US policing

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘No progress’ since George Floyd: US police killing three people a day

      by

      ‘No progress’ since George Floyd: US police killing three people a day As Joe Biden pushes to ‘fund the police’, data from Mapping Police Violence shows high rates of deaths at the hands of law enforcement persistPolice officers in America continue to kill people at an alarming rate, according to a data analysis that has raised concerns about the Biden administration’s push to expand police investments amid growing concerns about crime.Law enforcement in the US have killed 249 people this year as of 24 March, averaging about three deaths a day and mirroring the deadly force trends of recent years, according to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group. The data, experts say, suggests in the nearly two years since George Floyd’s murder, the US has made little progress in preventing deaths at the hands of law enforcement, and that the 2020 promises of systemic reforms have fallen short.In a rare move, Los Angeles ex-deputy is charged in 2019 fatal shootingRead morePolice have killed roughly 1,100 people each year since 2013. In 2021, officers killed 1,136 people – one of the deadliest years on record, Mapping Police Violence reported. The organization tracks deaths recorded by police, governments and the media, including cases where people were fatally shot, beaten, restrained, and Tasered. The Washington Post has reported similar trends, and found that 2021 broke the record for fatal shootings by officers since the newspaper started its database tracking in 2015.“The shocking regularity of killings suggests that nothing substantive has really changed to disrupt the nationwide dynamic of police violence,” said Samuel Sinyangwe, a data scientist and policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence and Police Scorecard, which evaluates departments. “It demonstrates that we’re not doing enough, and if anything, it appears to be getting slightly worse year over year.”Advocates argue that the persistent rate of killings was a critical reason the US should not be expanding its police forces.Police killings are proceeding at almost exactly the same pace as previous years. No progress has been made in reducing deadly police violence nationwide. Another ~870 people will be killed by police by year’s end unless there are massive systemic changes. https://t.co/G3YiCYZoEi pic.twitter.com/bvhQvZJKWV— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) March 26, 2022
      Joe Biden, who has repeatedly said to “fund the police”, released a budget proposal earlier this week for $30bn in law enforcement and crime prevention efforts, including funding to put “more police officers on the beat”. The proposal, which called for the expansion of “accountable, community policing”, sparked immediate criticisms from racial justice groups. The Movement for Black Lives noted that the White House was proposing only $367m to support police reform and said Biden’s budget “shows a blatant disregard for his promises to Black people, masked as an effort to decrease crime”.Michael Gwin, a White House spokesperson, said in an email that Biden had been “consistent in his opposition to defunding the police and in his support for additional funding for community policing”, and “remains committed to advancing long-overdue police reforms”.“The president, along with the overwhelming majority of Americans, knows that we can and must have a criminal justice system that both protects public safety and upholds our founding ideals of equal treatment under the law. In fact, those two goals go hand-in-hand. That approach is at the core of the president’s comprehensive plan to combat crime by getting guns off the streets, and by investing in community-oriented policing and proven community anti-violence programs,” he added.During the national uprisings after Floyd’s murder, “defund the police” became a central rallying cry, with advocates arguing reform efforts had failed to prevent killings and misconduct. Cities could save lives by reducing police budgets, limiting potentially deadly encounters with civilians, and reinvesting funds into community programs that address root causes of crime, activists have said.Some cities initially responded with modest cuts to police budgets, in some cases removing officers from schools, traffic enforcement and other divisions, and investing in alternatives. But over the last year, an uptick in gun violence and homicides has prompted a backlash to the idea of defunding (even as the current crime rate remains significantly lower than decades prior). With intense media coverage of crime, officials have been pressured to abandon reforms, prioritize harsh punishments and invest more in police. Cities that made small cuts have largely restored and expanded law enforcement budgets.