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Category: police violence

  • Grand Rapids Officer Released On Bail After Indictment For Killing Patrick Lyoya

    Patrick Lyoya, 26, an African immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was shot in the back of the head by patrolman Christopher Schurr on April 4.

    This act of police violence was met with widespread shock and mass demonstrations demanding that Schurr be terminated from the Grand Rapids police department and charged with murder.

    There was an announcement made on June 15 saying that Schurr had been fired from the Grand Rapid Police Department. This came less than a week after his indictment on second degree murder charges in the death of Lyoya.

    Despite the national attention focusing on the killing of Lyoya, it would take more than two months for Schurr to be indicted for second degree murder.

    The post Grand Rapids Officer Released On Bail After Indictment For Killing Patrick Lyoya appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Peckham solidarity forces immigration officers to abandon raid

    The people of Peckham came together over the weekend to push back against an immigration raid. Over the course of an afternoon, the crowd swelled from a handful of people to hundreds. Immigration forces and police were there to take away a man for “immigration offences“. He was being held in a van.

    However, after Lewisham Anti-Raids tweeted for support, people came to help:

    People were able to spread the word online:

    Some people sat down and laid down their bikes:

    Members of the public have previously been able to halt immigration raids by getting in the way of police vans and officers. In May 2021, people in Glasgow gathered to stop Border Force officials from taking men away. And this year, in May, another crowd in Edinburgh forced immigration officers to back off when they were trying to detain residents.

    It’s a real testament to people power:

    Police violence

    However, none of this is to say that everything went smoothly in Peckham. Plenty of people on the ground shared disturbing footage of aggressive police.

    In one video, screams ring out as police try to push through people:

    And one person observed how we can use our bodies for resistance:

    Another added that while filming cops is essential, it’s not the only thing to do:

    After all, if this is how the police behave when they know they’re being filmed, what else could they be up to when cameras aren’t pointed at them?

    “Shame on you!”

    As the police gave up and started to leave Peckham, people cheered and chanted “shame on you”:

    There were also chants of “don’t come back to Peckham”:

    Moreover, it’s important to remember:

    Community solidarity isn’t sitting around with neighbours to celebrate an undemocratic coloniser like the Queen. It’s taking care of neighbours by resisting police violence. It’s responding to calls for aid. It’s coming together to protect people from racist immigration policies.

    Peckham, just like Glasgow and Edinburgh, showed everyone how it’s done.

    Featured image via screenshot – The Mirror/YouTube

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Black man dies after repeated tasering from police led him to jump into the Thames

    The Metropolitan Police tasered a Black man several times on Chelsea Bridge Road in London. As they advanced on him, the man fled and jumped into the river Thames. He was rescued from the river by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The man is as yet unnamed. As usual, people have to rely on civilian recordings of the incident to see what actually happened.

    Operation Withdraw Consent shared the footage a bystander recorded:

    The police have said they received reports that the man was holding a screwdriver. As the video shows, he is clearly in some distress.

    As the police taser him, he falls to the ground screaming in pain. He yells something at the two officers advancing on him. They then tase him again and the man rolls on the ground, twitching. This happens yet another time. The man then runs over a barrier at the side. As the officers pursue him, he jumps over the railing and into the Thames.

    Reporting

    We can trust neither the mainstream media nor the police to accurately report what happened.

    The police said that after their officers tasered the man he:

    subsequently entered the river.

    A number of outlets also used similar euphemisms. The Independent said the man “fell”:

     

    The BBC also said the man fell:

     

    Sky News made it sound as though the man simply fell into the Thames and was then pulled out:

     

    By saying that the man “fell” into the river, the media are neatly following the narrative the police set out. There’s a huge difference between saying that the man was involved in an incident with tasers and “entered” the river, and saying that he jumped into the river after being repeatedly tasered.

    Outrage

    Many people on social media discussed these awful policing tactics. Others also noticed the terrible reporting:

    Commentator Michael Morgan said:

    Meanwhile Deborah Coles, director of charity INQUEST which monitors state-related deaths, said:

    And outgoing Goldsmiths student union president Sara Bafo said we must withdraw power from the police:

    Moreover, journalist Lorraine King explained how Black people are more likely to be tasered for longer than white people:

    Anti-Blackness

    Figures from the Home Office a year ago show:

    Black people were four times more likely to have force used against them by Met police officers than white people, and five times more likely to have Taser-like devices used against them by the force.

    As King said above, Black people are also more likely to be tased for longer. A report from the Independent Office for Police Conduct found that Black people are more likely to have a taser fired at them for longer than 5 seconds. They also said:

    In the majority of cases involving either allegations of discrimination or common stereotypes and assumptions, there was evidence that the individual concerned had mental health concerns or a learning disability. This supports findings by others that the intersectionality of race and mental health can increase the risk of higher levels of use of force.

    If the media reports the police’s actions in a passive or sanitised way, it only enables them to continue to be violent towards Black people. This man did not “fall” into the river. He died trying to escape police violence.

    Just last month, Operation Withdraw Consent said:

    We want our communities to be given the power to respond to the 80 per cent of non-criminal incidents that the police respond to – as we believe that a community response, rooted in resolution and meeting individual needs, would have better outcomes.

    We must withdraw our consent from aggressive policing. And in order to do that, we need to be able to understand and call out journalism that’s in service to the police and not the public.

    Featured image via Twitter/screenshot – Operation Withdraw Consent

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Turkey: Police arrest, torture protesters on the anniversary of ‘Occupy Gezi’

    Turkish police arrested 170 protesters around Istanbul’s Taksim Square on May 31, as crowds gathered to mark the 9th anniversary of the nationwide anti-government demonstrations that began in nearby Gezi Park, reports Medya News.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Police strip searched yet another child while she was on her period. Enough is enough.

    This article includes a recounting of self-harm and discussion of suicide.

    A mother has spoken about how police strip searched her 15-year-old child, who later tried to kill herself. The teenager’s family is now bringing a civil case against the police.

    This comes just after Child Q’s harrowing experience of being strip searched by police. In fact, police have strip searched roughly 50 children a week over the last five years. The mother, who spoke to the BBC, shared details of her daughter’s traumatising experience from December 2020. This was the same month in which Child Q was strip searched.

    What happened this time?

    The BBC detailed that Olivia (name changed to protect identity) is mixed-race and autistic. Olivia’s mum said that:

    Olivia had been out with some friends when they had an argument with two boys, who called the police and alleged they were the victims of an attempted knife-point robbery. She was searched by police at the scene and nothing was discovered. Olivia and her friends were then arrested.

    Olivia’s mum (who the BBC report calls Lisa – another pseudonym) warned the police over the phone that Olivia had been self-harming. Olivia handed over a small blade that she used to self-harm. Whilst changing her clothes, a sharpened stick fell from her clothes. It was another item she used to self-harm. But when the police noticed it, six officers handcuffed her and “forcibly stripped her”. They then carried out what the BBC called:

    an intimate search in the presence of male officers.

    It bears repeating that Olivia is a vulnerable child who was in a distressed state. Why the police thought it acceptable to seize her and strip search her is beyond comprehension. Olivia’s mum also said that:

    Olivia was actually on her period at the time too. And they cut off her underwear in front of these grown male officers. She was absolutely distraught.

    In the time since she was strip searched, Olivia has continued to self-harm and has also attempted suicide.

    History of abuse

    What happened to Olivia is enraging and terrifying. This is yet another example of shocking police behaviour. It is, however, also important to pay attention to the fact that Olivia is mixed-race and autistic. There have been many instances in which police have treated autistic people in a violently ableist manner.

