Resource Links Tagged with "Policing"

Here Are Concrete Actions White People Can Take to Fight Racial Injustice

“My call to action challenges white professionals to lean into discomfort and bring about change.”
by TaLona Holbert | July 2020
Every day of my life, I have experiences that infer Black inferiority and anti-Blackness. It is exhausting to wake up each day and convince myself and others that I belong, that my life matters and that I am capable, despite being surrounded by social, cultural and professional cues that suggest otherwise. No matter how subtle or seemingly innocuous signals of Black exclusion and inferiority are, they diminish Black people’s dignity and humanity, erode our identity as Americans, and reinforce decades of stereotypes and discrimination intended to cement our status as second-class citizens.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Confederate Monuments] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Blindness] [Assumptions]

The Invention of the Police, Why did American policing get so big, so fast? The answer, mainly, is slavery.

by Jill Lepore | July 2020
In Philadelphia, in 1705, the governor expressed the view that the militia could make the city safer than the watch, but militias weren’t supposed to police the king’s subjects; they were supposed to serve the common defense—waging wars against the French, fighting Native peoples who were trying to hold on to their lands, or suppressing slave rebellions. The government of slavery was not a rule of law. It was a rule of police. In 1661, the English colony of Barbados passed its first slave law; revised in 1688, it decreed that “Negroes and other Slaves” were “wholly unqualified to be governed by the Laws . . . of our Nations,” and devised, instead, a special set of rules “for the good Regulating and Ordering of them.” Virginia adopted similar measures, known as slave codes, in 1680.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Slavery] [History] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [Prison System] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Politics]

For Local Native Americans, a Reckoning over Hurtful Images Goes Way Beyond One South Philadelphia Statue

by Jeff Gammage and Maddie Hanna | July 2020
James Logan was not just a colonial statesman and Philadelphia mayor. He was an architect of the infamous “Walking Purchase,” a scheme in which he and others swindled the original Lenape inhabitants out of perhaps a million acres of land in 1737. “You see these things every single day,” said Mach, 33, a University of Pennsylvania doctoral student who studies how Native Americans are represented in museums. “This stuff is just everywhere.”
Across the United States, the Black Lives Matter protests against racism and police violence have also ignited new discussions and demands over the use of Native images, symbols and mascots, and the future of monuments to men who harmed and killed indigenous people.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Myths] [Systemic Racism] [Indigenous] [Policing] [History] [Economics] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Confederate Monuments]

In 1912, This Georgia County Drove Out Every Black Resident Between the 1860s and the 1920s, White Americans Pushed out Thousands of Black Residents from Their Communities.

by Becky Little | August 2019
To understand what Abrams is up against in November, when she’ll compete against two Republican men in a red state that has only elected white men, it’s useful to look at the state’s history of white supremacy and how that legacy affects Georgians today. One county in particular shoulders an especially egregious past. The northern county of Forsyth, one of Georgia’s 10 most populous, leans heavily white and conservative. Its demographics are shaped by an event that happened in 1912, when white people forced out all 1,098 of Forsyth’s black residents, who comprised about 10 percent of the population at the time.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [Racial Covenants] [Denial] [Housing] [Accountability] [Policing]

7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real

by Ben & Jerry’s | Month Unknown 2020
While Barack Obama’s presidency was indeed a profound and meaningful mark of true progress, racism, of course, never really went away. The presence of a black president, hockey starOpens a new window, or movie-franchise superheroOpens a new window, however welcome and exciting, cannot reverse centuries of racial injustice. In fact, racism is built right into every level of our society in ways that might surprise you. Includes a video from Demos “We Must Talk about Race to Fix Economic Inequality.”
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Employment] [Economics] [Prison System] [Housing] [Policing] [Advocacy] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Accountability] [Politics]

It Took 10 Minutes to Convict 14-Year-Old George Stinney Jr. It Took 70 Years after His Execution to Exonerate Him.

by Lindsey Bever | December 2014
In March 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came for 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents weren’t at home. His little sister was hiding in the family’s chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.
Two young white girls had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. He and his little sister, who were black, were said to be last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney – and directed their attention toward George. On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. On Wednesday, 70 years later, he was exonerated.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Prison System] [White Supremacy] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [-ing While Black] [Denial] [Assumptions] [Accountability]

Five White Louisiana Judges Uphold Life Sentence of Black Man Jailed for Stealing Hedge Clippers 23 Years Ago

by Namrata Tripathi | August 2020
A man from Louisiana, who was sentenced to life in prison for stealing a pair of hedge clippers over 20 years ago, will continue to remain in prison after the state Supreme Court denied a request to review his case. Fair Wayne Bryant, a 62-year-old Black man, was convicted for stealing garden equipment in 1997, which landed him in prison for the rest of his life. Bryant, in 2000, had appealed his life sentence to be unconstitutionally excessive and his case had made its way up to the high court of the state. However, his hopes were dashed after a Louisiana Supreme Court panel, consisting of five White men and one Black woman, upheld his life sentence 5-1 last week. The only person to dissent was the Black judge on the panel, Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Prison System] [Systemic Racism] [Silencing POC] [Accountability] [Policing] [Economics] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Blindness]