“To invest more into a system that we all know is broken is really a slap in the face to everyone who marched in summer 2020,” said Chris Harris, director of policy at the Austin Justice Coalition in Texas. “It reflects just a real lack of solutions to the problems that we face. It’s just more of the same – even if it’s exactly the thing that we know continues to hurt and kill people.”Graphic on killings by police in the US each year, showing 249 people have been killed so far in 2022, and 1,136 people were killed in 2021.Harris said it was disappointing to see calls for police expansion at the federal level, given the George Floyd Act, the national reform measure proposed after the protests, did not succeed. He said he was not surprised that the killings by police continue apace: “We fail to deal with the underlying issues that often drive police interactions in our communities, partly because we’re funding this law enforcement response rather than the upfront supports and services that could help people.”Gwin noted that the White House was exploring possible executive action to pass reforms after Republicans blocked negotiations over legislation.Sinyangwe pointed to a data analysis in Los Angeles, which showed that in recent years, one-third of incidents in which Los Angeles police department (LAPD) officers used force involved an unhoused person: “Instead of using force against homeless people, we should be investing in services and creating unarmed civilian responses to these issues.”But in LA, where housing and outreach efforts have fallen short, there has been an escalating law enforcement crackdown on street encampments. And LAPD is on track to get a large budget boost, despite a sharp increase in killings by officers in 2021.Proponents of police budget increases argue that law enforcement is the solution to violence, but Sinyangwe noted that fewer than 5% of arrests nationally are for serious violent crimes. And research has shown that when police forces expand, there are more arrests for low-level offenses, he said. And many high-profile killings by police have involved stops for alleged low-level crimes.Kaitlyn Dey, an organizer in Portland, Oregon, said it was frustrating to see officials push a narrative that cities need to “re-fund the police” when municipalities have largely failed to defund law enforcement in the first place.“We have to start chipping away at how many officers there are, what kind of equipment they have – that is going to reduce [police] violence, because they’re not going to be able to enact it if you take away their resources,” she said.There are documented solutions that could reduce killings, said Alex S Vitale, sociology professor at Brooklyn College and an expert on policing. He noted estimates suggesting that 25% to 50% of people killed by police were having a mental health crisis.“If we would develop non-police mental health crisis teams, and improve community-based mental health services, we could save hundreds of lives a year,” he said.Vitale, author of The End of Policing, pointed to a program in Denver that sends mental health clinicians and paramedics to respond to certain 911 calls, which is now dramatically expanding after a successful pilot. Health experts have responded to thousands of emergency calls since 2020, and have never had to call police for backup, the Denver Post reported.“While the media has mobilized crime panics to try and shut down talk of reducing our reliance on policing, organizations across the country are doing grassroots work in communities to demand these alternatives,” he said.TopicsUS policingUS politicsJoe BidenGeorge FloydnewsReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The US government is deploying robot dogs to the Mexican border. Seriously? | Moustafa Bayoumi

