromise him…
This is a particularly intriguing entry, suggesting the FBI had contact with someone with high-level access to the Nation of Islam, a highly insular group, which the predominately white FBI had minimal ability to approach without immediately being identified. Who that person was, however, must for now remain a mystery.
By July 1970, the bureau assessed that given the existing acrimony between the BPP and NOI — one group inclining to revolutionary socialism, the other firmly advocating black separatism — the best course of action would be to do nothing. As they wrote, “the BPP and the NOI are already at odds” and “this trend should be allowed to continue unmolested….” Not only was doing nothing easier, in the bureau’s view, “if it ever became public knowledge that the Bureau was a participant in creating a dispute between black groups” it could prove “most embarrassing.”
BPP’s Publications
It has long been known that the FBI circulated a coloring book, purported to be published by the Black Panthers, with the aim of making the group appear bloodthirsty and violent, thereby alienating broader public support. Mostly flying under the radar, however, was a plan by the FBI to use the Panthers’ own material against them. The bureau anonymously mailed the BPP’s holiday greeting cards to “newspaper editors, public officials, responsible businessmen, and clergy.” The aim was to make the recipients “aware of the vicious nature of the BPP.”
It is unclear what effect this had, if any. But the notion of using a group’s own materials against it — by sending it to forces who would perceive it as hostile — was a consistent method of the FBI in the period of the long sixties.
A May 1970 proposal put a twist on this method, suggesting to insert a page in the Black Panther newspaper as if it were a legitimate part of that issue, that “could contain material which would be critical of local BPP policy and personnel, including threats to expell [sic] local members and call for realignment of the local chapter.” To carry this out, they made a “preliminary inquiry” at Chicago’s O’Hare airport — suggesting they had a cooperative source there — and determined “it is possible to access to shipments of the Panther paper under secure conditions.”
The outcome of this project is unknown. Pulling it off would have been a major logistical feat, to say nothing of being vulnerable to exposure via a simple call to the Oakland office. Still, the objective of splitting apart the group through use of its own press — intercepted at the airport — is striking in its boldness.
The Informant
The above proposals and actions were part of official COINTELPRO operations, meaning they had specific criteria to meet and procedures to follow before they could be implemented by the FBI. In carrying such plans out, however, one element in the bureau’s work involved something more basic, the use of informants who gained a position of trust in the groups they were targeting. These informants could not only supply intelligence but advance the FBI’s objectives by operating internally within the target group. In the case of the Chicago BPP, no informer was more key to these efforts than William O’Neal.
Today, O’Neal is best known for being the “Judas” character played by LaKeith Stanfield in Judas and the Black Messiah. O’Neal, however, was not fictional, but rather the person who supplied a floor plan for the police raid that would result in the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Notably, however, O’Neal, who was recruited by FBI Special Agent Roy Martin Mitchell, joined the Chicago Panthers before Hampton’s rise to the position of branch chairman and continued in the organization a year after Hampton’s and Clark’s murders. So it is worth examining his activity as a member of the Illinois BPP more broadly.
As the Chicago BPP sought to expand in February 1969, the FBI reported that the chapter had been approached by a faction of the West Side Chicago gang, the Vice Lords, headed by Edward “Pepilo” Perry. Perry “offered to join the BPP, giving up their former identities as Vicelords [sic].” The bureau, however, was keen to prevent the growth of the BPP, particularly its merging with other groups. In order to sabotage this possibility they instructed their informant to raise suspicions about the Vice Lords:
The BPP is well aware that the Chicago Police Department Gang Intelligence Unit, headed by Captain WILLIAM BUCKNEY, has many sources in such gangs, possibly even young black police officers. The source (CG 7251-R PROB) [O’Neal] has been instructed to play upon this fear of youth gangs, in that in recruiting gang members the BPP may well be recruiting police spies. On this particular occasion the source was in personal conversation with HAMPTON, during the course of the meeting with Perry, and reminded him of this danger.
O’Neal’s work appeared to have been successful, with the FBI later writing, “It is believed this caution to HAMPTON played a considerable role in the reluctance of the BPP to accept PERRY, as might normally have been expected.” In other words, William O’Neal, the FBI informant, who would play a critical role in the killing of the very man he was advising, is telling Hampton he needs to be wary of informants.