Whitesplaining: The Conversation about White Progressive Liberal Racism That We Aren’t Having

by Shanta Lee Gander | August 2020
Whitesplaining, or white people explaining things to Black people, is a phenomenon. Many of us Black folx swap stories with our friends or with family members as we deconstruct these situations and the assumptions. In this current moment of interrogating the culture, I’ve been re-visiting these moments of whitesplaining in my own life as an extension of an insidious kind of racism that often goes unnoticed. It is the other part of the conversation about race that America needs to have. I’ve lived in Vermont for 10 years. Here, the white progressive racism is partly due to the narrative that Vermont banned adult slavery in its constitution in 1777. With closer examination of the research conducted by Dr. Harvey Amani Whitfield, one learns that this “fact” is full of inconsistencies. Vermont at the time was still an environment that allowed slave owners to place ads for runaway slaves.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Definitions] [Individual Change] [History] [Slavery] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism] [White Defensiveness] [Accountability]

GREAT NEGRO PLOT OF 1741: THE RUMORS AND LIES THAT LED TO EXECUTION OF OVER 30 BLACK AMERICANS IN NEW YORK CITY

by Blackthen | August 2020
The details of the events that took place in New York City in the spring and summer of 1741 are recorded in numerous historic and later accounts, many of which contain contradictory information. According to nearly all accounts, a fire on March 18, 1741, at Fort George—then Lieutenant Governor George Clarke’s home—was the first in a series of fires in the city that may or may not have been set by slaves. The fires occurred at regular intervals and then with increased frequency until April 6, when four fires were set in a single day. Rumors raced across the city when a witness claimed to have seen a black man, identified as a slave named Cuffee, running from the scene of one of the fires.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Slavery] [Accountability] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [Silencing POC] [Assumptions]

Protesters Block Evangeline Thruway in Wake of Lafayette Police Shooting

by Katie Gagliano | August 2020
…The shooting was captured on bystander video shared widely on social media. It shows at least five Lafayette Police officers approaching a Black man with what witnesses said was a knife in his hand walking away from police toward a convenience store. Video then shows officers open fire near the entrance of the convenience store and at least 10 shots can be heard.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [-ing While Black] [Black Lives Matter] [Bystander Intervention] [Accountability]

On Nantucket, a Racist Act Gets a Second Look

by Dugan Arnett Globe Staff | August 2020
On March 11, 2018, island residents awoke to a startling act of hate. The front door of the African Meeting House — a nearly 200-year-old former church that now serves as a symbol of the island’s rich Black history — had been defiled with racist graffiti: “N—– LEAVE.” The crime made national news, shocking many who couldn’t fathom such overt bigotry in a place of rarefied tranquility. Residents quickly condemned the vandalism, while local officials, labeling the act a hate crime, vowed to seek justice. But justice hasn’t come.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Culture] [Accountability] [History] [Collective Action] [Silencing POC]

Race of Mass Shooters Influences How the Media Cover Their Crimes, New Study Shows

by Laura Frizzell, Sadé L. Lindsay, and Scott Duxbury | July 2018
If a news report mentions a shooter’s tough childhood, chances are he’s white. On Jan. 24, 2014, police found Josh Boren, a 34-year-old man and former police officer, dead in his home next to the bodies of his wife and their three children. The shots were fired execution-style on Boren’s kneeling victims, before he turned the gun on himself. On Aug. 8, 2015, 48-year-old David Ray Conley shot and killed his son, former girlfriend and six other children and adults at his former girlfriend’s home. Like Boren, Conley executed the victims at point-blank range. Both men had histories of domestic violence and criminal behavior. Yet despite the obvious similarities in these two cases and perpetrators, the media, in each case, took a different approach.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Myths] [Individual Change] [History] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Colorblindness] [Prison System] [-ing While Black]

Letter to My Son; “Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage.”

by Ta-Nehisi Coates | July 2015
Specifically, the host wished to know why I felt that white America’s progress, or rather the progress of those Americans who believe that they are white, was built on looting and violence. Hearing this, I felt an old and indistinct sadness well up in me. The answer to this question is the record of the believers themselves. The answer is American history. …When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” he was not merely being aspirational. At the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term people to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. As for now, it must be said that the elevation of the belief in being white was not achieved through wine tastings and ice-cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [-ing While Black] [Policing] [White Blindness] [Slavery]

