FT | Author JK Rowling has attacked Humza Yousaf, calling Scotland’s first minister “bumbling and illiberal” and stoking a row over the country’s contentious new hate crime law.
The creator of the Harry Potter franchise was responding to criticism from Yousaf on Thursday that posts she had made on X earlier in the week identifying transgender women as men were “offensive and upsetting”.
Rowling posted on X: “Most of Scotland is upset and offended by Yousaf’s bumbling incompetence and illiberal authoritarianism, but we aren’t lobbying to have him locked up for it.”
Rowling, a leading gender-critical feminist, used her social media profile to test whether the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act would criminalise promoting the importance of biological sex over gender identity.
The legislation, which came into effect on Monday, has triggered a row between the author and lawmakers, and thrust culture wars into the forefront of Scottish politics.
Yousaf in an interview with the BBC hit out at the author’s provocative posts on social media, insisting the law had a high threshold for criminality and was not intended to respond to those who are “upset or insulted”.
The legal difficulties in balancing the protection of vulnerable communities with the right to free speech have opened up a new line of attack for the opponents of the Scottish National party and Green coalition, with them characterising the legislation as an example of unworkable progressive policymaking.
It comes as opinion polls fail to provide a clear picture of voting intentions ahead of the general election later this year.
A YouGov poll this week predicted a UK landslide for Labour in which it would become the largest party in Scotland, winning 28 seats north of the border to the SNP’s 19. A Survation poll last week forecast that the SNP would hold 41 seats to Labour’s 14.
The act widens the existing crime of stirring up racial hatred to include other protected characteristics, such as sexuality, gender and disability, with the threat of jail terms of seven years.
Thousands of complaints have reportedly been made to the police about Rowling’s posts, as well as about a speech Yousaf gave to parliament in 2020 during which he complained about the number of senior positions of authority held by white people.
Police Scotland, which has yet to announce the number of allegations of hate crimes it has received, earlier this week decided Rowling’s posts, in which she invited the police to arrest her, were not criminal.
The force also decided against logging Rowling’s posts and Yousaf’s speech as “non-crime hate incidents”.
The police, who note such incidents when allegations do not breach the threshold of criminality, use these records to monitor trends, but opponents say this process has a chilling effect on free speech.
The police decision sparked an angry response from Murdo Fraser, a Conservative MSP, whose post last year on social media saying identifying as non-binary was as valid as “choosing to identify as a cat” did get logged.
Fraser on Wednesday accused Police Scotland of political bias. “They have taken a different approach to comments made by the SNP first minister to those made by an opposition politician,” he said. “It is hard not to conclude that Police Scotland has been captured by the SNP policy agenda.”
new atlas | Soldiers and tactical unit police officers often have a lot of heavy gear to carry, including the ballistic body armor that they're wearing. That's where the ExoM Up-Armoured Exoskeleton is intended to come in, as it's load-reducing and bulletproof.
The exoskeleton is manufactured by German company Mehler Protection, which designed the product in collaboration with Canadian biomechanics tech company Mawashi Science & Technology, and French tactical police force GIGN (Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale).
Body armor panels throughout the full-body exoskeleton provide ballistic protection up to the European standard of VPAM 8. This means that they can withstand being hit by three 7.62 × 39-mm rounds (which AK-47 rifles use) fired from a distance of approximately 10 meters (33 ft).
Additionally, the exoskeleton's titanium frame reportedly redistributes as much as 70% of the overall load from the wearer's shoulders down to the ground (via structural soles inside the user's boots). At the same time, the ExoM's flexible spine, sliding waist belt and articulated hip, knee, and ankle joints are claimed to ensure that the wearer retains up to 99% of their usual range of motion.
Finally, because the ExoM is a passive exoskeleton (meaning it doesn't utilize any motorized actuators), it doesn't have any batteries that add weight or require charging – the latter could definitely prove challenging in remote locations, or on long missions.
We're still waiting to hear back from Mehler regarding information such as the type of ballistic material utilized, and the setup's total weight.
mises | In all the media and regime frenzy over the Janaury 6 riots and the Pentagon Leaker in
recent months, it is interesting to examine the contrast between how
the regime treats "crimes" against its own interests, and real crime committed against ordinary private citizens.
Witness, for example, how the Biden administration and corporate
media have treated the January 6 riot as if it were some kind of
military coup, demanding that draconian sentences be handed down even to
small-time vandals and trespassers. Regime paranoia has led the Justice
Department to ask for a 30-year sentence for Enrique Tarrio, a man who was convicted of the non-crime of "seditious conspiracy" even though he wasn't even in Washington on January 6. In recent months, Jacob Chansley, the "QAnon Shaman," received a sentence of three-and-a-half years,
even though prosecutors admit he did nothing violent. Riley Williams
was given three years for simply trespassing in Nancy Pelosi's office.
Members of the Capitol Police force have been lionized in the media as
great protectors of "sacred" government buildings, and any threat to the
property or persons of Washington politicians has been equated with an
assault on "democracy."
The situation is quite different when it comes to protecting the
state, its agents, and its property from any threat. During urban riots,
such as those which occurred in Ferguson, Missouri and Minneapolis, Minnesota,
the police went to great lengths to protect themselves and government
property. If you were just a private shopkeeper or ordinary citizen,
however, you were on your own. At the Uvalde School shooting in 2022,hundreds of law enforcement officers from all levels of government
chose to protect themselves rather than the children who were being
murdered inside. When Uvalde parents demanded the police act, the police
attacked the parents.