      by

      The US government is deploying robot dogs to the Mexico border. Seriously?Moustafa BayoumiAs if the border isn’t surveilled and militarized enough, the Department of Homeland Security wants to go full Black Mirror Are we all doomed to live in Charlie Brooker’s techno-dystopia? In Metalhead, an episode from season four of his famed Netflix show Black Mirror, a woman navigates an austere post-apocalyptic landscape while running for her life from a murderous robot dog. What makes the mechanized beast in the show particularly frightening is the lethal combination of the single-mindedness of a computer program with the extreme ferocity of an angry, feral dog.But it’s just TV, right? Not exactly. The military, technological, security and political classes in this country appear united in their desire to make robot dogs part of our future, and we should all be worried.The latest example came on 1 February, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled “Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment at the Border”. DHS dressed up their statement with the kind of adorable language made to warm the hearts of dog lovers everywhere. “The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is offering US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) a helping hand (or ‘paw’),” read the release. Isn’t that cute? A picture of the “four-legged ground drone” accompanied the release, and the “Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicle”, as it’s called, looked remarkably (and scarily) similar to the monstrous quadrupeds seen in the Black Mirror episode. But let’s not judge based on appearance. The real issue is that we keep rushing to militarized and technological solutions to what ultimately are human and political questions, creating more problems along the way.These particular robot dogs are made by Ghost Robotics, which claims that its 100lb machine was “bred” to scale “all types of natural terrain including sand, rocks and hills, as well as human-built environments, like stairs”. Each robot dog is outfitted with a bevy of sensors and able to transmit real-time video and information feeds. The devices are not yet in operation on the US-Mexico border, but a testing and evaluation program is under way in El Paso, Texas.To listen to DHS, it all sounds so utterly charming and so very next-gen – until you realize that what we’re talking about is the further encroachment of government surveillance on our daily lives. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, “people who live along the border are some of the most heavily surveilled people in the United States. A massive amalgamation of federal, state and local law enforcement and national security agencies are flying drones, putting up cameras and just generally attempting to negate civil liberties – capturing the general goings-on of people who live and work in proximity to the border.”Then there’s the question of lethal force. These specific ground drones may not be armed, but Ghost Robotics is already infamous for the combination of robot dog and robot rifle. In 2021, small arms manufacturer Sword International (must these companies choose such dystopian names?) outfitted a robot dog from Ghost Robotics with a custom-made weapon, called a “special purpose unmanned rifle” or Spur. This darling invention was unveiled at the annual conference of the Association of the United States Army.Incidentally, US policy not only does not “prohibit the development or employment” of killer robots (officially known as “lethal autonomous weapon systems,” or Laws) but also opposes any international preemptive ban. Meanwhile, as the Congressional Research Service notes, Israel has already exported what many consider a lethal autonomous weapon system to Chile, China, India, South Korea and Turkey. We’re fast running out of time for robust international dialogue on this issue.Domestically, the short history of the use of the robot dogs in our cities is also troubling. The Honolulu police department used about $150,000 of pandemic funding to buy their robot dog, which they then used to scan the eyes and take the temperatures of unhoused people to check for symptoms of Covid. The practice raised the alarms of advocates who said the practice was fundamentally dehumanizing. Needless to say, no housed person was treated that way.And after public outcry in 2021, the New York police department returned its $94,200 robot dog, Digidog. That robot was deployed to a home invasion in the Bronx and to a tense situation in a public housing building in Manhattan, attracting the angry notice of New Yorkers. Once again, many Black and brown New Yorkers felt over-policed, over-surveilled and under-resourced.“You can’t give me a living wage, you can’t raise a minimum wage, you can’t give me affordable housing; I’m working hard and I can’t get paid leave, I can’t get affordable childcare,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman in a video he posted to Twitter. “Instead we got money, taxpayer money, going to robot dogs?”Bowman is hardly alone. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized both the NYPD’s robot dog in 2021 and the recent news of robot dogs at the border. “It’s shameful how both parties fight tooth + nail to defend their ability to pump endless public money into militarization,” she recently tweeted. “From tanks in police depts to corrupt military contracts, funding this violence is bipartisan + non-controversial, yet healthcare + housing isn’t. It’s BS.”She’s right, of course, as is Bowman. Where exactly are our priorities?The Biden administration has a chance to stop this program in its tracks before the border becomes even more of a militarized, technological dystopia. We’re so easily mesmerized by the massive capabilities of technology, but the fact is that techno-military solutions to human problems too often create more problems than they solve. Just ask the unhoused populations in Honolulu, the urban poor in New York, and – if the program’s not cancelled – asylum seekers on the border. These are the people whose daily realities are increasingly being militarized by this technology. And because they are vulnerable and without political clout, they’re the ones closest to living in a Black Mirror episode. Meanwhile, the rest of us are sold a hi-tech bill of goods that unites everything that Americans love – technology, dogs and guns – and told to believe it’s all for the best.Look, I love my tech and all it can do as much as the next person, but when our embrace of technology reduces rather than enhances our dignity, then we have a problem. Humans deserve better. And frankly, so do dogs – even robot ones.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS-Mexico borderUS militaryUS policingcommentReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden on crime: ‘The answer is not to defund the police’ – live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