O’Neal was not just sabotaging unity — he was also helping get Panthers arrested. As early as April 1969, the bureau was reporting on how instrumental he was in the arrest of multiple Panthers:
[A] number of arrests locally for BPP members have been effected, primarily through information provided by Chicago BPP source, CG 7251-R (PROB) [O’Neal]. The information has been made available to the Bureau previously, under the BPP caption; however, in brief relates to the arrest on March 28, 1969, of five BPP members, returning to Chicago from an appearance the previous evening in Racine, Wisconsin, a description of the automobile being used for this travel, together with the indication several of these BPP members would be armed was given [to] the Chicago Police Department (PD).
At the same time he was undermining the group, O’Neal was moving up its ranks. By July 1969, he was no longer head of security for Chicago, having ascended to chief of staff for the statewide organization. O’Neal had been offered the position of “Chief of Security” but turned it down “saying the Party is full of informants and he wants no part of this job” — a savvy move given how high the level of suspicion and paranoia was about informants at the time — a paranoia O’Neal himself was working to create.
Roy Mitchell
O’Neal’s handler, Roy Mitchell, continued to receive internal praise in the aftermath of the killing of Fred Hampton, though it is less clear what he was being praised for. This praise comes through, in a memo to Chicago SAC Marlin W. Johnson, from J. Edgar Hoover, dated March 18, 1970, where certain unnamed agents in the Chicago office are commended. As Hoover writes, “Through you [Johnson], I want to commend those agents in the Chicago Office who participated so competently in a matter of substantial interest to the Bureau in the security field.”
A number of things stand out about this memo, published here for the first time. First is the obliqueness of its content, written in a way that the uninformed reader has no idea what the “matter of substantial interest” is. Second is the fact that Roy Mitchell’s name is handwritten at the top, rather than being typed into the memo itself. And finally there is a stamp at the bottom of the missive, “REMOVED FROM FIELD PERSONNEL FILE 67 – NOT RECORDED.” All of which suggests that, unlike an earlier commendation to Mitchell immediately after the Hampton killing, the director is being very careful to minimize the paper trail to Mitchell, who was garnering unwanted attention for his role in the Hampton killing.
The actual nature of the “matter of substantial interest” referenced in this memo must for now remain a mystery. Perhaps once material like William O’Neal’s informant file is made public, things will become clearer.
The obliqueness in that memo is less present in another commendation directed to Mitchell’s files — though again, Mitchell’s name is handwritten at the top and a “REMOVED FROM FIELD PERSONNEL FILE stamp appears at the bottom — for agents in Chicago who worked on apprehending Angela Davis: “I want to commend, through you, those agents of the Chicago Office who performed so effectively relative to the investigation of Top Ten Fugitive Angela Yvonne Davis, the subject of an Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution case.”
While there are no specifics, what comes through is that the bureau’s work in Chicago — including Mitchell, whose informant work provided information that would be ultimately be used by the Chicago police to murder Fred Hampton and Mark Clark — had become incredibly effective, to the point that FBI leadership commended that work for aiding the FBI’s national objectives.
Don’t Get Fooled Again
What comes through in this new material is how successful the FBI was in seizing on the Chicago chapter’s weaknesses — not only the heightened vulnerability that came with the dynamic of police attacks and armed self-defense, but also with rumor and innuendo.
While the contending, and often confused, politics within the organization were ultimately decisive in all this — the BPP itself would split in March 1971 between two equally bad positions, Huey P. Newton’s reformist “survival pending revolution” philosophy and Eldridge Cleaver’s inclination toward political violence — the measures by law enforcement played no small role in these developments.
That the bureau had placed an informant in a position of rising power, where he could keep the FBI apprised of who was in leadership, the status of membership, who might have had weapons or be otherwise legally vulnerable, to say nothing of a sense of the internal disputes, both political and personal, appear as no small reason for their successes.
The murder of Fred Hampton and the destructive efforts against the Black Panthers in Chicago by the FBI cannot be undone. But they can be understood — and in ways far better than was possible fifty-one years ago. Armed with such knowledge, a new cohort of leftist activists — knowing the perils of incendiary rumors, damaging sectarianism, and the efforts of those who would encourage individuals and organizations, whether informants or simply misguided radicals, to perilously step over legal limits — can be made less vulnerable to efforts that were far too successful in the past.