We find similar phenomena at the federal level. There are, of course,
special federal laws against violence perpetrated against federal
employees. Ordinary taxpayers receive no such consideration. Note how
federal agencies move to arm themselves to the teeth while also seeking to disarm the private-sector. Federal agents will spare no expense finding someone who put his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk,
but it's another matter entirely when we're talking about serious
violent crime against regular people. Federal agents, of course, allowed 9/11 to occur right under their noses,
they refused to investigate known rapist Larry Nasser, and shrugged off
reports about the man who would end up slaughtering children at a high
school in Parkland, Florida. Contrast this with how long the federal
government has been conniving to get revenge on Julian Assange for
merely telling the truth about US war crimes.
Naturally, law enforcement officers rarely face any sanctions for their failures to bother themselves with private property, life, or limb. The federal courts have made it clear that law enforcement officers are not obligated to actually protect the public. In other words, the taxpayers must always pay taxes to hold up their end
of the imagined "social contract" or face fines and imprisonment. But
the other side of that "contract," the state, has no legal obligation to
make good on its end. This, of course, is not how real contracts work.
The Marion County Record's co-owner and publisher, Eric Meyer, believes Friday's raid was prompted by a story published Wednesday
about a local business owner. Authorities countered they are
investigating what they called "identity theft" and "unlawful acts
concerning computers," according to a search warrant.
"Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been
published online, and your public statements to the press, there appears
to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search
—particularly when other investigative steps may have been available —
and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly
limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement's ability to conduct
newsroom searches," the letter said.
Meyer said that, before the raid, his newspaper had investigated
Cody's background and his time at the Kansas City Police Department
before he came to Marion. He declined to provide details of the
newspaper's investigation of Cody. "I really don't think it would be
advisable for me to say what it was we were investigating, other than to
characterize the charges as serious….," Meyer said. He told The Star
the newspaper didn't publish a story about the allegations. "We didn't
publish it because we couldn't nail it down to the point that we thought
it was ready for publication," he said. "He (Cody) didn't know who our
sources were. He does now." Meyer said the newspaper told city leaders
they had received information about Cody but could not confirm it.
Another factor in the raid appears to be the anger of a local politically-involved restauranteur:
He and his reporter Phyllis Zorn were kicked out of an August 2nd
meeting at a local establishment with US Congressman Jake LaTurner
(R-KS) by the City of Marion Police Chief after restaurant owner Kari
Newell demanded they leave. Meyer and Zorn published a subsequent story
about the hostile encounter, which infuriated Newell and prompted angry
Facebook posts.
The paper then received a tip about Newell having her license suspended
in 2008 after a DUI, checked it out, decided not to publish it, and
ultimately shared it with the local police because they believed it
might've been shared with them as part of Newell's ongoing divorce
battle. The police then told Newell what the newspaper shared, and she
attended Monday's City Council meeting to make outrageous claims about
the newspaper and one of the council members (who had also obtained the
letter) violating her rights. She also called Meyer later that evening
and erroneously accused him of identity theft. Not even four days later,
police arrived at the newspaper office, Meyer's home and the council
member's home with search warrants signed by a judge
Lots of things about to be tried in this small town.
scalawag | Cop City is the Atlanta ruling class' chosen solution to a set of
interrelated crises produced by decades of organized abandonment in the
city. As Gilmore explains,
crisis means "instability that can be fixed only through radical
measures, which include developing new relationships and new or
renovated institutions out of what already exists." These crises
included the threat and reality of mass uprisings against police
violence, extreme and racialized income inequality and displacement,
corporate media narratives in the wake of the 2020 uprisings that
threatened the image of the city as a safe place for capital investment
and development, and a municipal secession movement that threatened to
rob the city of nearly half of its tax revenue following the uprisings.
Designed and propelled by a mix of state, corporate, and nonprofit
actors, Cop City would address the overlapping crises facing Atlanta in
three ways. First, it would provide a material investment in police
capacity on the heels of the uprisings, a project to prepare for and
prevent future rebellion. Second, it would represent an ideological
investment in the image of Atlanta, signaling to corporations and those
attracted by the influx of tech and other high-paying jobs that Atlanta
is a stable, securitized city that will protect their interests. And
third, Cop City would constitute a geographical investment—one that
refashions publicly-owned land in a disinvested area into something new
while opening up new opportunities for development. In other words, to
borrow from Gilmore, Cop City is a partially geographical solution to a
set of crises facing and generated by the city—a means through which a
coalition of state and corporate actors have chosen to address years of
organized abandonment and its outcomes.
When thousands of Atlantans took to the streets
during the nationwide uprisings of 2020, they were responding to more
than the recent police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and
Rayshard Brooks. They were responding to decades of social
disinvestment, displacement, and police expansion—and calling for a
reversal of these dynamics.