    Earlier in May, a 12-year-old Black autistic boy was allegedly assaulted by a white woman. Antwon Forrest was left with a deep gash in his head. Avon and Somerset police initially told his family that they would take no further action. But the force have now classified the incident as a racist attack. And they’ve also apologised for their response to the case. They will be reviewing it, but their initial actions speak for themselves.

    Moreover, in 2020 a police officer dragged an autistic boy across the floor in a special-needs school in Liverpool. Incredibly, the officer was part of a “safer schools” unit. Christopher Cruise was convicted of assault; he retired before he could be sacked. The officer was fined and didn’t serve any time in prison. A relative of the boy who was assaulted said:

    He has autism and he struggles a lot. He is much younger in his head, more like a five-year-old.

    We are all absolutely furious. His days are hard enough already.

    Also in 2020, a parent came forward to say that police pointed a taser at their 12-year-old autistic son. The parent said that when a pair of shoes no longer fit her son, he became extremely distressed:

    He was an 11-year-old boy in autistic distress – overwhelmed, frightened, anxious and unable to regulate these feelings.

    When neighbours called the police due to the noise, the parent said that:

    Four police officers restrained my son and placed him in handcuffs. Having heightened sensitivity to touch, this increased my son’s discomfort to intolerable levels. Without freedom of movement, his primary mechanism of self-regulation – pacing and rocking – was restricted.

    While the police dragged her son away kicking and screaming, the boy yelled out:

    Help me Mummy, help me Mummy, I’m being kidnapped.

    There are almost certainly many other cases in which the police have abused autistic people.

    How can you reform this?

    The epidemic of police violence against Black people, disabled people, immigrants and other minorities shows that neurodiversity training isn’t enough. Training isn’t going to deal with the rot at the heart of British policing. The police are institutionally racist and ableist, and there’s no amount of training that will change that. As the Independent’s race correspondent Nadine White argued, Black children are under attack by police.

    The Metropolitan police have referred themselves to a police watchdog over the incident with Olivia. But as law magazine The Justice Gap reported:

    More than half of these searches were conducted by the Metropolitan Police and a disproportionate number of black and mixed-race children were subjected to this process.

    A police force which can strip search children and leave them traumatised is a police force that is beyond repair. Olivia’s experiences are haunting. A mixed-race child with autism was violently attacked by officers who outnumbered her. This is indefensible. But we know the usual suspects will try to defend such behaviour.

    We can’t rely on the police investigating themselves – we have to rely on each other. It’s now more important than ever to observe the police in public. Cop watching organisations are available to help people learn how to legally observe and document police behaviour. As for police violence behind closed doors, we must speak loudly and clearly that we will not let them keep hurting our children.

    Featured image via Unsplash/Colin Lloyd

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Two Years After Police Murder of George Floyd, Activists Fight an Uphill Battle

    Two years ago, the video of the police-perpetrated murder of George Floyd sparked one of the largest protests in the United States. According to the New York Times, between 15 and 26 million Americans joined the Movement for Black Lives in over 550 locales. New legislation like the 2021 Justice in Policing Act was passed by Democrats in the House of Representatives, but stalled in the Senate. New calls to “Defund the Police” reverberated in marches and at city halls. At the climax of the uprisings, the nation glimpsed the possibility of a transformed society, one in which life-affirming priorities like housing, education and health care would be funded instead of police.

    Today, activists fight an uphill battle to push progressive ideas in an era of acute right-wing backlash and the spread of reactionary politics and repression. Republicans have introduced over 100 bills aimed at criminalizing protests since the start of the rebellion sparked by the murder of Floyd, and Republican-controlled states have passed laws granting immunity to drivers who hit and kill protesters. Meanwhile pro-policing Democrats like New York City mayor Eric Adams have been elected after decrying the “Defund the Police” movement and promising to beef up police funding.

    Where does the movement go from here? Truthout interviewed Amara Enyia, the manager of policy and research for the Movement for Black Lives, the massive nationwide collective that describes itself as having come together in 2015 “in response to the sustained and increasingly visible violence against Black communities in the U.S. and globally” and that “launched the Vision for Black Lives, a comprehensive and visionary policy agenda for the post-Ferguson Black liberation movement, in August of 2016.”

    Nicholas Powers: What is one of the biggest obstacles to change? We see now a reactionary pushback to the Movement for Black Lives and “Defund the Police,” and a retrenchment of older, more punitive ideas.

    Amara Enyia: Well, I’ve seen governments not be responsive to the people, and one of the first steps that has to happen is people must harness their power and create systems that reflect their values. And replace the ones we have. One obstacle is to realize the way things are not the way they have to be.

    Can you go into that a little more?

    Sure. The first is when people are in survival mode, they don’t have the space to imagine. I mean, it’s just hard to talk about policy when you’re facing an eviction.

    Second is the reinforcement by those in positions of power and authority that we have to accept the state of things. We internalize their notions, get stuck in a box — and yes, people get disillusioned. Third is the intentional mystification of policy. Like tax policy — it dramatically affects people’s lives, but the minute you go into the details, eyes glaze over.

    Look at the tax system: It hurts low-income people of color because it values wealth over income. Or look at issues like redlining. In 2020, J.P. Morgan lent more to one white neighborhood in Chicago than to all the Black neighborhoods combined.

    The thing is, we all engage in economic activity. Most people intuitively know the power dynamics that shape their lives, but the elites use an obscure language that only those with degrees can understand. It drives a wedge between those who create policy versus those affected by it.

    It has been two years since the immense uprising of the George Floyd protests. What do you think led to such an explosion? What has been the lasting legacy?

    We don’t know what one spark will do. We had already seen Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and too many more. And then in 2020 we had a pandemic. It was a confluence of circumstances that no one could have predicted.

    The legacy of it is the fact that we have redefined the conversation and [organized to] challenge the billions that go into policing and redirect those resources to the issues that create crime. Out of that has come the Breathe Act [a visionary bill framework] where people are given health care, fully funded schools, youth activities and more…. It goes beyond policing. We need the resources to address what really makes us safe.

    What are the obstacles to getting this practical legislation passed?

    One of the biggest blocks is the desire for microwave solutions for a slow-cooked problem. Too many politicians want a solution slogan to rattle off in a commercial or campaign. It’s easy to say hire more police, buy more scanners, build more police stations. It plays well on TV. The reality is there has been a public policy failure over years. Too many politicians did not take the long-term view or even acknowledge where they failed. So they retreat to the same scrappy, cheap “lock ‘em up” slogans.

    How can activists and progressive politicians challenge mass incarceration and policing?

    We have to resist falling in line. We see the Eric Adams model here in Chi-Town with Lori Lightfoot who is a Black woman but uses the law-and-order rhetoric. We have to point out to the people that there’s a history. Look at the 1994 Crime Bill, remind them that it doesn’t work. We have to advocate for policy that addresses mental health, or say one [issue] that is often forgotten: environmental racism. What about lead exposure? Lead is a neurotoxin that can lead to impulsive behavior. Youth exposed to lead can become violent, but yet we attribute that to some violent gene in their makeup. Add to that disinvestment in youth programs and the lack of nurses or counselors in school. When they become adults, we throw them in jail.

    I think of Laquan McDonald, who was murdered by the Chicago police. In a sense he was killed long before they killed him.

    We have to stop pushing social problems onto the police. The only tools they have are a gun and the power to arrest.

    What are some of the policy proposals that you advocate for to short-circuit this fall back into a default reliance on policing?