There Is No Such Thing as a ‘White Ally’ — “TNSWA” Part II

by Catherine Pugh, Esq. | July 2020
Part II of TNSWA series. Racism is not mine, it’s yours, and it’s not called “help” when it’s your mess we’re cleaning. Part I is available here. I get stuck when I try to see the “White Ally” label as something bigger than a White woobie. Normally, that’s no problem, but this woobie comes at the expense of Black living. “White Ally” remains a term I neither use nor care for. Originally, I kept my own counsel here because my objections felt cranky. “White Ally” was a deft marketing plan recasting potential “haters” as heroes, but hardly a reason to engage. As it happens, I have no love for “White Privilege” either and shrugged it off from within the same genre of indifference. “White Privilege” was our ironic tongue-click when you acted like the child who commits patricide and then begs an orphan’s mercy. As with the other, it merited little attention. Then Travis and George McMichael executed Ahmaud Arbery, and everything changed. It is from this place that There Is No Such Thing as a White Ally was born. So many questions to ask ourselves.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Individual Change] [Accountability] [Definitions] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Anti-Racism] [-ing While Black] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [White Fragility/Tears] [“All Lives Matter”] [Advocacy]

Walking While Black

by Garnette Cadogan | July 2016
*On my first day in the city, I went walking for a few hours to get a feel for the place and to buy supplies to transform my dormitory room from a prison bunker into a welcoming space. When some university staff members found out what I’d been up to, they warned me to restrict my walking to the places recommended as safe to tourists and the parents of freshmen. They trotted out statistics about New Orleans’s crime rate. What no one had told me was that I was the one who would be considered a threat. On one occasion, less than a month after my arrival, I tried to help a man whose wheelchair was stuck in the middle of a crosswalk; he threatened to shoot me in the face, then asked a white pedestrian for help…
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Blindness]

Police Incitement Against Black Lives Matter Is Putting Protesters in Danger

by Sarah Lazare | July 2016
* From the floor of the Republican National Convention to the online pages of the Blue Lives Matter Facebook community, it is now commonplace for public officials, police and first responders to openly declare war on Black Lives Matter—the civil rights movement of our times. “After the shooting, when they [the police] talked about the protest, they talked about how violent protesters were,” Mica Grimm, organizer with Black Lives Matter- Minneapolis, told AlterNet. “They never talked about how five people were shot. No one will ever bring that up. They really don’t care that much about protesters.”
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability] [Silencing POC]

We Still #SayHerName: Remembering Sandra Bland 5 Years Later

by Micha Green | July 2020
Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland. Sandra Bland. Say her name for every year since her justice fighting light was dimmed. It’s been five years since Bland was arrested, detained and found hanging three days later in a Waller County, Texas jail cell. Her death was ruled a suicide, however, with the unlawful nature of her arrest in a routine traffic stop- for failure to signal a lane change- Bland’s passing still raises concerns as her family and activists continue to beg for a reopening of her case.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter]

Black Codes, Slave Patrols and Policing Today

fearing the rise of the abolition movement in the North, slaveholders throughout the South strengthened laws governing slaves and free people of color, known as “black codes.” The black codes governed enslaved people as well as four categories of free people. By putting both into one legal category, whites divided the population along racial lines, not along categories of free and unfree.

When White Friends Don’t Believe What Blacks Go through, They’re Not Friends

by Mary C. Curtis | September 2014
*Yet whites are, frequently, disappointingly, incredulous. Very often a “friend’s” reaction that goes something like this: “I don’t think a police officer would stop anyone for no reason at all.” Or: “You must have done something suspicious.” Or my favorite: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about.” I am not some child coming home with some tall tale, and I am certainly not a delusional liar.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]

Surveillance Footage Shows Rhode Island Officers Fabricated Assault That Nearly Ruined Man’s Life

by Ricky Riley | July 2016
A Providence, Rhode Island man was charged with assaulting police officers at a night club last year but surveillance footage released this week shows that officers started the raucous. Tuesday, the Rhode Island Attorney General’s office announced that 29-year-old Esmelin Fajardo will be allowed to enter a not guilty plea regarding the charges related to a melee in a club during closing hours.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Accountability] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [-ing While Black] [White Privilege]

Violent Arrest of Teacher Caught on Video; Officers Face Investigation

by Tony Plohetski | September 2018
Officials are investigating an Austin police officer’s violent arrest of an African-American elementary school teacher who was twice thrown to the ground during a traffic stop for speeding and comments by a second officer who told her police are sometimes wary of blacks because of their “violent tendencies.” Video from the previously unreported June 2015 incident was obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV this week. The video shows the traffic stop escalating rapidly in the seven seconds from when officer Bryan Richter, who is white, first gives a command to 26-year-old Breaion King to close her car door to when he forcibly removes her from the driver’s seat, pulls her across a vacant parking space and hurls her to the asphalt.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [White Privilege]