Twenty-first-century Atlanta has featured rapid, publicly-subsidized
development and gentrification, the further disintegration of the social
safety net, the expansion of surveillance and policing, and rising
inequality. Since 1990, the share of the city's Black population has decreased
from 67 percent to 48 percent, while the median family income and the
share of adults with a college degree in the city doubled. Investment
firms have gobbled up the housing stock, with bulk buyers accumulating
over 65,000 single-family homes throughout the Atlanta metro area in
the past decade. As the city has attracted major tech companies like
Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Honeywell—and along with them, more middle
and upper-class white people—the city has pushed its Black and working
class further out of the city. Choices by policymakers have made Atlanta
a lucrative place for big business, but a difficult place to live for
the rest of residents. In 2022, for example, Atlanta was named by Money as the best place to live and was identified by Realtor Magazine as the top real estate market in the country. The same year, Atlanta was proclaimed the most unequal city in the country; relatedly, Atlanta is the most surveilled city in the U.S.
How did we get here? Atlanta has long been home to what is known as "the Atlanta Way"—the
strategic partnership between Black political leadership and white
economic elites that work in service of corporations and upper-class
white communities and to the detriment of lower-income Black and
working-class communities. While historians such as Maurice Hobson, Adira Drake Rodriguez, and Dan Immergluck
have documented the long history of the Atlanta Way throughout the
1900s, we can begin with the leadup to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta as a
key accelerant of the Atlanta Way. As Immergluck notes,
the decisions made in preparation for the Games "effectively set the
stage for long-term gentrification and exclusion in the city, focusing
primarily on making the city more attractive to a more affluent set of
prospective citizens."
kansascity | Soon
after he became Kansas City’s police chief in 2017, Rick Smith pulled
officers away from a strategy credited with reducing homicides.
The effort, called the Kansas City No Violence Alliance,
or KC NoVA, garnered national attention after killings dropped to a
historic low of 86 in 2014, the fewest in Kansas City in more than four
decades.
Under
NoVA, law enforcement agencies used “focused deterrence” — targeting
violent people and their associates and offering them a choice: change
your behavior or go to jail. In exchange, they would get help finding
jobs, getting an education and other assistance.
But
when homicides increased again by the end of 2015, authorities went
back to their separate agencies and “started chasing the bloodstain,”
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said.
By 2019, the strategy was effectively abandoned.
Now, an assessment obtained by The Star offers candid insight into why: Despite the effort’s early success, the Kansas City Police Department had grown weary of the strategy and began to step away, angering other participants who wanted the program to continue.
“Instead
of really steering into the problem and retooling ourselves at that
moment, we kind of threw in the towel,” Baker, one of the chief
architects of KC NoVA, said in December. “We kind of gave up.”
Some
key figures who were part of KC NoVA’s launch were reassigned or moved
on. Its effectiveness was questioned as killings rose in 2016.
Significant elements of the strategy were dismantled over time.
Since then, murders have continued to increase. In 2019, the city nearly hit an all-time record.
Other
cities that stuck with and adjusted their focused deterrence strategies
over time eventually prevented homicides by targeting a small group of
chronic offenders vulnerable to sanctions, supporters of the approach
say.
Kansas
City police instead announced last summer they were partnering with
federal authorities on a program that has been around since 2001 and was
retooled in recent years under then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff
Sessions. It focuses on targeting the most violent individuals, but not
their associates.
That shift, Kansas City police said, was endorsed in an assessment conducted by the National Public Safety Partnership.
“Today,
we are focusing the limited resources of the KCPD to the individuals
who are ‘trigger pullers,’” the department said, noting it is constantly
evaluating what works and what needs to change. “We don’t rule out any
potential solution and will consider all options in order to reduce
violent crime.”
The study concludes NoVA helped dramatically reduce violent crime in 2014 when there were 78 homicides, a 10-year low.
But the study also found the longer NoVA was in place, the less effective it became.
"I
think we're a little early to say that NoVA is a success or a long-term
failure, we don't know yet," said FOP President Brad Lemon.
The 41 Action News Investigators asked Forte if NoVA was working on March 10.
"Absolutely, crime is down with those people involved in the network by 10 percent since we started NoVA," he said.
While
Forte says the specific repeat violent offenders NoVA has targeted
aren't committing as many crimes, Kansas City homicides have skyrocketed
from a 10-year low of 78 in 2014 to a 10-year high of 128 last year.
And the city is on pace to break last year's record this year.
James, who's on the NoVA Board of Directors, acknowledges the program has its limits.
"Drive-by shootings, domestic violence, those types of things that NoVA is not able to address," he said.
The
NoVA study notes in April 2014, Forte permanently transferred 28
officers from the Patrol Bureau to the Violent Crimes Division and
another 30 to investigate gun crimes.
James at the April Kansas City Police Board meeting said even that board doesn't fully understand NoVA's role.
"This is kind of why telling people what NoVA is doing is important because the board doesn't know," he said.
On
March 28, the 41 Action News Investigators sent an open records request
to KCPD asking how many officers were assigned to NoVA and any numbers
showing its impact.
On April 6, Captain Stacey Graves responded by
writing, "KCPD does not have any officers specifically assigned to
NoVA, all KCPD officers are part of the community collaboration."
Graves also wrote, "I am waiting on stats for the remainder of your request."
Almost two months later, the 41 Action News Investigators are still waiting for those stats.
A
month ago, the 41 Action News Investigators also requested e-mails and
other information to find out more details about NoVA's current status.
On
Friday morning, the day before Forte's retirement, Graves informed the
41 Action News Investigators that material had been located, but the
Investigators don't have it yet.