Emails exchanged between Trump official Peter Navarro and Airboss Defense Group CEO Patrick Callahan show that the company sold respirators to FEMA before any contract was awarded and expected to be paid up front, breaking from typical protocol. 'Consider it done,' Navarro wrote. (photo: House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis)
Documents Show Trump Officials Skirted Rules to Reward Politically Connected and Untested Firms With Huge Pandemic Contracts
J. David McSwane, ProPublica
McSwane writes:
House Democrats investigating the COVID-19 response say Trump adviser Peter Navarro pressured agencies to award deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
top adviser to former President Donald Trump pressured agency officials to reward politically connected or otherwise untested companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts as part of a chaotic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the early findings of an inquiry led by House Democrats.
Peter Navarro, who served as Trump’s deputy assistant and trade adviser, essentially verbally awarded a $96 million deal for respirators to a company with White House connections. Later, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency were pressured to sign the contract after the fact, according to correspondence obtained by congressional investigators.
Documents obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis after a year of resistance from the Trump administration offer new details about Navarro’s role in a largely secretive buying spree of personal protective equipment and medical supplies.
But they also show he was among the first Trump officials to sense the urgency of the building crisis, urging the president to push agencies and other officials to “combat the virus swiftly in ‘Trump Time’” and cut through the red tape of the federal purchasing system.
In another communication, Navarro was so adamant that a potential $354 million contract be awarded to an untested pharmaceutical company that he told the top official at the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, “my head is going to explode if this contract does not get immediately approved.”
Navarro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The committee’s work backs up investigations by ProPublica and other news outlets into the more than $36 billion the federal government has awarded, much of it without traditional bidding and with little scrutiny, to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
At least five of the committee’s lines of inquiry are exploring issues reported by ProPublica, including the $96 million no-bid deal for respirators that was ordered by Navarro, a $34.5 million deal signed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that fell apart and ended with a contractor pleading guilty to fraud, a contract for masks awarded to a former Trump administration official, and the revelation that FEMA had paid millions to a contractor with a history of fraud allegations for unusable and unsanitary fake test tubes.
In a letter describing the subcommittee’s findings, Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina and members of the committee told President Joe Biden’s emergency response team that Trump’s lack of action worsened the health crisis.
“The President rejected calls from governors to ensure that the country had sufficient (personal protective equipment) and other supplies to address the crisis, leading to severe shortages and forcing states and cities to compete on the open market,” they wrote.
The committee asked officials overseeing FEMA and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, along with the director of the National Archives, to provide records detailing Navarro’s actions and the circumstances behind several questionable contracts awarded in response to the pandemic, which has left more than 550,000 Americans dead and many more suffering.
“In the absence of a coordinated national plan, various White House officials pursued ineffective, ad hoc approaches to procuring certain supplies. Recently obtained documents show that White House officials pushed federal agencies to issue non-competitive contracts for certain pharmaceutical ingredients and other items — some of which would not be ready for many months or even years — even as acute shortages for surgical masks, nitrile gloves, gowns, and other items continued,” members of the subcommittee wrote.
The respirator deal, with Airboss Defense Group, a subsidiary of Canadian company Airboss of America, was reported by ProPublica in April 2020 after a highly unusual entry in federal procurement data indicated the contract had been directly ordered by the White House. The Trump administration provided few answers about the award, but records the company provided to Congress indicate the firm used an influential consultant to connect Navarro with Airboss CEO Patrick Callahan.
Retired four-star Army Gen. John Keane, whom Trump had recently awarded the Medal of Freedom, reached out to Navarro on behalf of Airboss and the company got a phone meeting with the White House Coronavirus Task Force, emails show. The emails indicate that the company delivered an initial batch of respirators to FEMA before any contract was awarded, and the company upped its production on the promise that the White House, and Navarro, would make a contract official. Emails indicate the company expected to be paid upfront, at contract signing. The federal government typically doesn’t pay until a contract is agreed to and a product is delivered.