    Increase funding for frontline violence prevention. These are workers who come from the community and have organic relationships. They know the people in the neighborhood.

    Next, permanently fund the frontline prevention. How can they do their jobs not knowing if they will be supported one year to the next? To follow up on that, align federal, state and city resources to amplify the impact the social services can have… Follow up with expanding programs for the youth. Thirty years ago, we had arts, music and gardening activities; now they have nothing to do and are just left out there in the streets.

    Most importantly, for those of us in the movement, learn from the people. We can get into our bubble, too. I talk to everyday people and listen to them. They know what they need.

    Note: This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for publication.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Bristol ‘riot’ trials highlight oppressiveness of police and criminal ‘justice’ system”

    On Monday 23 May, Matthew O’Neill was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his part in Bristol’s 21 March 2021 Kill the Bill uprising, after pleading guilty to riot and arson.

    The public gallery was packed with supporters during his sentencing.

    He was the second person to be sent to prison this month for the events of 21 March. 18 people have now been imprisoned since last year, for a total of over 63 years between them.

    Police clashed with protesters against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (policing bill) outside Bristol’s Bridewell Police station. The night ended with several police vehicles on fire and demonstrators breaching police lines to break through the windows of the station. The police brutally attacked the demonstrators, hitting them over the heads with batons and the edges of their riot shields.

    To read an account of the events of 21 March click here, and click here to read The Canary‘s prior coverage of the trials.

    Several juries have failed to convict for riot

    In the last few weeks, the state has been having an increasingly hard time persuading juries to convict defendants of riot as harrowing evidence of police violence comes out. Earlier this month, Kadeem Yarde was found not guilty of all charges, while juries in the cases of Indigo Bond and Joe Paxton were unable to decide on a verdict, and both will have to face a retrial next year.

    Yet another jury was unable to come to a decision about whether to convict a third defendant (whom we don’t have permission to name) last week, and instead found him guilty of the lesser – although still very serious – charge of violent disorder. He was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.

    The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has responded to these failures to convict for riot by moving the goalposts and trying to prosecute some defendants for lesser offences. On Monday 23 May, Fleur Moody – who had originally been charged with riot – pled guilty to the lesser offence of affray. Fleur’s case is the first time the CPS haven’t doggedly tried to pursue the charge of riot for kill the bill protestors.

    The Bristol ‘riot’ trials are set to continue until at least this Autumn, with retrials currently being scheduled for January 2023.

    Unlike the mainstream press, we won’t be lazily copying and pasting police press releases about those being sent down, or publishing details of their personal lives. We are not intimidated or ashamed to say that the people facing the wrath of the courts are our comrades. We are proud of them. The fight that they were a part of was started long before the events of March 21 2021, and it is still going on now. That fight is not just about the policing bill – the fight we are talking about is much broader than that. It is the ever present struggle of the people against power.

    At Bristol Crown Court this month, one of the defendants reminded us of just that.

    “This whole thing’s deeper than any of us”

    I was in the courtroom during Matthew O’Neil’s sentencing, sitting in the public gallery. The feeling of anger and rage around me was palpable.

    The balance of power in the courtroom was clearly weighted towards the prosecutor and the judge, in their ridiculous wigs and gowns. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were backed up by several police officers, while the defendant was locked in a glass box.

    The truest things in any situation are often said by those with the least power, and that day was no different. As the judge listed the accusations against Matthew – of using force against officers and destroying police property on 21 March – he said:

    This whole thing’s deeper than any of us

    And isn’t that the truest thing of all about these trials? Those charged with the ‘riot’ are forced to explain their actions to the court in terms of a narrow legal definition of self-defence. That is to say that at any given moment when they used any force against the police, they did so to fend off an attack, or because they were in fear of an attack by the police.

    The CPS have argued consistently that the defendants were not consistently under attack by the police, and at some points they were taking the offensive.

    But – and let’s talk frankly – why shouldn’t we take the offensive when the police use force against our communities every day?

    The police take the offensive against our people all the time. They do that when they push ahead with punitive measures against some groups, but not against others. They do it when they use violence against working class people and communities of colour, while protecting those with money and power. And, when they donned their riot gear outside Bridewell they were ready to use that violence again.

    Is it really relevant who started it on 21 March, when the police started it long ago? They have been attacking us all our lives.

    “We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning”

    At demonstrations in support of the ‘riot’ defendants, supporters have displayed a police riot shield painted with the words “We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning”.

    That phrase encapsulates how wrong it is to see the events of 21 March as anything other than an uprising against the violence and oppression of the police.

    Just days before Bristol’s Kill the Bill demonstration, police used violence against women who had gathered to mourn Sarah Everard, who’d been brutally murdered by a serving police officer.

    1816 people have been killed in police custody – or following police contact – since 1990, and a disproportionate number of them were people of colour. According to Deborah Coles of Inquest:

    The disproportionality in the use of force against Black people adds to the irrefutable evidence of structural racism embedded in policing practices.

    In the days after the Bristol ‘riot’, we wrote:

    The siege of Bridewell was an act of resistance against the police violence which is felt daily by communities in the UK. Against the violence routinely faced by protesters. Against police harassment and police killings.

    In January, 24-year-old Mohamud Hassan died after being detained at Cardiff Bay police station, not so far away from Bridewell. Five weeks later, 29-year-old Mouayed Bashir also died in police custody, this time in Newport. Police violence is felt disproportionately by People of Colour in the UK. Non-white people are twice as likely to be shot dead by the police, and a Person of Colour is more than twice as likely to be killed in police custody.

    In the moments before the Bristol Kill the Bill protesters marched on Bridewell, one of the demonstrators made a speech over a megaphone, saying:

    There’s one reason why we’re here today, and that’s the encroachment of the police state into our lives…

    People then called on the crowd to march on Bridewell police station.

    An uprising in defence of GRT peoples’ existence

    One of the motivations for the 21 March uprising at Bridewell was the proposed new police powers to arrest people living in vehicles and confiscate their homes.

    As of this month, the repressive powers proposed in the policing bill have been agreed upon by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and the bill has become an Act. This will herald a new wave of oppression and violence against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) people.

    A great many of those arrested after the 21 March Bristol ‘riot’ are from a Traveller background. Many of the defendants have said in evidence that they joined the protest because of the Bill’s proposed attack on GRT people, and a disproportionate amount of the defendants live in vehicles themselves, or have close friends who do.

    There is a long history of violent oppression of GRT people in the UK. For hundreds of years, simply being a Gypsy was an offence punishable by hanging in the UK.

    Fast forward to the 21st century, and oppressive attitudes towards GRT people are still endemic among the police. A 2018 Traveller Movement study reported that one officer had heard phrases to the effect of ‘the only good Gypsy is a dead Gypsy’ being used by a colleague, and that this kind of extremely defamatory language is not uncommon. A 2021 report found that GRT people were “over-policed”, and that GRT women made up 6% of the prison population, but only 0.1% of the general population.

    In 1985, a police pogrom against a convoy of Travellers who were on their way to Stonehenge resulted in 24 people being hospitalised and 537 Travellers being arrested. That event – dubbed ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’ – occurred during a mass movement against the Thatcher government’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJA), an act which brought in new police anti-trespass powers and created a new offence of ‘aggravated trespass’. ‘Aggravated trespass’ allows the police to arrest trespassers if they are disrupting ‘lawful business’. It can be used to repress GRT people and demonstrators. The 2022 PCSC Act builds on the repressive powers of the CJA, protecting the ‘rights’ of the wealthy and propertied by explicitly making it illegal to trespass on land with an intent to reside.