A KCPD staffing study due to be released before the end of the month may shed more light on NoVA.
knoxnews | The Knoxville Police Department on Feb. 23
released video recordings of the arrest of a 60-year old woman who
collapsed while she was being taken to jail and later died, and said the
investigation into how officers handled the incident will continue.
Community
reaction to the videos was swift: Nearly 400 comments, the majority
critical of how officers handled the situation, appeared within hours on
the department's Facebook post of a compilation showing excerpts from various police cameras.
Lisa Edwards,
60, was arrested Feb. 5 outside Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center,
where she had been treated earlier. Hospital security called police when
Edwards declined to move off the property after she was discharged.
Here's what Knox News knows about Edwards' arrest, her death and the ongoing police investigation.
A
police video compilation from the Feb. 5 arrest shows how officers
arrested her and what happened after she lost consciousness in the car.
The compilation includes excerpts from body-camera footage of the
initial interaction with Edwards, body camera footage of officers taking
her into custody, and in-car camera footage from the time she was
placed into the back of a cruiser.
Sgt. Brandon Wardlaw, officer Adam Barnett,
officer Timothy Distasio and transportation officer Danny Dugan are
shown in the video compilation. All four are on paid leave during the
internal affairs investigation.
Body cam
footage shows the first KPD officer arrived just before 8 a.m., about an
hour after Edwards was discharged from the hospital. Edwards told the
officer she had a stroke and couldn’t walk, but he responds by telling
her the hospital wants her gone.
therealnews | Well actually, there’s three new books because I published The Global Police State in 2020, and this year, there are two new books, Global Civil War and Can Global Capitalism Endure?
But what happened was I was writing and thinking about and speaking
about this crisis from 2008 and on, and then the pandemic hit. And it
became clear to me as I started researching that and engaging with other
people that the pandemic has accelerated in warp speed the crisis
itself, and it’s introduced a whole new set of concerns as we face this
crisis of humanity. And that book also goes into considerable detail on
digitalization, because the digital transformations underway are
absolutely tremendous. They’re linked to everything else.
But then the companion to Global Civil War – And both of these came out in 2022 – Is Can Global Capitalism Endure?,
which is really the big summation of the crisis and what we can expect
in the following years and the following decades. So if it’s possible, I
would love to put out a summary here of where we’re at with this
crisis.
This is a crisis like never before. This is an existential crisis.
It’s multidimensional. Of course, we can talk about the economic or the
structural dimension, deep economic, social crisis. We’re on the verge
of a world recession, but I think it’s going to be much more than that.
It’s going to be another big collapse which might even exceed what we
saw in 2008. But it’s also a political crisis of state legitimacy, of
capitalist hegemony, of the crack up of political systems around the
world. And it’s also a social crisis of what technically we can call a
crisis of social reproduction. The social fabric is disintegrating
everywhere. Billions of people face crises for survival and very
uncertain futures. And of course, it’s also an ecological crisis, and
this is what makes it existential.
I am suggesting that the 21st century is the final century for world
capitalism. This system cannot reach the 22nd century. And the key
question for us is, can we overthrow global capitalism before it drags
down and destroys all of humanity and much of life on the planet along
with it?
So let me step back and say that we can speak about three types of
crises. Of course, there are periodic receptions, the mainstream goals
of the business cycle that take place about once every 10 years, but
we’re in something much more serious. We’re in what we can call a
structural crisis, meaning that the only way out of the system is to
fund it. The only way out of the crisis is to really restructure the
whole system. The last big structural crisis we had was the 1970s. The
system got out of that by launching capitalist globalization and
neoliberalism. Prior to that, we had the big structural crisis of the
1930s, the Great Depression. System got out of that by introducing a new
type of capitalism, New Deal capitalism, social democratic capitalism,
what I call redistributive nation state capitalism. And before that,
just to take it back once more – Because these are recurrent, they
happen, these structural crises about every 40 to 50 years – Was from
the late 1870s to the early 1890s. And the system got out of that by
launching a new round of colonialism and imperialism.
So now, from 2008 and on, we’re in another deep structural crisis.
And I know later in the interview we’ll get into that dimension, that
economic structural dimension. Technically, we call it an
overaccumulation crisis. But I want to say that there’s a third type of
crisis, and that actually is where we’re at: a systemic crisis, which
means the only way out of the crisis is to literally move beyond the
system. That is, to move beyond capitalism. So when I say that we are in
a systemic crisis, this can be drawn out for years, for decades. But we
are in uncharted territory. This is a crisis like no other. If we want
to put this in technical terms, we’re seeing the historic exhaustion of
the conditions for capitalist renewal. And the system, again, won’t make
it to the [22nd] century.
As you pointed out in the introduction, the ruling groups, at this
point, are in a situation of permanent crisis management, permanent
state of emergency. But the ruling groups are rudderless. They’re
clueless. They don’t know how to resolve this crisis. And quite frankly,
they cannot. They can’t. What we’ve seen is that over the past 40
years, world capitalism has been driven forward by this trickle process
that I lay out in these two new books, Global Civil War and Can Global Capitalism Endure?,
of globalization, digitalization, and financialization. And these three
processes have aggravated the crisis, really created and aggravated the
crisis many times over. And just to summarize a couple other things
here, what we’ve seen over the last 40 years is the buildup of this
structural crisis and the problem of surplus capital, meaning that
corporate profits in 2021 were a record high even in the midst of us all
moving down and suffering. Record high profits. So the transnational
capitalist class has accumulated enormous amounts of wealth beyond what
it can reinvest, hence stagnation, beyond what it can even spend.