Airboss’ parent company nearly tripled its sales in large part because of the deals Navarro helped broker, the subcommittee wrote, and saw a $12 million increase in profit from April to June 2020. The company said it hadn’t seen the subcommittee’s letters but defended its work with FEMA.
An Airboss spokesperson said in a statement that the company is “proud of its successful efforts to rapidly respond to the urgent requests of the then White House Coronavirus Task Force to help supply the U.S. Government with urgently-needed PPE equipment to save lives, and protect our front-line healthcare professionals in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. Within days of the request, ADG mobilized its extensive U.S. PPE manufacturing capabilities, and vast supply chain network to produce and begin delivering this critical equipment.”
In a separate contract negotiation, this time for generic pharmaceuticals, Navarro pressured FEMA and officials leading the effort to beef up a depleted national stockpile to award a potential $354 million deal to Phlow to make drug ingredients. In an email pressing BARDA officials Navarro wrote:
“This is a travesty. I need PHLOW noticed by Monday morning. This is being screwed up. Let’s move this now. We need to flip the switch and they can’t move until you do. FULL funding as we discussed.”
Democrats on the subcommittee noted that Phlow had never before received a federal contract and had incorporated just a couple months earlier, in January 2020. ProPublica left a message with a company spokeswoman, who has not yet responded.
In another public letter this month, the subcommittee expressed concern that Robert Stewart, the CEO of Federal Government Experts LLC, which was awarded a no-bid $34.5 million contract with the VA and a smaller deal with FEMA, wasn’t cooperating with its investigation.
This contradicts statements his lawyer made before a federal district judge just weeks before, that Stewart was helping congressional investigators, as he pleaded guilty to multiple counts of fraud. Stewart did not immediately respond to calls and text messages.
Police in riot gear. (photo: Getty)
Police Departments - Not Taxpayers - Should Pay the Bill for Misconduct Settlements
Miriam Aroni Krinsky, MarketWatch
Krinsky writes: "The recent $27 million settlement between the city of Minneapolis and the family of George Floyd is the largest pretrial settlement in a civil rights wrongful death case in U.S. history. It's also a glaring signal that our system to hold police accountable for wrongdoing is woefully broken."
Cash-strapped cities and ordinary citizens bear the financial and social cost of police violence
Civil settlements for police misconduct have become more frequent — and in the many cases where criminal charges fail to materialize, this is the only recourse for victims and families to seek accountability and remediation for the harm they have suffered. What is lesser known is that these payouts don’t actually achieve accountability, nor do they serve as a deterrent for police misconduct because the funds almost never come from police budgets.
Instead, these payouts are often covered by insurance policies or settlement budgets where taxpayers — as opposed to the wrongdoers or the institutions that fail to correct practices that perpetuate misconduct — are left footing the bill. And this structure offers little risk-management incentive to address the underlying problems.
If we are serious about reducing police violence and promoting police accountability, we need to place responsibility for systemic failures at the foot of those who can correct them by holding police departments financially liable for problems that lead to wrongdoing. More importantly, we must proactively transform policing to prevent deadly incidents from occurring in the first instance and stop forcing taxpayers to subsidize misconduct while police departments and unions face no financial accountability and often actively obstruct reforms that could prevent the very situations that lead to these costly settlements.
More than $3 billion paid to settle misconduct lawsuits
Over the past 10 years, 31 of the 50 U.S. cities with the highest police-to-civilian ratios in the country have spent more than $3 billion to settle misconduct lawsuits. That’s not even the most shocking statistic: three of those cities — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — have shelled out $2.5 billion in settlements. As cities become more strapped financially, public resources should be invested in healthcare, housing and education — not paying for the misconduct of law enforcement. In Minneapolis, for example, it’s unclear where the $27 million will come from or what services might be cut to pay for it, as the city’s fund covering these payouts is already depleted.
Police budgets have remained at the same percentage of state and local budgets for the past 40 years, despite violent crime falling 74% since the early 1990s. Police departments — not cash-strapped local governments — should fund these settlements, or at the very least departments should have to purchase liability insurance policies where implementation of proactive practices to avoid liability would be factored into pricing.