    It’s not surprising, then, that people with lived experience of the oppressive policing of travelling people chose to rise up against a Bill which represented a direct attack on their existence. Narrow legalistic definitions of self-defence don’t make much sense when viewed in that light.

    Matt fought back “bravely” “for himself and others around him”

    The Canary spoke to one of Matt’s supporters, who was there at the trial. He said:

    Matt is from a traveller background and is well used to being attacked by the system in so many ways. He’s had a life of it so far. In his case there was talk of how he “went overboard” in his response to the police violence. What he actually did was react against their brutality and bravely fight back for himself and others around him.

    With the very real threat posed to the travelling way of life, marginalised communities and the right to protest by this government and its authoritarian new laws, the anger felt by Matt and so many others is entirely legitimate.

    He said that – in the face of the state attack that the PCSC Act represents – we need more rage, not less:

    We really need more people to respond and resist with more rage, not less. Now is not the time for well mannered, ineffective protests or staying passive. We need to make their new laws unworkable.

    The state should expect more trouble like that seen when people in Bristol stood together and fought back on 21st March 2021. We will never accept more powers for an already paramilitarised, violent and racist police. They get impunity and praise in their courts while we get punishment and prison. We see in all the current trials just how stacked their so called justice is against us.

    There’s an old saying, “When freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free”. Alongside that we could remember “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.”

    Guilty pleas “should not detract from the police violence defendants face”

    The Network for Police Harassment (NETPOL) has released a statement about the case of Fleur Moody. It says:

    On Monday 23rd May, Fleur Moody pleaded guilty to affray at Bristol Crown Court.

    But – NETPOL maintains – Fleur’s guilty plea “should not detract from the police violence she faced in Bristol that night.”

    Fleur, like many others, wanted to act in solidarity with GRT people:

    Fleur, a vulnerable young woman, suffering from PTSD and complex mental health problems, attended the protest on 21st March in solidarity with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities whose way of life is criminalised by the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act.

    The statement goes on to describe the appalling police violence that Fleur suffered at the hands of the police. According to NETPOL:

    Any actions that Fleur took that night pale in comparison with the violence she, and countless others, faced on the streets of Bristol.

    Fleur was knocked unconscious by police before being sprayed with CS gas. Harrowing footage shows Fleur screaming in pain, her hair covered in blood, after a fellow protester carried her into the police station for treatment. Police officers are seen standing by, doing nothing, as she loses consciousness again on the floor of the police station.

    NETPOL commented on the injustice of Fleur spending a year with a riot charge hanging over her head:

    Like other defendants, Fleur was charged with riot. She has spent over a year facing the prospect of up to ten years in prison for the crime of being beaten up by the police.

    Just a week before trial, the Crown Prosecution Service, presumably shaken by recent acquittals and hung juries, dropped the charge to the less serious offence of affray.

    A statement from Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign said:

    Guilty pleas should never be seen as an admission of guilt but rather a lack of belief that a fair trial could truly be had. The threat of a longer sentence [if defendants refuse to plead guilty] essentially blackmails people into accepting them

    We need to remember whose side we’re on

    The courts and the mainstream media want to depoliticise Bristol’s Kill the Bill uprising. When people are forced to defend themselves in court their deeply political actions are shoe-horned into a dangerously liberal framework. In the language of the courtroom, narrow legalistic definitions of things like self defence begin to take the place of what is right and what is wrong.

    We need to reject their framework and reclaim the narrative. One way to do that is to support all of the defendants, whether they plead guilty, or are found guilty or innocent.

    We need to see the 21 March for what it was: a battle fought by ordinary people against authoritarian state power. It is a battle that is still raging all around us.

    We need to organise ourselves to continue that fight, and to defend the rebels of Bridewell. You can donate to their crowdfunder here.

    Featured image via Shoal Collective / NETPOL (with permission)

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Detroit Organizations Demand Justice Department Act On Police Misconduct

    CPTA begins the memorandum by stating that: “The Coalition for Police Transparency and Accountability (CPTA) requests a federal investigation of a pattern of killings and excessive force by the Detroit Police Department (DPD) and an institutional culture within the department that promotes violence and racial discrimination within the Department and against members of the community. The mission of CPTA is to expose police misconduct in all its forms and thereby demand police transparency and accountability as well as garner community support for this effort. The Coalition was formed after the killing of Hakim Littleton in July 2020 by the Detroit Police Department officers.

    The post Detroit Organizations Demand Justice Department Act On Police Misconduct appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Massacre In Buffalo Highlights The Legacy Of Racist Violence

    A white racist gunman targeted and killed ten African Americans in a supermarket in an African American community in Buffalo, New York.

    The 18-year-old shooter, Payton Gendron, has been heavily influenced by the white supremacist ideology of replacement theory which encourages violent attacks against African Americans and other nationalities in the United States.

    According to reports, Gendron drove more than 200 miles in New York state to this location where on several occasions, he visited the store in order to map out his murderous attacks against innocent people. One witness said that he had talked to Gendron the day before outside the supermarket for over 90 minutes.

    This massacre follows numerous incidents over the last few years where gunmen motivated by racist beliefs have carried out mass shooting aimed at killing as many of a particular targeted group as possible.

    The post Massacre In Buffalo Highlights The Legacy Of Racist Violence appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Protestors document police violence at demonstration for Kurdish people

    The South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) has shared footage online of what appears to be South Yorkshire Police striking protestors and using pepper spray. SYMAAG said:

    This began, and should have ended, as a peaceful, calm protest showing solidarity with those in Kurdistan. Instead the police reacted in a way completely out of proportion to the protest and the actions of those present. This was a protest with families and young children.

    Instead, officers seem to drag one person away, whilst beating others back:

    SYMAAG also outline in an earlier tweet that Kurdish flags were ripped away from protestors:

    Sequence of events

    SYMAAG explain how the police made their presence felt at the protest. In a statement released on their social media, they explain why they held the protest:

    Since Sunday 17th April,  Turkey’s army -one of NATO’s largest armies has been invading parts of Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan. In response to this attack and in solidarity with Kurdish people resisting the invasion, the Sheffield Kurdish Community and its supporters came together for a rally in front of Sheffield Town Hall on the afternoon of the 24th of April.

    They detail how, as the rally was coming to a close, police asked the attendees to hand in their flags:

    As the rally ended and people started packing up banners and flags, two policemen approached one member of the community and asked him to hand in his Kurdish flags. The man refused and tried to continue collecting his things, helped by friends. After moving the conversation to the town hall stairs, the police insisted on getting the flags from the man. For about forty five minutes, police and rally attendees argued on the steps.

    Because the man held on to his flags, the police then acted forcefully:

    The police would not let people go home with the flags and banners they brought. After a while, the man asked if he was under arrest to which the police replied negatively. The police, seeing that people would not give their flags, tried to forcefully grab the flag and the flagpole, which ended up breaking. Police then decided to arrest the man in question and several extra policemen violently pushed away attenders including women, teenagers and younger children. This put families and children in a state of shock, with many crying for help. 

    This police violence continued:

    People followed, trying to support the man and stop the arrest. The police then indiscriminately used pepper spray and punched people in order to disperse the supporters. Several men, women and a teenager were badly affected by pepper spray with eyes and throat burning. An ambulance was almost called as the teenager could not stand up for a while, crying and disoriented. The man put under arrest was taken to the police station and released later in the evening.