And what this has led to is this mass of what we call – I know we’re
going to get into this later in the interview – This mass of fictitious
capital, meaning all of this capital around the world which is not
backed by the real economy of goods and services. It’s what technically
we call fiat money, this unprecedented flow of money. And it’s led to
this situation where in the world today we have this mass of predatory
finance capital which is simply without precedent, and it’s
destabilizing the whole system.
But let me conclude this introductory summary by saying the problem
of surplus capital has its flip side in surplus people, surplus
humanity. The more the surplus capital, the more hundreds of millions,
even billions of people become surplus humanity.
And what that means is that the ruling groups have a double
challenge. Their first challenge is what do they do with all the surplus
capital? How do they keep investing in making profit? Where can they
unload this surplus capital and continue to accumulate? But the second
big challenge, because the flip side is surplus humanity, is how do you
control the mass of humanity? Because there is a global class revolt
underway. That’s the title of the book, Global Civil War. After
the late 20th century worldwide defeat of proletarian forces, now the
mass of humanity is on the move again. There are these rebellions from
below breaking out all over the world. And the ruling groups have the
challenge of how to contain this actual rebellion underway and the
potential for it to bring down the system from, oh, no.
theguardian | It is no surprise that the pursuit and deadly beating of Tyre Nichols was set in motion by a police traffic stop.
Despite
repeated criticism of this practice, and the widespread availability of
body-cam and cellphone footage, the number of fatalities from such
encounters shows no sign of declining.
Between 2017 and November 2022, 730 people were killed by police
during these incidents. More than once a week during that time, someone
not being pursued or investigated for a violent crime met their death
after a traffic stop. An alarming number were stopped on the pretext of
any one of a hundred or more petty traffic code violations.
How did police achieve the power, and impunity, to stop motorists seemingly at will?
Beginning
in the 1920s, police departments experienced rapid growth because the
mass uptake of car ownership called for adequate traffic enforcement.
Until then, uniformed officers on wheels had mostly been chasing
gangsters and robbers. Would they have the legal right to stop otherwise
law-abiding motorists driving in their own private vehicles? Even
without a warrant? Yes, the courts decided, because the cars were being
operated on public roads.
As Sarah Seo has shown,
over the ensuing decades, judges granted more and more powers to the
police to stop and search vehicles. In particular, they were given the
authority to do so on the mere pretext of suspecting criminal activity –
in what is now known as a pretextual traffic stop. But what constitutes
a “reasonable” pretext is still a legal gray area. The fourth amendment
is supposed to protect us against searches and seizures that are
“unreasonable”. The problem is that when fourth amendment cases are
brought against police, courts and juries routinely defer to the
officer’s testimony.
This judicial tilt in favor of discretionary authority inevitably led to abridgments of civil liberties, and worse.
That
it would lead to racial profiling was foreordained. The ability to hit
the road is often seen as an American birthright, manifest in the
freedom to travel from coast to coast, unrestricted and unsurveilled.
Yet the right to enjoy this liberty has never been enjoyed evenly,
because of the restrictions historically placed on the movement of Black
(and, in many regions, brown) people by vigilantes, police and other
government agents.
Today’s warrantless traffic
stops are part of the lineage of the many efforts to limit the access
of people of color to the heavily mythologized freedom of the open road.
So, too, the well-known perils of “driving while Black” or brown are
amplified by the paramilitary technology embedded in today’s police
cars. Such features include drone-equipped trunks, bumper-mounted GPS
dart guns, automatic license plate readers, voice diction technology,
facial and biometric recognition, thermal imaging, augmented reality
eyewear, smart holsters, ShotSpotter gunfire detectors, and advanced
computers and software that allow instant access to government and law
enforcement databases. “Hot spot” policing requires hi-tech cars to move
in formation, through targeted urban neighborhoods. In 1960, James
Baldwin compared an officer
“moving through Harlem” to “an occupying soldier in a bitterly hostile
country”. Today’s saturation patrols, like Scorpion, the Memphis unit
that hunted down Nichols, bear more of a resemblance to
counter-insurgency missions by special operations forces.
kansascitydefender | It is easy to see how police are the dominant authority in these murders. Another news story,
released by KSHB Kansas City two days after Malcolm Johnson’s murder,
works to legitimate the narrative by exclusively using police and FBI
perspectives. In the story, Public Information Officer Sgt. Jacob
Becchina says, “We train tirelessly from day one to give officers every
tool both physically, mentally and tactically to work through those
situations so that they have the best chance to make the best decisions
that they can,” suggesting again that this outcome was the best possible
and truly could not have gone any other way.
The article also quotes a retired FBI agent and former cop, completely
uninvolved in the case, who adds legitimacy through admitted ignorance:
“Unless there are circumstances that we don’t know about, I think this
will be found to be a justifiable use of force.” The article follows
this with information about Johnson’s backstory that does not pertain to
the actual incident in the convenience store.
Becchina is one of KCPD’s three Public Information Officers, a
euphemism for marketing and PR cops who push information out to
journalists and are functionally in-house propaganda machines. PIOs
write press releases and often, as the primary spokespeople for all
incidents, prevent the media from talking to the cops involved. In a 2016 study
conducted by the Society of Professional Journalists, 196 survey
respondents at a variety of news outlets shared that over half of them
regularly experienced PIOs blocking their interview attempts with
police.