There also need to be mechanisms to impose accountability on police unions that frequently oppose common sense reforms aimed at enhancing police practices and addressing misconduct. Too often officers with a history of wrongdoing are put back on the job due to union advocacy or negotiated contract provisions. Civil service and union protections that enable officers who engage in misconduct to continue to police our streets are in need of reform, just as a national database is needed to ensure law enforcement members who have been discharged from one department for misconduct cannot be hired elsewhere without disclosing their history.
Yet these are the exact reforms that unions have blocked time and again. When the lack of these protections result in a tragedy that forms the basis for a large settlement, the unions don’t feel the financial pain; instead taxpayer coffers are depleted.
While civil settlements provide some relief for families, individual officers often avoid any culpability. We need legislative solutions that enhance the ability to hold individual officers accountable, regardless of the uniform they wear.
Even as one considers efforts to recalibrate accountability, we also must shrink the footprint of policing to avoid situations that can escalate into tragedy. More than 80% of all arrests nationwide are for low-level, nonviolent offenses. George Floyd was apprehended for allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill, a misdemeanor that was met with a death sentence. It is time to reevaluate whether police resources are best invested in these victimless crimes when more than half of reported crimes — including almost 40% of homicides — go unsolved.
Similarly, mental health, substance use, and other medical emergencies should not be responded to by guns drawn. It is not enough to train officers on de-escalation; we need alternative responder models that remove the criminal justice system from the equation altogether and recognize these human challenges as public health issues best addressed by treatment and support systems, not police.
It’s also time for these civil settlements and the underlying data on misconduct to come out of the shadows so the general public can understand the extent to which their tax dollars are paying for the consequences of police brutality. There are 18,000 police departments across the country and each is collecting information on misconduct differently — if at all — so any available data is incomplete and inconsistent. As such, it’s nearly impossible to discern whether settlements are having any impact on the prevalence of misconduct. We need national standards for data collection and disclosure so that communities are aware of these settlements —- including how they are paid — and can hold their local officials accountable.
Among the leaders who can promote accountability are elected prosecutors. Prosecutors should have the ability to independently investigate and prosecute officer-involved shooting incidents and fatalities, while also implementing practices to identify troublesome police conduct and proactively avoid reliance on officers with credibility concerns. Too many people remain behind bars because this misconduct has gone unchecked for too long; prosecutors should also have conviction integrity processes that correct these past injustices.
The widespread failure to address police misconduct has rightfully fractured trust between law enforcement and the communities they are meant to serve, particularly communities of color. Civil settlements should not be the only recourse for victims of police wrongdoing. But when they are, we should ensure that those responsible for the systemic failures — or for standing in the way of reform — pay the price for the resulting tragedies. And we must implement structural reforms that address the root causes of police misconduct so that we create a justice system that lives up to its name.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Federal Communication Commission to loosen local media ownership restrictions. (photo: iStock)
US Supreme Court Lets FCC Loosen Media Ownership Rules
Andrew Chung and David Shepardson, Reuters
Excerpt: "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Federal Communication Commission to loosen local media ownership restrictions, handing a victory to broadcasters in a ruling that could facilitate industry consolidation as consumers increasingly move online."
In a 9-0 ruling authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the justices overturned a lower court decision that had blocked the FCC’s repeal of some media ownership regulations in 2017 for failing to consider the effects on ownership by racial minorities and women. Critics of the industry have said further consolidation could limit media choices for consumers.
The justices acted in appeals by the FCC, companies including News Corp, Fox Corp and Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc and the National Association of Broadcasters.
The associations for other broadcast networks’ local affiliates, including ABC, NBC and CBS, backed the appeals, arguing that consolidation would help ensure the economic survival of local television amid heavy competition from internet companies that provide video content. Broadcast television stations have said they are increasingly losing advertising dollars to digital platforms.
In 2017, the FCC - then led by Republicans during former President Donald Trump’s administration - voted to eliminate a ban in place since 1975 on cross-ownership of a newspaper and TV station in a major market. It also voted to make it easier for media companies to buy additional TV stations in the same market, and for companies to buy additional radio stations in some markets.
The FCC, now equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, is led by acting chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, who voted against the 2017 decision. The agency is set to have a Democratic majority once President Joe Biden nominates and the Senate confirms a new commissioner. The FCC could then seek to reverse the 2017 order.