    Sheffield Superintendent Benn Kemp said:

    We know there has been some community concern regarding the circumstances surrounding yesterday’s arrest.

    Footage of the incident and the events leading up to the arrest is currently being reviewed at Chief Officer level.

    More than concern

    Kemp’s comments do very little to inspire confidence in either the police or their review process. As SYMAAG’s statements show, protestors in Sheffield were met with heavy-handed policing. Concerningly, there’s also the implication of extremism or terrorism as a possible explanation for the police’s actions.

    As The Yorkshire Post report:

    A 44-year-old man from Sheffield was arrested shortly before 2pm at the protest, on suspicion of displaying articles suggesting support for a proscribed organisation, which is an offence set out in the Terrorism Act 2000. He was then released under investigation.

    It is commonplace for Kurdish people and their supporters to be immediately cast under suspicion. As The Canary’s Emily Apple reports from a trip to Bakur:

     In every meeting we go to, in every interview we conduct, eventually we discuss what sentences people are facing or have already served.

    Everyone is charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”. But these are not terrorists. These are lawyers, journalists, MPs, co-op members, and human rights activists. Their crime is being Kurdish and supporting radical democracy in the face of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.

    The actions of South Yorkshire Police are frighteningly similar to the broader repression faced by Kurdish people in Turkey. It’s going to take far more than a review to address these injustices.

    South Yorkshire Police had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

    Featured image shared with permission.

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Execution In Grand Rapids Illustrates Failure To End Police Terrorism

    Over two weeks after Patrick Lyoya, 26, was stopped, chased, tackled and shot in the back of the head by a Grand Rapids patrolman, killing him instantly, there still has not been any punitive action taken against the white officer responsible for the death of the Congolese immigrant.

    The City of Grand Rapids has refused to even release the name of the officer since he has not yet been charged with a crime.

    This incident in a major midwestern municipality clearly illustrates the systematic refusal by the local, state and federal government agencies to address the ongoing deaths at the hands of the police. Two years since the brutal shooting deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and many others, the relevant authorities responsible for the funding and oversight of law-enforcement have refused to take any action to reform the operational culture of the police.

    The post Execution In Grand Rapids Illustrates Failure To End Police Terrorism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A Year After Police Killed Daunte Wright, Minneapolis Is Still Resisting

    About 100 people gathered in the Brooklyn Center neighborhood north of Minneapolis on Monday to honor Daunte Wright one year after the young Black man was shot and killed by local police officer Kim Potter on April 11, 2021. Potter shot Wright during a traffic stop and was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to two years in prison after claiming that she mistook her gun for her taser before shooting.

    Wright’s killing set off a wave of protests and unrest in the suburb less than a year after the murder of George Floyd by police on a crowded Minneapolis street corner sparked a nationwide uprising against systemic racism and police violence.

    On Monday, after a moment of silence marking the 20 years of Wright’s life, his immediate family placed candles on a memorial that now stands where Wright crashed his car and died after being shot.

    Jeanette Rupert, a reverend, nurse and activist from Minneapolis who has supported families of those slain by police, told the crowd that change is being made through Wright’s legacy, and his life will not be forgotten.

    “We will continue to make change and use our gifts to implement change,” Rupert said. “What are you going to do to make sure this family stays uplifted, and other families of stolen lives?”

    About 10 miles away, the intersection where Floyd was brutally murdered by former officer Derek Chauvin as other cops looked on — and the birthplace of an uprising that would spread across the nation — remains a permeant memorial and meeting space free of police.

    Banner and signs with Amir Locke’s name have been added to “George Floyd Square” since early February, when the 22-year-old became the latest victim of police violence in Minneapolis after being shot and killed by a SWAT team during a no-knock raid on an apartment where he was sleeping on the couch. Locke was not a subject of the police investigation and was sleeping while holding a gun he owned legally. Body camera footage of the raid and deadly shooting, along with an initial press released from police that wrongly identified Locke as a suspect, has enraged the community for weeks.

    A sign honoring Amir Locke, the young Black man recently killed by police during a no knock raid in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is now part of the memorial known as “George Floyd Square.”
    A sign honoring Amir Locke, the young Black man recently killed by police during a no-knock raid in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is now part of the memorial known as “George Floyd Square.”

    The level of trauma suffered by the people of Minneapolis and its Black community in particular is palpable around the corner from George Floyd Square, where dozens of mock gravestones with the names of Black people killed by police across the country fill a large green space. Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Amir Locke, Sandra Bland, Tanya Blanding, Troy Robinson, Atatiana Jefferson… the list goes on.

    George Floyd Square remains central to the movement in Minneapolis, and organizing meetings for activists and community members are regularly held there twice a day. Local activists told Truthout the meetings are an important organizing hub that has inspired multiple grassroots projects across a city that has emerged as a leader in the movement to end racist policing and violence.

    The movement remains strong in Minneapolis despite dwindling media coverage, political setbacks and right-wing backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement on the national stage.

    Daunte Wright's immediate family gather to observe the one-year anniversary of Wright's killing by police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
    Daunte Wright’s immediate family gather to observe the one-year anniversary of Wright’s killing by police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.

    Protesters responded to the killing of Locke by taking to the streets in the middle of winter, and residents of the city have spent the past two years debating proposals to defund and abolish the police department, raising deep questions about the systemic roots of poverty and violence, and who feels safer or less safe with police around, and why.

    In November, Minneapolis voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have dissolved the Minneapolis Police Department into a new public safety department offering a slate of services and responders besides armed police. Proponents said the initiative would have removed institutional barriers to reappropriating police funding and directing it to other services, such as trained experts to respond to a mental health crisis or drug overdose instead of police.

    Supporters said the debate over the ballot question was marred by misinformation but still received 60,000 or about 43 percent of votes. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who opposed the ballot question and has weathered blistering criticism for failing to prevent police violence, clung to office by a narrow margin after being challenged by two progressives who supported the proposal.

    Mock graves representing Black people slain by police in a greenspace near George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 11, 2022.
    Mock graves representing Black people slain by police in a green space near George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 11, 2022.

    Facing mounting pressure from activists over the failure of previous reforms to prevent the death of Locke and statements allegedly misrepresented changes to the city’s no-knock warrant policy, Frey recently placed a ban on no-knock warrants, which typically involve a team of police barging into a residence unannounced. However, under the new policy, police can still enter a residence after knocking repeatedly, announcing their presence and waiting 20 seconds during daytime hours or 30 seconds at night, according to reports.

    Twin Cities activists remain frustrated by the pace of reform, and mistrust between residents (and especially residents of color) and the police remains high. However, activists are also building new forms of community safety without police, such as a crisis hotline that connects people with community resources and/or responders trained in first aid and mental health care. Regular meetings at George Floyd Square provide a space for coming together and organizing such efforts without waiting on politicians to act.

    Back in Brooklyn Center, the friends, neighbors and activists who had gathered for Wright’s one-year memorial finished their prayers and released balloons into the evening sky after chanting Wright’s name three times. The sense of hope and togetherness was palpable; as Rupert explained, Wright lives on through his family and the “change-makers” who continue to organize for substantial police reform in Minnesota despite defeat at the ballot box in November. As the memorial came to an end, old-school hip-hop hits blared through speakers, and people formed lines and began dancing together in the street.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • United States: No charge for cop who killed Amir Locke

    The cop who fatally shot Amir Locke during a predawn, “no-knock” raid in February, will not face charges, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Police Killings Continue; Biden Administration Calls For More Law- Enforcement Funding

    In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey, who was in office at the time of the murder of Floyd and the subsequent rebellions in the city and around the country, has now issued a proposal to ban “No-Knock Warrants”. However, the problems of police misconduct and brutality are not new to Minneapolis and the recent initiative by the City of Minneapolis does provide loopholes that would allow the type of law-enforcement intrusions into people’s homes that result in many unjustified deaths.