      3.28pm EST

      15:28

      Trump Israel ambassador spills beans on embarrassing meeting

      1.48pm EST

      13:48

      ‘The answer is not to defund the police’ – Biden

      1.39pm EST

      13:39

      Joe Biden considering executive order to implement police reform – White House

      12.30pm EST

      12:30

      Today so far

      12.18pm EST

      12:18

      Russia plans staged attack to justify invasion of Ukraine – reports

      10.40am EST

      10:40

      Isis leader detonated bomb to avoid US capture, Biden says

      Live feed

      Show

      Show key events only

      4.37pm EST

      16:37

      The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, became similarly defensive earlier today when a reporter pressed for more details about the deaths of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and his family members.
      Joe Biden said that Qurayshi detonated a bomb to avoid capture by the US troops who carried out a special forces raid last night, and the explosion killed the Islamic State leader and several of his family members.
      NPR reporter Ayesha Rascoe asked Psaki whether the White House would present evidence to substantiate Biden’s claims that a suicide bomb killed Qurayshi and his family.
      “Obviously, these events just happened overnight. And so, I’m going to let the Department of Defense do a final assessment, which I’m certain they will provide additional detail on once it’s finalized,” Psaki said.
      Rascoe continued to press the issue, telling Psaki, “The US has not always been straightforward about what happens with civilians. And, I mean, that is a fact.”
      The US military initially described a Kabul drone attack carried out last year as a “righteous strike,” but Pentagon leaders were later forced to admit that the attack had actually killed 10 civilians and no Islamic State combatants.
      “The president made clear from the beginning, at every point in this process, that doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties was his priority and his preference,” Psaki said.
      “Given these events just happened less than 24 hours ago, we’re going to give [the Pentagon] time to make a final assessment. And they’ll provide every detail they can.”

      4.14pm EST

      16:14

      The State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, clashed with a reporter at his press briefing after the journalist demanded evidence to substantiate US claims of Russia’s plans to stage an attack to justify an invasion of Ukraine.
      “You’ve made an allegation that they might do that. Have they actually done it?” AP reporter Matt Lee asked Price.
      “What we know, Matt, is what I just said, that they have engaged in this activity,” Price said. “We told you a few weeks ago that we have information indicating Russia also has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine. So that, Matt, to your question is an action that Russia has already taken.”

      The Hill
      (@thehill)
      Reporter: “It’s an action that you say they have taken, but you have shown no evidence to confirm that. […] This is like – crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”Must-watch exchange between @APDiploWriter Matt Lee and @StateDeptSpox. pic.twitter.com/RPIPb2zwf5

      February 3, 2022

      Lee pointed out that the administration has not presented evidence to support the allegation of a planned false-flag operation either, and he pressed for concrete proof of Russia’s schemes in Ukraine.
      Specifically on the allegation of a planned fake video to justify an invasion, Lee said, “This is like – crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”
      Pointing to his decades of experience covering US foreign policy, Lee noted that the Pentagon has previously made wrong assertions about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the potential of Kabul falling to the Taliban.
      Price became defensive, telling Lee, “If you doubt the credibility of the US government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

      The Guardian’s Julian Borger and Shaun Walker report:
      US officials claim they have evidence of a Russian plan to make a “very graphic” fake video of a Ukrainian attack as a pretext for an invasion.
      The alleged plot would involve using corpses, footage of blown-up buildings, fake Ukrainian military hardware, Turkish-made drones and actors playing the part of Russian-speaking mourners.
      “We don’t know definitively that this is the route they are going to take, but we know that this is an option under consideration,” the deputy national security adviser, Jonathan Finer, told MSNBC, adding that the video “would involve actors playing mourners for people who are killed in an event that they would have created themselves”.
      Finer added: “That would involve the deployment of corpses to represent bodies purportedly killed, of people purportedly killed in an incident like this.”
      The Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said the video would have purported to show a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine and would be “very graphic”. He added that the US believed that the plan had the backing of the Kremlin.
      “Our experience is that very little of this nature is not approved at the highest levels of the Russian government,” Kirby said.

      3.28pm EST

      15:28

      Trump Israel ambassador spills beans on embarrassing meeting

      Martin Pengelly

      Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Progressives concerned as Eric Adams takes helm as New York mayor