Rosenworcel did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the ruling.
Writing for the unanimous court, Kavanaugh said that the FCC reasonably reviewed the ownership rules to find that repealing or modifying them “was not likely to harm minority and female ownership.”
Kavanaugh added: “The FCC reasoned that the historical justifications for those ownership rules no longer apply in today’s media market, and that permitting efficient combinations among radio stations, television stations and newspapers would benefit consumers.”
The case highlighted diverging views on the best way to ensure a competitive environment that promotes a broad range of local news and information. Critics of the FCC’s action have said relaxing ownership rules could jeopardize a wider array of sources at the local level.
The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had thwarted the FCC’s efforts to revise the rules since 2003 in a series of decisions. The new rules were challenged by a number of community advocacy groups led by the Prometheus Radio Project. The 3rd Circuit in 2019 blocked the new rules.
Former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, a Republican who voted for the 2017 order, said he expects there will be some “strategic deals” to consolidate in which a local newspaper could be acquired, but that “no massive deals” are going to happen given the struggling local media sector.
Cheryl Leanza, a lawyer for the plaintiffs who challenged the 2017 FCC decision, said that “the good news is the Biden FCC, once it gains a working majority, can quickly get to work building a solid record to promote the public interest standard and media ownership diversity.”
Advocacy group Free Press said the Biden FCC and Congress “must recognize that hedge-fund and Wall Street-driven consolidation harms local communities, and only decimates what’s left of competition and diversity. ... The silver lining here is (the court) deferred to the agency’s judgment and left room for a new commission to get this right.”
David Chavern, CEO of the News Media Alliance group that represents more than 2,000 news organizations, hailed the ruling and said the previous restrictions “had shackled the newspaper industry for far too long. The repeal of the ban will generate much needed investments and cross-platform synergies that will help sustain local news media.”
Protester outside Derek Chauvin trial in Minneapolis. (photo: Samir Ferdowski)
Protesters Are Chaining Themselves to the Fence Outside Derek Chauvin's Trial
Samir Ferdowsi, VICE
Ferdowsi writes: "Emilie Valenti arrived outside the Hennepin County Courthouse before dawn in 20-degree weather and chained herself to a barbed-wire fence."
With “Locks 4 Stolen Lives,” protesters in Minneapolis are demanding justice for George Floyd and expansive police reform.
The 55-year-old activist had just taken over the spot of another protester, who’d been chained to the fence in downtown Minneapolis throughout Tuesday night. Before that, Kaia Hirt, a local schoolteacher, had locked herself to the fence for nearly 24 hours to demand expansive police reform, like removing qualified immunity for officers who commit crimes. They’re also demanding the passage of police reform bills in the Senate. They’re protesting day and night while the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin takes place a few hundred feet away.
“The demands are there, and we’re not going anywhere,” Valenti, a community engagement worker, told VICE News. “It’s about families supporting families around police violence.”
These protesters have been taking shifts locking themselves to barbed-wire-topped fencing the National Guard placed outside the courthouse where Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd last May 25. While the trial is in session, protesters have occupied space outside the courthouse, playing music, chanting, and waving signs. They’ve also written the names of people brutalized by police on bike locks and padlocks that they have locked to the barbed-wire fencing.
The initiative has taken on the name “Locks 4 Stolen Lives,” and community members are invited to clamp their own padlocks onto the fencing encircling the courthouse, which cost the city $645,000. Rifle-wielding National Guard members with armored vehicles have been deployed to the area during the trial.
On Wednesday afternoon, there were hundreds of locks chained to the fence.
According to Valenti, the Guards and police frequently come and cut the padlocks off. But for each lock that’s cut off by cops, she says, more appear.
“The police are getting more and more hostile,” Valenti said. “They’re pulling little maneuvers like this that are ridiculous. They come up with some other reasons for it, but it’s pretty obvious they’re trying to maneuver us out of here. But we don’t plan on going anywhere. The demands are still our demands.”
The protesters want to see Chauvin convicted in the death of George Floyd, and an overhaul of police use-of-force standards. Chauvin is facing up to 65 years for second- and third-degree murder charges, as well as a second-degree manslaughter charge after kneeling on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes. To help voice these demands, Frank Nitty, a national civil rights activist, came from Milwaukee to see the locks for himself and help in the cause.