A third of these respondents said that it was the department’s policy
to prohibit interviews with anyone other than the PIO, Chief, or other
executive cops. Every reporter I asked about PIOs had a similar story of
being blocked from access to crucial information. “The police would
rarely speak to me; I had to go through the city manager and rely on
insufficient press releases,” a reporter for a small city’s only
newspaper told me. Others spoke of problems with purposeful
misinformation or information withholding, discrimination based on news
outlet, and exhausting runarounds.
As paid members of the police force who report directly to the Chief,
Public Information Officers create the narratives that most breaking
news stories reproduce. In a vlog called “What I’ve Learned Being a Public Information Police Officer” (posted 11/23/19), a YouTuber called officer401 talks about the process of getting information to the public:
“Something major happens…you go back to your office, you type up this
long press release, and you send it out to the public and all the news
agencies. Within minutes you have reporters from all over the country
calling you. I’ve had people from the New York Times call me, I’ve had
people from People Magazine call me. And they all want further
information about your story….there’s something strangely satisfying
that when you put out that press release, hours later you’re watching
the news and every station that’s talking about your story is literally
reading your press release word for word.”
Because reports are sealed due to “pending investigations,” crime scenes
are closed, and involved cops are not available for comment or
questions, the rapidfire media cycle forces reporters to rely on PIO
press releases for all initial reporting. Having a dedicated PR staff
means police committing these acts of violence have someone at the ready
to handle any incidents with necessary time, energy, and media
connections, something completely foreign to the average person, not to
mention someone who has been incapacitated or killed by police.
A lack of transparency and public understanding makes it so that the
average person knows nothing of the way PIOs impact news stories.
Further adding to the confusion, television reporters often head to the
scene of the crime to do their reporting, which–again–is frequently
taken verbatim from the PIO’s press release. Visually, the presence of a
reporter at the scene suggests they have a kind of eyewitness
authority–that they themselves have gathered information from the crime
scene, possibly talking to cops and witnesses. This seeming objectivity
gives the police narrative even more power.
kansascity | Authorities on Friday identified a 31-year-old Kansas City man who was fatally shot by a police officer the day before in an incident that also left a police officer shot in the leg.
Malcolm D. Johnson was killed during a confrontation at a
gas station near East 63rd Street and Prospect Ave., according to the
Missouri State Highway Patrol.
Kansas City police officers had identified a suspect in
an aggravated assault investigation around 6 p.m. Thursday, Sgt. Andy
Bell, a spokesman for the highway patrol, said Thursday.
Two officers went inside the gas station and tried to arrest him when “a fight, a struggle ensued,” Bell said.
The man drew a handgun and shot one of the other officers
in the leg as an additional two officers arrived on the scene to help
with the arrest. The officer who was shot returned fire, fatally
shooting the man, Bell said.
“The officer in self-defense returned fire,” Bell said.
Johnson was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. The officer was
being treated for his injuries and was in stable condition Friday.
The highway patrol has been the lead investigative agency for police shootings in Kansas City
since June 2020. Up until then, the Kansas City Police Department
investigated its own officers, a practice that was criticized by the
community.
LATimes | As they do every week during football season, the Lowe family
gathered Sunday morning to watch the NFL games on two big flat screens
in the South Los Angeles home of the family matriarch.
But as the
San Francisco 49ers prepared to face off against the Philadelphia
Eagles, there was one fewer family member watching. Anthony Lowe, 36, had been shot and killed by Huntington Park police officers Thursday afternoon.
Instead of talking football, the family spoke in hushed tones of the grainy cellphone video
they’d seen the night before: Lowe, a double amputee, trying to run
from Huntington Park police officers on what was left of his legs while
holding a long-bladed knife.
Lowe’s lower legs had been amputated
last year. In the video, he appears to have just dismounted from a
nearby wheelchair. As he scrambled down the sidewalk away from the
uniformed officers, two police sport utility vehicles drove into the
frame and parked, blocking the camera’s view.
The video, which was posted on Twitter on Saturday, then abruptly ends; no footage of the ensuing gunfire has been released.
Yatoya
Toy, Lowe’s older sister, identified the man running from police as her
brother. She said that his legs had been amputated after an altercation
with law enforcement in Texas, and that the family also has questions
about that incident.
“This is the first [Sunday] where he
ain’t watching the game with us. It’s what he loves to do,” Toy said.
She still uses present tense when referring to her brother, who has two
teenage children. “He’s the life of the family. He brings happiness,
joy; he loves to dance. He’s very respectable, he loves his mother. He’s
the favorite uncle. The kids all love him.”
Lowe’s death is a
devastating loss for the close-knit Lowe family, Toy said. And it comes
at a time of increased scrutiny of police brutality and violence after a
string of high-profile incidents, including the beating death of
29-year-old Tyre Nichols by Memphis Police this month.
The
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s homicide unit is
investigating Lowe’s shooting, as it typically does for all shootings
involving Huntington Park Police Department officers, according to the
unit’s Lt. Hugo Reynaga.
A detective with the homicide unit
stopped by the home of Dorothy Lowe, the dead man’s 53-year-old mother,
Saturday to interview family. They responded, Toy said, by peppering the
detective with questions about Anthony’s death.