      by

      Progressives concerned as Eric Adams takes helm as New York mayorHomelessness, safe housing, police brutality and racial injustice – does Bill de Blasio’s replacement have the policies to fix them? For many New Yorkers, the inauguration of Eric Adams as the 110th mayor of New York City – and only the second Black person to serve in the position – has evoked a range of feelings, from excitement at the possibility of change to confusion and concern.‘Generals don’t lead from the back’: New York mayor Eric Adams seeks bold start Read moreAdams’ rise through city and state politics was fairly typical. In addition to serving as a New York police captain, he was the Brooklyn borough president and a state senator. But he remains an unconventional, even enigmatic figure. There are questions surrounding his home address and curiosity about his plant-based diet, but information about his actual policies remain scarce.“Where Eric Adams has thrived, in many ways, is in really failing to lay out a vision,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, director of the New York Working Families party. “His transition has been defined by personality, less [by] an agenda for the city.”Progressives and advocates working across multiple sectors have voiced concerns at the slow emergence of Adams’ plans and priorities, and worry about positions he has taken including increasing the use of the heavily criticized “stop-and-frisk” policy and resurrecting plainclothes policemen units.Adams’ ascent comes at a crucial time in New York history, as the city seeks to emerge from the pandemic and the economic and social chaos that has come with it.New York’s ballooning homelessness crisis, primarily caused by a lack of affordable housing, is one of the largest issues Adam must contend with. In 2020, more than 120,000 people, including children, slept in the New York municipal shelter system, with homelessness reaching the highest levels since the Great Depression.Covid presented additional challenges, spreading rapidly among homeless populations.Advocates have widely supported Adams’ priority of increasing permanent, affordable housing in a city which has some of America’s most expensive rents. But many have raised concerns about Adams’ main plan: converting 25,000 hotel rooms into permanent apartments, noting zoning and conversion requirements many hotels do not meet.Public housing, managed by the New York Public Housing Association, is another area where Adams has faced pushback. Adams supports privatizing public housing units as well as selling air rights above public housing units. Activists have said such actions, presented as an opportunity to raise capital for blighted buildings, are ineffective and that oversight for private landlords when it comes to addressing housing issues like mold and lead paint would become even more difficult.“His focus is going to be on his big-money donors. That’s been his track record all along. That’s not a secret,” said Fight for NYCHA core member Louis Flores.“We expect him to continue down that road, and for public housing that he’s going to support policies that benefit the real estate development industry at the expense of the public housing residents.”Slice of life: New York’s famed $1 street pizza under threat from rising costsRead moreDespite ambiguities around some of Adams’ plans for addressing homelessness, some experts are hopeful delays in appointments – and Adams’ reputation for flexibility – could be an opportunity for his administration to receive input from community leaders on how to address the crisis, including through the creation of a deputy to oversee homelessness and affordable housing.”Having a bit more of a deliberative process is ultimately going to be more impactful than coming out on day one with an ambitious target for the number of units of affordable housing that should be created that might not actually have the impact of reducing homelessness and housing insecurity,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy director at Coalition for the Homeless.Proposed changes to policing are another point of tension.Adams, who has described assault at the hands of an NYPD officer as inspiration for joining public service, has faced criticism for his plans to resurrect controversial plainclothes units, an anti-crime department in the NYPD involved in a number of shootings, and increase use of stop-and-frisk, a policy critics have condemned as racially discriminatory.While Adams and his newly appointed NYPD commissioner, Keechant Sewell, the first Black woman to lead the department, have supported these policies and vowed to use properly trained, “emotionally intelligent” officers, progressive have argued that previous training attempts have failed, with many officers continually excused for misconduct.“What does the emotional intelligence of an officer matter if he’s got you up against the wall, patting you down,” said Kesi Foster, a lead organizer with the nonprofit Make the Road New York and a steering committee member with Communities United for Police Reform.Simone said: “The ways to solve unsheltered homelessness is not through policing and pushing people from one corner to another.”Other policing initiatives Adams has sponsored have met criticism, specifically when it comes to New York’s troubled jail system.While Adams has publicly supported closing down Rikers Island, a jail with notoriously poor conditions where several people have died in pre-trial custody, he has also promised to bring back solitary confinement to Rikers, reversing a previous ban on a practice several experts have called “inhumane”.Eric Adams sworn in as mayor of New York CityRead moreAdams has publicly opposed bail reform measures, meant to curtail pre-trial detention but rolled back, citing debunked claims that releases have spurred increases in crime.“Changing the bail bill is not going to achieve the outcome the mayor wants. We’re hoping that we can convince him of that during his tenure,” said Marie Ndiaye, supervising attorney of the Decarceration Project at the Legal Aid Society.“Getting wishy-washy on bail reform is pretty scary because there’s a pretty linear correlation between the rollbacks and the jail population increasing,” said Sara Rahimi of the nonprofit Emergency Release Fund.In general, advocates contend there is more to be learned about Adams as more appointments are made, but given his comments so far, many are approaching the mayor-elect with caution and timid hope of being able to advance progressive policy.“Cautiously optimistic and cautiously pessimistic all at once would be the way to go there,” said Ndiaye.TopicsNew YorkUS politicsUS policingUS crimeUS domestic policyHomelessnessHousingnewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Generals don’t lead from the back’: New York mayor Eric Adams seeks bold start

