Wednesday, October 20, 2021

In Addition To Asset Forfeiture - Police Have Corporate-Funded Foundations

nakedcapitalism |  One thing I learned from studying with Tom Ferguson: follow the money. That’s the Golden Rule for understanding American politics and other money-driven political systems.

Alas, political scientists and other students of politics often don’t do this, for a variety of reasons, not least that they don’t want to admit – let alone document – how our entire political system is awash with money, let alone completely dominated by it.

I was therefore pleased when this report crossed my desk earlier this month, Police Foundations: A Corporate-Sponsored Threat to Democracy and Black Lives, produced by Color Of Change and Public Accountability Initiative/ LittleSis. I’d intended to write this up last week, but will instead substitute it today for a post I’d planned on vaccine mandate litigation. That’ll have to wait until I can check in again with a lawyer friend who’s in the thick of many of these lawsuits. Rest assured, these  aren’t going away and there will be ample opportunity for me discuss them soon.

The police foundation report is chock-full with good data and information and I encourage interested readers to look at it in full, especially as some graphic design considerations prevented me from reproducing data and information I’d otherwise wanted to include. In addition, the report’s organization is somewhat repetitive. One can grasp its gist by looking at the foreward and executive summary.

Any serious attempt at policy reform must come to grips with how it’s at present undermined by police foundations, which are funded by corporations who publicly proclaim support for reform and protest movements and at the same time privately funnel money that ensures nothing fundamental will change.

Corporate Funding of Police Foundations: The Problem

From the report:

On June 12, 2020, with the nation and world still reeling from the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, Atlanta police murdered Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man. Days later, after the city’s police chief resigned in shame and Brooks’ murderer was charged, Atlanta police officers staged a “blue flu” protest and called in sick.

But this isn’t the end of the story. On June 18, as Brooks’ family made funeral arrangements for their loved one, the Atlanta Police Foundation announced it would give each Atlanta police officer a $500 bonus. Again: One day after officers walked out on the job because charges were filed against their colleagues for the murder of Rayshard Brooks, the Atlanta Police Foundation rewarded police with a bonus (report, p. 3).

So, where did the money come from? Again, per the report:

Police foundations are private organizations that funnel corporate money into policing, protecting corporate interests and enabling state-sanctioned violence against Black communities and communities of color. You might be more familiar with the Atlanta Police Foundation’s sponsors: Amazon, Bank of America, Chick-fil-A, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Waffle House, Wells Fargo, Uber and UPS, to name a few. These are the donors we know about. As calls for accountability increased in recent years, police foundations have taken additional steps to scrub their websites and hide donor information.

There is a police foundation in nearly every major American city, behind almost every police department, backed by wealthy donors and giant multinational corporations. In 2020, many police foundations’ top corporate sponsors made public statements in support of Black Lives Matter, while providing a corporate slush fund for police (citations omitted, report, p.  3).

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