The answers the
detective provided were vague and unpersuasive, said Tatiana Jackson,
another sister of Lowe. Their biggest question: What was so threatening
about a disabled double amputee with a knife that it necessitated
shooting him?
meaww |Cerelyn "CJ" Davis,
who is currently under fire after severe beating and the death of Tyre
Nichols by her police officers, has earlier also faced controversy for
leading the infamous REDDOG Unit while serving in Atlanta. The Memphis police chief
formed a unit, called SCORPION, two years ago, consisting of 40 cops.
But it was shut down after Nichols died on January 10 because of alleged
police brutality. It has been said that three of the five officers
involved in the alleged assault were from the SCORPION team.
Like SCORPION, REDDOG was also deactivated over a decade ago after allegations of “excessive force” and “police brutality” came to light, The Daily Mail reported. The page of Davis on the website
of the Memphis Police Department also mentions that. It states, “As a
Commander, she led the Special Operations Section, which included SWAT,
Mounted Patrol, Motors, Helicopter Unit, Vice & Narcotics, REDDOG
Unit, all Federal Task Force Officers, HIDTA Task Force, Cyber Crimes,
Gangs & Guns, and the Surveillance Unit.”
In 2011, Mayor Kasim Reed ended REDDOG after cops of the unit raided a gay bar in September 2009 after receiving tips on illegal drug use
and sex. They also reportedly took severe measures against those
present there, which led to a federal lawsuit. A year later, the city of
Atlanta had to give $1.025 million to the complainers.
Now, activist Hunter Dempster, who is an organizer with Decarcerate
Memphis, has compared the two infamous police units. He told
DailyMail.com, “They are literally an oppression force. The trust
between the citizens and the police in Memphis is about as bad as you
could ever imagine in a Metropolitan city. They are unchecked doom
squads that can do whatever they want. Davis' REDDOG unit was disbanded,
so how are you going to take the same premise of a disbanded unit to
your new job?”
Dempster continued saying, “Davis is doing her best
to say all the best social justice buzzwords and accountability – but
she is just giving lip service and empty promises and trying to make
herself look good,” before adding, “It shouldn't take someone dying for
something to happen. They are violent bullies who pull you over, wave a
gun in your face, and beat you up. They terrorize poor black and brown
communities.”
theonion | In an attempt to quell public outrage over the upcoming release of
body-cam footage showing the deadly beating of Tyre Nichols by five of
its officers, the Memphis Police Department continued to urge calm
Thursday in light of the unspeakable evil they had committed. “I
understand that this heinous atrocity beyond the comprehension of anyone
with a shred of basic human decency might be upsetting to some, but we
are asking everyone to please maintain their composure,” said police
chief Cerelyn Davis, explaining that while it was regrettable that
officers were mercilessly slaughtering innocents in the streets with
complete disregard for their humanity, it was no excuse for causing a
big commotion. “This barbaric instance of malice and savagery need not
inspire uproar. I pray that cooler heads prevail during this time of
unending death and misery being inflicted upon the powerless masses.”
Davis went on to insist that any sign of unrest would only give the
forces of unconscionable evil an excuse to impose even more wanton
suffering on those who have no choice but to endure it.
NYPost | The chief of police in Memphis in charge of the five officers who fatally beat and tasered motorist Tyre Nichols was fired from a previous law enforcement job after a botched probe.
Cerelyn “CJ” Davis became the first female police chief in Memphis’
history in 2021 and is currently in the international spotlight after
five cops brutally beat Tyre Nichols.
She was fired from the Atlanta police department in 2008 for her
alleged involvement in a sex crimes investigation into the husband of an
Atlanta police sergeant, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Two detectives accused Davis of telling them not to investigate
Terrill Marion Crane, who was married to sergeant Tonya Crane after the
police department obtained photos of him with underage girls.
A federal grand jury later indicted Terrill Crane on child
pornography. He pleaded guilty to one count of child pornography in
2009, the newspaper reported.
The indictment was issued after Atlanta police took no action in the
case and a subsequent investigation by the city pointed to Davis as the
reason. Davis was demoted from major to lieutenant before being fired
from the force that she had joined in 2008.
Dale made me aware of a video in which Gonzalo Lira outgasses nonsense from his pie hole in sufficient volume and density so as to subvert the credibility of everything else he has here-to-date said about Ukraine. In this instance, he's so completely out of his depth and out of his mind talm'bout major riots coming to major American cities this spring in response to police violence. NOPE! Nyet! No way, no how! Nah Gah Happen....,
Ever since the Occupy Movement got b-slapped out of existence by a coordinated Federal clampdown, the Michael Brown uprisings, followed by the George Floyd uprisings, (A BLM/DNC Warren Buffet production) and finally the mass incarceration of every redneck peckerwood and his cousin who got caught up in January 6th Stop the Steal shenanigans - it has become conspicuously obvious to the casual observer that THE MAN is not fucking around and has not been for quite some time.
Everything else is - as they say - merely conversation.....,
TheIntercept | The recent wave of arrests are part and parcel of a “green scare,”
which began in the 1990s and has seen numerous environmental and animal
rights activists labeled and charged
as terrorists on a federal level consistently for no more than minor
property destruction. Yet the Atlanta cases mark the first use of a
state domestic terrorism statute against either an environmental or
anti-racist movement.