Nitty said tension with police has been escalating through the first week of the trial. Police have installed more concrete barricades in front of the protesters’ hub, where people can rest, eat donated food, and talk with each other on the street by the courthouse, he said. Protesters also say that guards have blocked parking spaces and forced the group to move essential supplies, like food and water, numerous times. Police at the scene declined to speak to VICE News; a request for comment to the Minneapolis PD was not immediately returned.
“As a Black person in this country, it’s the little things we want changed,” Nitty said. “Of course we want people to go to jail for killing George Floyd, but we want to be treated fairly walking down the street, and it goes beyond. If we were out here protesting for dogs, they wouldn’t have done that. They can sympathize for dogs, but they can’t sympathize for Black people. And that’s a telling part of what’s happening in this country.”
The national organizer said he hopes more people will come out and help occupy the space outside of the courthouse, and bring locks with them. He said it’s a powerful way to show how police violence is plaguing minority communities in Minneapolis and across the country.
“It’s a unique thing: Everywhere you go, you see people doing something different, and all of it represents the same thing,” Nitty said. “It doesn’t really matter that it’s a mass of locks with names on it; it’s what it symbolizes—the fact that they don’t want us to have anything and they cut them down. Anything that shows we want justice, they’ll destroy. All the while they’re keeping monuments that represent slavery and some of the most racist people in the country.”
“We have no way to represent positive change or people that have lost their lives that shouldn’t have due to unjust systems without it being defaced by our own government,” he continued.
Testimony from witnesses in the trial is set to continue throughout the upcoming weeks.
Myanmar has been rocked by protests on a near-daily basis since Aung San Suu Kyi was deposed in a coup. (photo: AFP)
Myanmar's Junta Orders New Charge for Aung San Suu Kyi Under Secrets Law
Al Jazeera
Most serious charge against Myanmar’s deposed leader could potentially lead to a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
yanmar’s deposed leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been charged with breaking a colonial-era official secrets law, her lawyer said on Thursday, the most serious charge against the veteran opponent of military rule.
Myanmar has been rocked by protests since the army overthrew Suu Kyi’s elected government on February 1 citing unsubstantiated claims of fraud in a November election that her party won.
In a new measure to stifle communication about the turmoil, the junta ordered internet service providers to shut down wireless broadband services until further notice, Reuters news agency reported, citing telecoms sources.
Suu Kyi and other members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) have been detained since the coup and the junta had earlier accused her of several minor offences including illegally importing six handheld radios and breaching coronavirus protocols. Her lawyers say the charges she faces are trumped up.
Her chief lawyer, Khin Maung Zaw, told Reuters by telephone that Suu Kyi, three of her deposed cabinet ministers and a detained Australian economic adviser, Sean Turnell, were charged a week ago in a Yangon court under the official secrets law, adding he learned of the new charge two days ago.
A conviction under the law can carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
Myanmar has been rocked by near-daily protests since the February 1 coup. On Thursday, protesters again took to the streets of cities across Myanmar, defying a security force clampdown that has killed at least 535 people. Activists burned copies of a military-framed constitution in protest against Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s power grab.
The demonstrations came as fighting intensified between Myanmar’s military and ethnic rebel groups in the country’s border areas – a development that a United Nations special envoy said increased the “possibility of civil war at an unprecedented scale”.
The DVB news outlet reported that 20 soldiers were killed and four military trucks destroyed in clashes with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), one of Myanmar’s most powerful rebel groups. The fighting in the far north comes days after Myanmar military aircraft began bombing positions of another group, the Karen National Union (KNU) in the country’s east.
The clashes in the east have sent thousands of people fleeing to the Thai border.
Tanee Sangrat, spokesman for Thailand’s foreign ministry, told reporters on Thursday that Bangkok was “gravely troubled” by the increasing casualties. In some of the strongest comments from Thai authorities yet, Sangrat also called for a de-escalation of the situation, an end to violence and the further release of detainees.
Thailand was working with Southeast Asian countries for a peaceful solution, he added.