      by

      ‘Generals don’t lead from the back’: New York mayor Eric Adams seeks bold start Significant challenges await the newly sworn-in leader of the most populous US city Eric Adams’s first two days in office would resonate with any weary New York commuter: a subway ride featuring a brawl requiring the attendance of police, then the challenge of negotiating Manhattan traffic on a rented bike.Fauci agrees hospitalization figures a better guide to Omicron than case count Read more“This is an amazing city,” the new mayor told ABC on Sunday. “You know, riding a city bike in, taking the train in, interacting with New Yorkers: generals don’t lead their troops from the back.“They lead their troops from the front. I’m going to lead my city into this victory from the front. And people tell me this is a difficult job. Darn it, I want it to be a difficult job.”Significant challenges await the newly sworn-in leader of the most populous US city, a Democrat who trounced the Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa in November to become New York’s second Black mayor after David Dinkins, who was in office from 1990 to 1993.“New York can and should be the center of the universe again,” said Adams in an inaugural address themed largely around getting to grips with an Omicron-fueled coronavirus surge that has slowed parts of the city to a crawl.The police and fire departments are reporting sickness rates of around 20% and three subway lines have been suspended because of staff shortages.Adams succeeds as mayor Bill de Blasio, another Democrat who despite becoming hugely unpopular has signalled a run for governor.The city, the new mayor said, had endured “two years of continuous crisis, and that insults our very nature as New Yorkers”.On Saturday, hours after his midnight swearing-in ceremony in Times Square, the 61-year-old rode the subway to work, greeting residents and calling 911 to report a brawl between three men.By the time officers arrived, the fight – witnessed by reporters accompanying the mayor – was over. Adams, a cop himself for 22 years, said he wished police had stuck around longer.On Sunday he was up early again, cycling to City Hall and an appearance on ABC’s This Week in which he called on New Yorkers to get vaccinated and boosted.“It’s going to prevent you from dying,” he said. “It’s going to alleviate the possibility of you being hospitalised and going on a ventilator.“To those who are not vaccinated: ‘Stop it. It’s time to get vaccinated. It’s time to have the booster shots. You’re endangering yourself and you’re endangering the public and your family as well’.”Adams, who is keeping de Blasio’s vaccine mandate for private employers, said consideration of a booster mandate for city employees including cops, firefighters and sanitation workers was “our next move and decision”.His host, George Stephanopoulos, challenged Adams on his campaign pledge to tackle soaring crime rates, especially gun violence.“The balance is not just heavy-handed policing, it’s public safety and justice,” Adams said.“We’re going to go after gangs, we’re going to take down some of the large gangs in our city. We’re going to zero in on gangs. We’re going to reinstitute a plainclothes anti-gun unit and zero in on those guns.”TopicsNew YorkCoronavirusUS policingUS crimeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Capitol rioter in Michael Fanone assault asks judge to let him use dating websites