    During a press conference on March 14, Frey told the media that: “The purpose here is to give people who are trying to comply, people who are trying to do the right thing, giving them the ability to again, get their wherewithal, answer the call if possible, and to make sure that officers are then entering into a situation where an individual is well-informed about who is entering the place.”

    The post Police Killings Continue; Biden Administration Calls For More Law- Enforcement Funding appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • A woman tried to protect others from police violence. Today she was sentenced to prison.

    Kill the Bill protester Jasmine York has been sentenced to prison after putting her body on the line to defend women from police violence.

    She’s one of 82 people who were arrested – most of them for riot – following a demonstration in Bristol against the draconian police bill. York has been sentenced to nine months, half of which will be served in prison. Meanwhile, 14 others have already received prison sentences for taking part in the protest.

    Dubious arson conviction

    A jury found Jasmine guilty of arson. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) insisted that during the demonstration Jasmine pushed a rubbish bin towards a burning police car, and the bin added fuel to the fire. But Jasmine insisted she was using the bin to try to create a barrier between her and the police. Crucially, there was no evidence whatsoever that the bin in question ever caught fire or fuelled anything. Despite this, she’s going to prison.

    The Bristol Anti-Repression Campaign (BARC) is made up of a number of Kill the Bill defendants and their supporters. It said of the sentencing:

    We’re proud of Jasmine, who tried hard to protect other women from the police and was severely beaten by them herself. We’re glad that she was found unanimously not guilty of riot, and also not guilty of a more serious form of arson [with intent to endanger lives] in her trial last month.

    Protecting women

    The CPS has spent ample resources prosecuting Kill the Bill defendants. It has painted them as an angry “mob” that worked together to beat up police officers and set fire to police vehicles.

    In his sentencing, judge James Patrick stated:

    You were very well aware of damage caused to police equipment which is paid for by the community, for the benefit of the community. Rather than standing by, you played your part by continuing the lawlessness.

    Yet in her week-long trial, the jury saw ample evidence of the police themselves behaving unlawfully. They saw evidence of officers cracking the edges of their shields onto people’s heads, and officers hitting and kicking protesters while on the ground. The jury saw photos of Jasmine’s dark bruises at the hands of the police. Her defence barrister Russell Fraser emphasised that “time and time again” Jasmine put her own body in harm’s way to protect others.

    During her trial, Fraser said:

    The one consistent thing [Jasmine] does is that she comes to the aid of other women. Consider the woman thrown back into the crowd. She moves across the line for that reason. There’s not many of us who would do that sort of thing, you might think.

    jasmine york trial
    Protesters stand outside court in solidarity with Jasmine York. Photo via BARC
    Cracking down on anyone who resists state repression

    The judge summed up his sentencing by saying:

    Your offending played a part in a very serious incident that caused lasting damage to public and private property. I would fail in my duty if I didn’t impose an immediate sentence. You will serve half of the nine months in prison.

    It is, perhaps, unsurprising that our increasingly fascistic state is keen to make an example of the Bristol residents who took part in the demonstration. After all, scenes of the Bristol unrest were broadcast around the world. They drew international attention to both the government’s new laws and to police brutality. The state is desperate to keep its citizens in line and to terrify them into obedience. And the best way to do this is to hand down harsh prison sentences.

    BARC argued:

    We recognise that the legal system is designed to maintain inequality, protect the police, and prevent political dissent. We know that the justice of the courts is a tool the state uses to preserve and defend itself.

    Indeed, Jasmine is just one of fifteen who’ve been made an example of by receiving prison sentences following the Kill the Bill demonstrations. Back in December, the same judge gave Ryan Roberts a massive 14-year sentence.

    BARC said:

    Although we were hoping for a non-custodial sentence [for Jasmine], this wasn’t unexpected – the repression following Kill the Bill protests has been harsh. The police and Judge Patrick are trying to send a message to anyone who takes a stand. Just last week, Mariella was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison.

    Mariella Gedge-Rogers was found guilty of riot after being brutally attacked by police on the same demonstration. She was kneed to the ground by an officer, dragged around by another, and held down by three more. As The Canary reported:

    Mariella is a Woman of Colour. She said that being “kneed to the floor” was especially frightening in the light of the murder of George Floyd, who died of suffocation as a result of Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck.

    Armoured thugs

    It’s telling that none of the police officers who were caught on footage attacking people are facing any accountability whatsoever for their brutal actions. They continue to keep their jobs while our friends go to prison.

    Meanwhile, the wider public barely questions whether it’s legitimate that an armoured and trained gang can brutalise communities and beat up protesters. It’s widely accepted – especially among white, middle class communities – that this gang’s use of violence is legitimate, and that it can be trusted to carry arms.

    2022 will see many more Kill The Bill trials, and potentially many more people going to prison. We can expect the state to put a spin on all the trials, depicting the police as a force that was attacked and fearful for officers’ lives. Don’t fall for this rhetoric – the police, the court, and the prison system are all in place to crush our spirit. But as BARC says:

    We wont go quietly and this is not the end. Collective self defence is our greatest weapon!

    Featured image via Eliza Egret

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Post-Courier: Violence in any form is a serious disease – target ‘rotten cops’

    EDITORIAL: By the PNG Post-Courier

    Papua New Guinea’s police commissioner, David Manning, addressing the International Women’s Day celebrations this week, let it be known that violence against women is becoming a serious disease.

    Yes, we agree. It is a growing threat to women and children, family unity and community harmony.

    On the same token Sir, may we also point out that some of the women and children that suffer from this disease actually live in the confines of police, army and correctional service barracks.

    International Women's Day
    International Women’s Day

    The wives of soldiers, cops and warders are not immune to this disease. Most, if not for Tik Tok, suffer silently.

    It is a national disease that needs to be addressed at all levels in our country. And the country’s security forces better start taking this message seriously. Violence against police wives must stop, must desist against army wives, and cease against CS wives.

    Peace and family harmony must be restored in your homes before you go out and deal with the bigger picture in the community. You might think your uniform gives you ultimate power over your wife but your wives are the custodians of your homes and children.

    Respect your wife and treat her well. If your home is safe and secure, your commitment and focus on delivering law and order to all corners of the country will be fulfilled peacefully.

    Expressing disgust at thuggery
    This week, we join the public in expressing our disgust at continued violence and thuggery by police against members of the public.

    This in itself is another serious disease that you mister commissioner, need to stamp out. When violence continues unabated, it goes to show that something is wrong, some of the practices and procedures you are putting in place, are weak and unworkable.

    A young man, the son of a cop, in the prime of his life, almost had his life snuffed out by three allegedly drunk cops on February 27.

    These Fox Unit policemen were arrested on Wednesday and charged with the cowardly attack on schoolboy Samuel Naraboi that left the 20-year-old in a coma at the Intensive Care Unit at the Port Moresby General Hospital for a week.

    Realising they were wrong and there is no escape for them, they surrendered to their commander and were brought in and processed.

    As the NCD and Central Divisional Commander Anthony Wagambie Jr lamented: “For this incident, whatever the circumstances were, the level of injury inflicted on the young man is not warranted at all and this is way beyond.

    “I would also like to make it known that this does not reflect the majority of hardworking police personnel. Police have been constantly reminded about ethical conduct and performing duties within the rule of law.