‘Constitution bonfire’
Meanwhile, a group of deposed members of parliament, mostly from Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, have vowed to set up a federal democracy in a bid to address a longstanding demand from minority groups for autonomy. The Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) also announced on Wednesday the scrapping of a 2008 constitution drawn up by the military that enshrines its control over politics.
The military has long rejected the idea of a federal system, seeing itself as the central power vital to holding the fractious country together.
Social media posts showed copies of the constitution, or in some cases imitations, being burned at rallies and in homes during what one activist called a “constitution bonfire ceremony”.
“The new day begins here!” Dr Sasa, international envoy of the CRPH, said on Twitter, referring to what for now is a largely symbolic move.
Fires also broke out overnight and early on Thursday at two shopping centres in Yangon owned by military-controlled conglomerates, with photographs of the flames and smoke posted on social media.
In New York, the UN special envoy on Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener told a closed briefing of the 15-member UN Security Council that the military was not capable of managing the country, and warned the situation on the ground would only worsen.
The council must consider “potentially significant action” to reverse the course of events as “a bloodbath is imminent”, she said.
“This could happen under our watch,” she said in a virtual presentation obtained by The Associated Press, “and failure to prevent further escalation of atrocities will cost the world so much more in the longer term than investing now in prevention, especially by Myanmar’s neighbours and the wider region.”
‘Failed state’
The opposition of ethnic armed groups to “the military’s cruelty … (is) increasing the possibility of civil war at an unprecedented scale”, Schraner Burgener warned.
“Already-vulnerable groups requiring humanitarian assistance including ethnic minorities and the Rohingya people will suffer most,” she said, “but inevitably, the whole country is on the verge of spiralling into a failed state.”
The council’s statements have so far expressed concern and condemned violence against protesters, but dropped language calling the takeover a coup and threatening possible further action due to opposition by China, Russia, India and Vietnam.
The United States on Wednesday urged China, which has significant economic and strategic interests in Myanmar, to use its influence to hold accountable those responsible for the coup.
While Western countries have strongly condemned the coup, China has been more cautious and the government’s top diplomat Wang Yi called for stability during a meeting with his Singaporean counterpart on Wednesday.
“China welcomes and supports ASEAN’s adherence to the principle of non-interference … and the ‘ASEAN approach’ in playing a positive role in promoting the stability of the situation in Myanmar,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement after the meeting, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
In a sign of stepped-up shuttle diplomacy, the foreign ministers of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines are also due to meet Wang Yi in China this week.
ASEAN members, of whom Myanmar is one, have pledged not to interfere in each other’s affairs but, led by Indonesia, some countries have been actively pushing diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.
Still, the military has up to now appeared impervious to outside pressure.
A demonstrator stands in front of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Science March in Washington, D.C., on Earth Day, April 22, 2017. (photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
EPA Dismisses Trump-Appointed Science Board Members, Seeks Expert Replacements
Climate Nexus
Excerpt: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Wednesday it will remove more than 40 members of scientific advisory panels appointed under the previous administration in an effort to reduce the heavy influence of regulated industries over the regulatory process."
The Trump administration barred — illegally, according to critics — experts who received EPA grants from sitting on the agency's Science Advisory Board (SAB) and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), in effect elevating industry-backed voices and freezing out independent scientific experts.
Trump's EPA refused to strengthen standards on ozone, which disproportionately harms low-income communities and communities of color, on the advice of Trump-picked members of the CASAC. The CASAC also split on strengthening limits on industrial soot (also known as PM2.5) pollution despite mounting evidence it increased the risk of dying from COVID-19. An EPA spokesperson said the dismissed Trump-appointed board members were eligible to reapply if they chose to do so.
In a statement, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said, "Resetting these two scientific advisory committees will ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific insight to support our work to protect human health and the environment."
As reported by The Washington Post:
The action Wednesday is one of several steps Regan says are necessary to rebuild the scientific integrity of the EPA and restore staff morale. It comes as the White House this week launched a government-wide assessment of past political interference in science.
Regan recently, for instance, revived an EPA webpage on climate change deleted during Trump's first weeks in office. And in a memo to staff last week, he said the agency is reviewing policies that impeded science and is encouraging career employees to "bring any items of concern" to the attention of scientific integrity officials as they review Trump-era actions.
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