      by

      Capitol rioter in Michael Fanone assault asks judge to let him use dating websitesLawyer for Thomas Sibick tells judge he can be trusted to use social media to seek job and love during confinement at parents’ house A New York man charged with assaulting a police officer during the deadly Capitol riot has asked a judge for permission to use dating websites while confined at his parents’ house.Donald Trump could face charges for trying to obstruct certification of election, legal experts say Read moreThomas Sibick, of Buffalo, was part of a pro-Trump mob the then president urged to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.Five people died around events at the Capitol on 6 January, including a police officer and a rioter shot by law enforcement.Lawmakers hid or were hustled to safety as some rioters sought figures including Vice-President Mike Pence to capture or possibly kill.Sibick, 36, awaits trial. He is alleged to have taken part in an “ongoing violent assault” of the former Washington police officer Michael Fanone, “ripping off [his] radio – his lifeline for help – and his badge”.Fanone was seriously injured and has become a leading voice seeking accountability for the rioters and those who urged them on, giving emotional testimony to the House select committee investigating the attack.He announced last week that he had resigned as a police officer, to join CNN.02:36Earlier this year, Sibick sought to escape the company of other Capitol rioters in a Washington jail, even volunteering for solitary confinement.In October, Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered Sibick to enter home confinement under supervision of his parents. He is not allowed to attend political rallies, use social media or watch talk shows on cable news.“There will only be one chance,” Judge Jackson said then. “If you violate my conditions, it will indicate my trust was misplaced.”Nonetheless, in a Christmas Day filing first reported by Business Insider, Sibick sought permission to use social media to look for a job and to “interact with members of the opposite gender for the purpose of establishing a friendship”.His attorney, Stephen Brennwald, wrote: “He is not seeking to use any social media application for any prohibited purpose, such as for political engagement, news reading, or any other activity that would violate not only the letter, but the spirit, of his release conditions.“Mr Sibick realises that if he were to meet someone on a social media site, he would be unable to leave his home for the purpose of going to dinner or to participate in other events. He does, however, feel the need to establish some sort of connection with someone (if possible, in light of his situation).”Sibick has said he now views the Capitol attack as “without question unconscionable”, a “disgrace to our nation” and “a scar Trump is ultimately responsible for”.But he is among more than 700 people charged. Earlier this month, a man who attacked officers with a fire extinguisher was sentenced to more than five years in prison, the longest sentence yet handed down.Capitol rioters hit with severe sentences and sharp reprimands from judgesRead moreRobert Palmer, 54 and from Florida, told a judge he now recognised that Trump and others stoked the riot by “spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny”.“Little did I realise that they were the tyrannical ones desperate to hold on to power at any cost,” Palmer said, “even by creating the chaos they knew would happen with such rhetoric”.Trump was impeached for a second time, for inciting an insurrection. Ten House Republicans and seven senators turned against him but he was still acquitted.Members of the House 6 January committee have indicated that they could recommend Trump be criminally charged.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS policingnewsReuse this content More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Minneapolis votes on whether to replace police department

      by

      MinnesotaMinneapolis votes on whether to replace police department Future of policing is on the ballot in the city where Floyd’s death in May 2020 launched a nationwide reckoning on racial justice Associated Press in MinneapolisTue 2 Nov 2021 08.51 EDTVoters in Minneapolis will decide on Tuesday whether to replace their police department with a new Department of Public Safety, more than a year after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer launched a national movement to defund or abolish police. ‘I had a big gasp’: George Floyd jurors speak on the trial, the video and the verdictRead moreThe Democratic mayor, Jacob Frey, is also in a tough fight for a second term, facing opponents who attacked him in the wake of Floyd’s death.Frey opposed the policing amendment. Two of his leading challengers in a field of 17, Sheila Nezhad and Kate Knuth, strongly supported the proposal. Voters will also decide whether to replace an unusual “weak mayor, strong council” system with a more conventional distribution of executive and legislative powers.While results on the ballot questions were expected on Tuesday night, the mayoral race uses ranked-choice voting. If no candidate reaches 50% in the first round, the winner will be determined after a tally of second- and potentially third-choice votes. The future of policing in the city where Floyd’s death in May 2020 launched a nationwide reckoning on racial justice overshadowed everything else on the ballot. The debate brought national attention as well as out-of-state money seeking to influence a contest that could shape changes in policing elsewhere. The proposed amendment to the city charter would remove language that mandates Minneapolis have a police department with a minimum number of officers based on population. It would be replaced by a new Department of Public Safety that would take a “comprehensive public health approach to the delivery of functions” that “could include” police officers “if necessary, to fulfill its responsibilities for public safety”. Supporters of the change argued that an overhaul is necessary to stop police violence, to re-imagine what public safety can be and to devote more funding to approaches that don’t rely on sending armed officers to deal with people in crisis. But opponents said the ballot proposal contained no plan for how the department would operate and expressed fear it might make communities affected by gun violence more vulnerable. The details, and who would lead the new agency, would be determined by the mayor and the council. Two prominent progressives – Ilhan Omar, who represents the Minneapolis area, and state attorney general Keith Ellison – supported the policing amendment. But some leading mainstream liberals, including Governor Tim Walz and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, opposed it, fearing backlash could lead to Democratic losses across the US in 2022. Opponents included several Black leaders, some top voices in the police accountability movement. Minister JaNae Bates, a spokeswoman for the pro-amendment campaign, told reporters that even if the proposal fails, it has changed the conversation. “No matter what happens,” Bates said, “the city is going to have to move forward and really wrestle with what we cannot un-know: that the Minneapolis police department has been able to operate with impunity and has done quite a bit of harm and the city has to take some serious steps to rectify that.”TopicsMinnesotaGeorge FloydUS politicsUS policingRacenewsReuse this content More