    ‘Rebuilding public confidence’
    “We are trying our best to rebuild public confidence in the Constabulary, and such action by individuals only hinders the progress.”

    The last sentence catches our eyes and ears and we agree with your commander Wagambie Jr. A few rotten apples are dragging down the police force.

    The majority of sworn-to-oath hardworking policemen and women are getting the flack for the bad deeds of a few rotten cops.

    You need to put your big foot down Commissioner. We suggest, you sack every violent rotten cop who doesn’t understand their roles and responsibilities in policing, law and order.

    They are the ones bringing the force into disrepute.

    This PNG Post-Courier editorial was published on 10 March 2022. The original title was Violence in any form is a serious disease. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Behind the Blue Wall

    A nanny in Nashville was having a picnic on a bike path with the kids she was caring for when a man emerged from his house and started cursing at them. The woman began recording and threatened to call the police. But it turned out the angry man wasn’t afraid because he was part of the police – a captain with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. The nanny’s video went viral. It put a cop in the spotlight, cracked a hole in the “blue wall of silence” and sparked a “Me Too” moment that inspired women in the force to speak up about the captain and other high-ranking officers. 

    Monica Blake-Beasley was one of the few Black women on the force and one of those who spoke out. When she came forward to report that another officer had sexually assaulted her, she says her colleagues closed ranks and protected not her, but the officer she had accused. Soon, Blake-Beasley began to feel like the department was retaliating against her. As Samantha Max of WPLN News reports, Nashville officers who dare to rock the boat are often disciplined, passed over for assignments or forced to leave altogether. Records show that Black female employees who were investigated for policy violations were suspended, demoted or terminated at more than twice the rate of White employees.

    —

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • A Bristol riot defendant explains how she was traumatised after police kneed her to the ground

    Mariella Gedge-Rogers is facing prison after she was convicted of riot by Bristol Crown Court last month. The charge carries a maximum sentence of ten years and she’s due to be sentenced next week.

    Mariella – a 27-year-old aerial performer – was arrested after a confrontation between police officers and Kill the Bill protesters on 21 March last year outside Bristol’s Bridewell police station. She said she handed herself into the police station voluntarily after a wanted picture of her had been circulated. She then pleaded not guilty to riot in court.

    For the first time since her court case, she has spoken out publicly about the violence that she faced from officers.

    Kill the Bill

    Mariella told The Canary that she attended the Kill the Bill protest on 21 March to protect “the right to peaceful protest and freedom of expression”. However, she told us that “the energy changed” when the demonstration arrived at Bridewell Police station. She said:

    I was kneed to the floor by police and dragged around the floor by another officer whilst three officers held me down and one stood on my hand with their boot, my head was on the curb I was in the gutter whimpering (this can been seen and heard on body worn footage used in court).

    A video of the incident – circulated on Twitter – has received almost 10k views. You can watch it here:

    Mariella showed us this picture of the injuries to her hand taken a week after the protest:

    Injuries to Mariella's hand

    “Kneed to the floor”

    Mariella has been found guilty of riot on the basis of videos taken later in the evening. The mainstream media has focused on an incident where Mariella hit an officer with her skateboard. Mariella told us that this incident happened after the incident when she was kneed to the floor by officers.

    Mariella is a Woman of Colour. She said that being “kneed to the floor” was especially frightening in the light of the murder of George Floyd, who died of suffocation as a result of Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck.

    Mariella said she found the experience “frightening”, and that it affected the way she reacted later on.

    She said:

    As a woman of colour and after being kneed to the floor by police (considering the murders that had happened around this time of year at the hands of police) this experience was very frightening and affected my mental health and the way I reacted during the rest of my time at the protest.

    At the time of the protest at Bridewell, two young People of Colour had died following being detained by police in Cardiff and Newport. As The Canary highlighted in its coverage of the protest:

    In January, 24-year-old Mohamud Hassan died after being detained at Cardiff Bay police station, not so far away from Bridewell. Five weeks later, 29-year-old Mouayed Bashir also died in police custody, this time in Newport. Police violence is felt disproportionately by People of Colour in the UK. Non-white people are twice as likely to be shot dead by the police, and a Person of Colour is more than twice as likely to be killed in police custody.

    What happened to Mariella is – unfortunately – nothing new. The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) accused the UK police of ‘institutional racism’ in the policing of the Black Lives Matter protests the previous year. Its report found:

    Excessive use of force and disproportionate targeting of Black protesters, with baton charges, horse charges, pepper spray and violent arrests.

    “I feared for my life”

    Mariella told us:

    I didn’t know if I would get back up. I feared for my life.

    Mariella told us that the experience of being kneed to the ground made her act “out of character”:

    I suffer with symptoms of PTSD from being mistreated by men in the past. [My actions] became out of character, I was upset about what was going on.

    Mariella wanted to stress that she feels remorse that her later actions may have caused fear to police officers. She is seen on one officer’s body-worn footage saying “I know you’re a human being”.

    “Emotions were running high”

    Mariella described the backdrop to the March 21 Kill the Bill protest. She said:

    Emotions were running very high at that time shortly after George Floyd’s murder by a serving police officer, the removal of the Colston [slave trader] statue from its plinth in Bristol, the kidnapping and murder of Sarah Everard and the aftermath at her vigil at Clapham Common.

    The Bristol demonstration happened less than a week after footage of police brutalising women at a vigil for Sarah Everard had gone viral.

    “Traumatised”

    We asked Mariella how she had been affected by the events of 21 March. She told us that she felt “traumatised”, and that she:

    was made to feel like scum by the prosecution, when I am a normal person of society who was attacked. I’m at risk of doing 10 years in prison for riot – the most drastic public order charge… [This charge is] being used to make an example out of young protesters.

    Mariella continued:

    This charge is massively impacting my mental health and general wellbeing. As a young mixed-race woman, I fear a prison sentence could get in the way of my plans to begin my career in Circus arts.

    Mariella said that she thinks the sentence she is facing is “hugely disproportionate”, particularly considering the police violence she faced.

    I believe the prison sentence I’m facing is hugely disproportionate, especially after being assaulted by three policemen and dragged on the floor in the midst of the violence that took place that day.

    At least 62 protesters injured

    At least 62 protesters were injured by the police on 21 March. At least 22 of them sustained head injuries, and many of them were hospitalised. Avon and Somerset Police initially claimed their officers suffered broken bones and a punctured lung, but they later retracted this statement.

    Geraint Davies MP is the chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and the Constitution which investigated the policing of the protests in Bristol and Clapham. He said that the police:

    massively overreacted at the time and were found out after they misled the press and tried to mislead our inquiry

    His words echoed Mariella’s, when he said that the riot charges may be:

    seeking to punish people in an excessive and disproportionate way, not just for protesting but for challenging the police

    Bristol protesters have already been sentenced to over 55 years in prison

    Mariella is due to be sentenced next week at Bristol Crown Court. She will be the 14th person to be sentenced for the events of 21 March. The 13 people who have appeared in court so far have received more than 55 years in prison between them.

    In February 2022, Jasmine York became the first person to be found not guilty of riot for the events of 21 March.

    Appeal planned

    Whatever happens at her sentencing, people in Bristol know what really happened at Bridewell Police station, and have raised nearly £30k to support those facing prison.

    Mariella is already planning to appeal her conviction. She concluded:

    I’m hoping to be successful in appealing this charge or shortening this sentence in mitigation as I believe my imprisonment would not only disturb my home life but also cause pain to family and friends who need and care for me. I’d be more likely to have trouble getting back into a stable lifestyle after custodial. These impacts are far from having the desired effect.