Men of Color Get Locked Up Ahead of Trials as Dirty Cops Get Slaps on the Wrist

by Kali Holloway | January 2020
NYPD Detective Michael Bergmann filed a report accusing Pedro Barbosa of attempting to run him over with a car. …Security footage later proved that Bergmann had fabricated the whole story, and he eventually pleaded guilty to perjury, making a false statement and official misconduct. Last week—despite unequivocal proof that the then-cop had tried to send an innocent man to prison for more than 10 years—Brooklyn Supreme Court judge Danny Chun dismissed prosecutors’ request for a one-year sentence and instead gave Bergmann a single day in jail, already served, and four years probation. All in all, the case is a sadly typical example of police lies and abuse, and how the criminal justice system is actively complicit in both.
TAGS: [2020’s] [–ing While Black] [policing]

#AltonSterling: 37-Year-Old Man Killed By Baton Rouge PD

by Kirsten West Savali | July 2016
Another black body on hot asphalt, heartbeat colliding with bullets in his chest, breathing becoming labored as an executioner in a uniform steals his life from him. This time, his name was Alton Sterling. This time, he was 37 years old.This time, he was a father of five. This time, he was selling CDs in front of a store. This time, the Baton Rouge, La., Police Department is responsible for his death.There are no new words. There are no new thoughts. There are no songs to sing nor chants to scream that will make this soul-crushing feeling of inevitability go away.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege]

75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice

by Corinne Shutack | August 2017
Note that the author is a white woman and what seemed in 2017 to be “good ideas” such as requiring on-duty officers to wear body-worn-cameras, in practice, at least by itself, have led to worsening injustices. Other ideas may have better withstood the test of time TAGS: [Collective Action] [Teachers] [Policing] [2010’s]

Lifesaving Advice From a Black Woman Held at Gunpoint by Police

by Tonya Jameson | July 2017
As I stared at the officer nervously pointing his gun at me, I realized immediately what he saw: a black person who had no business being in his neighbor’s driveway. Former Charlotte Observer writer Tonya Jameson shows how she was screwing her new license plate into her new Isuzu SUV … before having a gun pulled on her by a Knoxville Police Department Officer.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [-ing While Black] [2010’s] [Policing] [Tips Dos/Don’ts] [Systemic Racism]

Woman Accuses Officer of Going too Far During Traffic Stop

by KTRK TV | August 2015
A Spring woman says she was sexually assaulted by a deputy during a traffic stop earlier this summer It happened around 10:30 pm on June 21 near Ella Blvd and Barren Springs Drive, according to Charnesia Corley. The 21-year-old says she was just going to the store to get something for her sick mother when she was pulled over by a Harris County Sheriff’s deputy. “I feel like they sexually assaulted me! I really do. I feel disgusted, downgraded, humiliated,” Corley said.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Policing]

Revealed: FBI Investigated Civil Rights Group as ‘Terrorism’ Threat and Viewed KKK as Victims

by Sam T. Levin | February 2019
The FBI opened a “domestic terrorism” investigation into a civil rights group in California, labeling the activists “extremists” after they protested against neo-Nazis in 2016, new documents reveal.
Federal authorities ran a surveillance operation on By Any Means Necessary (Bamn), spying on the leftist group’s movements in an inquiry that came after one of Bamn’s members was stabbed at the white supremacist rally, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. “The FBI considered the KKK as victims and the leftist protesters as potential terror threats…”
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [History] [Systemic Racism] [Policing]

A Century Later, a Little-Known Mass Hanging of Black Soldiers Still Haunts Us

by James Jeffrey | December 2017
Sixty-three black soldiers were represented by one lawyer in the largest court martial in U.S. history, the first of three that followed the Houston riot of 1917. In total, 110 men out of 118 were found guilty, and nineteen were sentenced to death by hanging. Those sentenced to death were not given the right to appeal.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [History] [2010’s] [Policing] [White Supremacy] [Systemic Racism]

Minority NYPD Officers Admit Their Fellow Cops Go ‘Hunting’ For Vulnerable Citizens Of Color

by Rachall Davies | July 2016
The inhumane killings of Black men, women and children across America at the hands of police officers has many people wondering why the officers NOT involved in these shootings don’t speak out, and now a few brave cops are breaking their silence. The NYPD is one of many U.S. police forces who face constant criticism and are often at odds with the Black community over poor handling of incidents involving their officers and Black men, but a few minority NYPD officers say it’s no accident that people of color seem to be the targets. “You might not see anything, but you go hunting, like, bounty hunting for an arrest,” NYPD officer Derick Waller told NBC New York back in April of this year.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2010’s] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege]

Mapping Police Violence

Black people were 24% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population.
There were only 27 days in 2019 where police did not kill someone.

Black people are most likely to be killed by police
3x more likely to be killed by police than white people.
1.3x more likely to be unarmed compared to white people.
It’s not about crime