The 19 protesters are being charged under a Georgia law passed in 2017, which, according
to the Republican state senator who introduced the bill, was intended
to combat cases like the Boston Marathon bombing, Dylann Roof’s massacre
of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, and the
Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting.
“During legislative debate over this law, the concern was raised that
as written, the law was so broad that it could be used to prosecute
Black Lives Matter activists blocking the highway as terrorists. The
response was simply that prosecutors wouldn’t do that,” Kautz told me.
“There are similar laws passed in many other states, and we believe that
the existence of these laws on the books is a threat to democracy and
the right to protest.”
The Georgia law is exceedingly broad. Domestic terrorism under the
statute includes the destruction or disabling of ill-defined “critical
infrastructure,” which can be publicly or privately owned, or “a state
or government facility” with the intention to “alter, change, or coerce
the policy of the government” or “affect the conduct of the government”
by use of “destructive devices.” What counts as critical infrastructure
here? A bank branch window? A police vehicle? Bulldozers deployed to
raze the forest? What is a destructive device? A rock? A firework? And
is not a huge swathe of activism the attempt to coerce a government to
change policies?
Police affidavits
on the arrest warrants of forest defenders facing domestic terror
charges include the following as alleged examples of terrorist activity:
“criminally trespassing on posted land,” “sleeping in the forest,”
“sleeping in a hammock with another defendant,” being “known members” of
“a prison abolitionist movement,” and aligning themselves with Defend
the Atlanta Forest by “occupying a tree house while wearing a gas mask
and camouflage clothing.”
It is for good reason that leftists, myself included, have
challenged the expansion of anti-terror laws in the wake of the January 6
Capitol riots or other
white supremacist attacks. Terrorism laws operate to name the state and
capital’s ideological enemies; they will be reliably used against
anti-capitalists, leftists, and Black liberationists more readily than
white supremacist extremists with deep ties to law enforcement and the
Republican right.
Since its passage in 2017, the Georgia domestic terrorism law has not
resulted in a single conviction. As such, there has been no occasion to
challenge the law’s questionable constitutionality. Chris Bruce, policy
director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, told
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “the statute establishes overly
broad, far-reaching limitations that restrict public dissent of the
government and criminalizes violators with severe and excessive
penalties.” He said of the forest defender terror charges that they are
“wholly inapposite at worst and flimsy at best.”
“The state is attempting to innovate new repressive prosecution, and I
think ultimately that will fail for them,” Sara, a 32-year-old service
worker who lives by the imperiled forest and has been part of Stop Cop
City since the movement began, told me.
The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives on a mostly party-line vote of 220–212,[5] but not the evenly divided Senate amid opposition from Republicans.[6][7] Negotiations between Republican and Democratic senators on a reform bill collapsed in September 2021.[7]
Background
The drafting of the legislation was preceded by a series of protests against the deaths of black Americans at the hands of mostly white police officers and civilians in 2020, including George Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.[4][8] The proposed legislation contains some provisions that civil rights advocates have long sought,[4] and is named in Floyd's honor.[9]
Provisions
The legislation, described as expansive,[4] would:
Grant power to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to issue subpoenas
to police departments as part of "pattern or practice" investigations
into whether there has been a "pattern and practice" of bias or
misconduct by the department[10]
Provide grants to state attorneys general to "create an independent process to investigate misconduct or excessive use of force" by police forces[11]
Establish a federal registry of police misconduct complaints and disciplinary actions[11]
Enhance accountability for police officers who commit misconduct, by restricting the application of the qualified immunity doctrine for local and state officers,[10][12] and by changing the mens rea
(intent) element of 18 U.S.C. § 242 (the federal criminal offense of
"deprivation of rights under color of law," which has been used to
prosecute police for misconduct) from "willfully" to "knowingly or with reckless disregard"[13]
Require state and local law enforcement agencies that receive
federal funding to adopt anti-discrimination policies and training
programs, including those targeted at fighting racial profiling[4]
Prohibit federal police officers from using chokeholds or other carotid holds (which led to the death of Eric Garner), and require state and local law enforcement agencies that receive federal funding to adopt the same prohibition[4]
Prohibit the issuance of no-knock warrants
(warrants that allow police to conduct a raid without knocking or
announcing themselves) in federal drug investigations, and provide
incentives to the states to enact a similar prohibition.[4]
Change the threshold for the permissible use of force by federal law
enforcement officers from "reasonableness" to only when "necessary to
prevent death or serious bodily injury."[4]
Mandate that federal officers use deadly force
only as a last resort and that de-escalation be attempted, and
condition federal funding to state and local law enforcement agencies on
the adoption of the same policy.[4]
At
a June 2020 hearing on police issues in the House Judiciary Committee,
George Floyd's brother, Philonise Floyd, testified in favor of police
reforms. Also testifying were the Floyd family's attorney Benjamin Crump (invited by the Democrats) and Angela Underwood Jacobs (invited by the Republicans), the brother of Federal Protective Service officer David "Patrick" Underwood, who was killed in the line of duty.[17][18][19] Committee Republicans invited conservative Fox News commentator and ex-Secret Service agent Dan Bongino,[19][20] who did not mention police brutality at the hearing and instead focused on dangers faced by police.[20] Committee Republicans also called Darrell C. Scott, a minister and prominent Trump ally, to testify.[19][21]
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