    Featured image via Twitter/Screenshot

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Who Has Power and How Do They Wield It?

    Washington, D.C.: The Difficulties of Firing Police Officers

    A group of hackers attacked the Metropolitan Police Department in 2021, leaking 250 gigabytes of data and confidential files.

    Buried in tens of thousands of records, Reveal reporter Dhruv Mehrotra found a disturbing pattern. Records of disciplinary decisions showed that an internal panel of high-ranking officers kept some troubled officers on the force – even after department investigators substantiated allegations of criminal misconduct and recommended they be fired.

    Aurora, Colorado: ‘Excited Delirium’ and Ketamine in Police Confrontations 

    When Elijah McClain was stopped by police in Aurora, Colorado, in 2019, he was injected with a powerful sedative, ketamine, and died after suffering cardiac arrest. His death sparked widespread protests.

    KUNC reporters Michael de Yoanna and Rae Solomon covered McClain’s case, and it made them wonder how often paramedics and law enforcement use ketamine and why. What they found led to real change.

    St. Louis: The History of Prisoner Disenfranchisement Laws in Missouri

    Prisoner disenfranchisement laws have been on the books since the founding of our nation and disproportionately affect voters of color. 

    Reveal Investigative Fellow and St. Louis Public Radio journalist Andrea Henderson reports from Missouri, where about 63,000 formerly incarcerated people could not vote in the last presidential election. She speaks to a community activist who credits getting his right to vote restored as the start of putting him on his current path.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Wet’suwet’en Approach UN Over Militarization And Rights Violations

    As the movement against the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline project in Canada continues, indigenous Wet’suwet’en activists have approached the United Nations to raise their concerns about indigenous rights violations. In a submission filed to the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, February 7, activists of the Gidimt’en clan of Wet’suwet’en raised the issues of forced industrialization, police militarization and violation of the rights of indigenous peoples.

    The eight-page document points out that Canada has overlooked its international obligations under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It stated that Canada has violated several rights of the community, including the right to conserve and protect traditional lands, and has forcibly removed clan members from their territories.

    The post Wet’suwet’en Approach UN Over Militarization And Rights Violations appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Kill the Bill defendant cleared of riot but guilty of arson. The case against her was always outrageous.

    A jury has found Kill the Bill defendant Jasmine York guilty of arson, but not guilty of riot. The case against Jasmine York was always outrageous, and evidence against her was scant. She’s one of 82 people who have been arrested – most of them for riot – following the 21 March demonstration in Bristol.

    The jury was unanimous on a not guilty verdict for the riot charge.The state poured a lot of resources into trying to find Jasmine guilty, and the prosecutor had a police team assisting her throughout the trial. For a person to be guilty of riot, they have to have committed unlawful violence. But the prosecution showed no evidence that Jasmine used any violence at all. It relied heavily on footage of other protesters graffitiing and rocking a police van, and, much later, vehicles on fire. But none of this involved Jasmine. Most of the footage they did have of Jasmine showed her yelling at the police and chanting. As defence barrister Russell Fraser said in his closing speech:

    emotion runs high indeed in times of social upheaval. I suggest you saw that full range of emotion in the footage played in the trial: optimism, excitement, anger, pain. That anger, even when it spiralled into foul language, never came close to unlawful violence, not violence for a common purpose.

    He pointed out:

    The Crown says, of course, that chanting is important as evidence of a common purpose [of riot]. Let’s have a serious analysis of chanting. Anti-police chanting is not evidence of a common purpose to do anything…

    So chanting is one of the reasons why Miss York finds herself here, why the Crown sees her as a leader, an instigator. It is a particularly big claim.

    Tall tales

    Desperate to prove that Jasmine was the ringleader, prosecutor Sarah Regan relied on a video clip of Jasmine saying that she was going to set up a Signal group chat on her phone. Regan suggested that Jasmine set up this group before 21 March in order to organise with others against police at the protest. But it quickly became apparent that Jasmine had set up the chat days later – only after she had been traumatised by the police, hit by a baton, and bitten by a police dog. In response to Jasmine being painted as a premeditated instigator, Fraser said:

    If someone is a leader, are they not recognised as a figurehead? Are they not someone of influence? People need to know who you are and she’s not known to the police. She’s not noticeably with anyone else at the protest. She isn’t with anyone outside the police station. How is it that from that she becomes the orchestrator of a riot?

    On top of this, Jasmine arrived at the demonstration unmasked and wearing a long, bright yellow skirt. That’s hardly clothing you’d wear if you were planning a riot.

    Protecting others

    The prosecution, along with its police witnesses, did a good job of painting a one-sided picture of a “mob” attacking the defenceless police, of a police force solely acting in self-defence. But as The Canary has extensively reported, there’s ample evidence of the police using shocking violence, and even of them ‘blading’ protesters with their oblong shields. Jasmine herself called the police after the demonstration to make a complaint about the violence the police had inflicted upon her.

    Fraser pointed out:

    We played a number of incidents of footage that you would appreciate – we say – demonstrates police violence. A man who was kicked several times on the ground as he retreated. A man who had a shield brought down on his head. The men lying down on the pallets who were hit while they were on the ground. Miss York being hit by a baton when she wasn’t a threat to anyone. A photographer being pushed with force: what could he have been doing?

    Regan was so keen to portray Jasmine as violent that she tried to discredit livestream footage which Jasmine herself had submitted as evidence. The livestream was filmed by Jasmine, and it showed her screaming “no, don’t hit” and “stop hitting her” at the police as they attacked the crowd. Regan ludicrously argued that because the footage came from Jasmine herself, she obviously had “an agenda”. But as Jasmine and her defence pointed out, she was on the frontline to protect others.

    Referring to the footage played to the jury, Fraser argued that at one point in the video:

    where she has her arms outstretched, if you watch the video and watch it in full, she is putting herself in harm’s way to protect others. She shelters people and takes a small female with her, away from danger.

    He continued:

    The one consistent thing she does is that she comes to the aid of other women. Consider the woman thrown back into the crowd. She moves across the line for that reason. There’s not many of us who would do that sort of thing, you might think.

    Fraser told the jury that “time and time again” Jasmine put herself between danger and other people.

    Arson claims

    The Crown insisted that Jasmine was guilty of arson because she pushed a commercial rubbish bin towards a burning police car, and the bin added fuel to the fire. But Jasmine insisted that she didn’t push it towards the police car but towards the police themselves. She said that she was using the bin to try to create an obstacle between her and the police. Crucially, there was no evidence whatsoever that the bin in question was ever on fire.

    Fraser said that the car was:

    already engulfed in flames. Most importantly of all, when you’re considering the standard of proof, where is the bin? There’s no photos of it. No one reported it missing. Does that absence of evidence leave you uncomfortable?

    Despite this, the jury found her guilty of arson.

    Stand with the Kill The Bill defendants

    Regardless of what happened in court, it’s important to stand with Jasmine and others who defended themselves against the police’s violence on 21 March. We know that the combined force of the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the mainstream media is stacked against them. They need our support now more than ever. The Kill The Bill demonstrations of March 2021 were the beginning of a new wave of resistance against the state’s latest authoritarian measures. We need to carry on that struggle and build real community power that can truly challenge state control.

    Featured image via Eliza Egret

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Koshka Duff’s horrific strip-search is yet another example of rampant police misogyny

    It’s taken almost a decade for the Metropolitan Police to apologise to Koshka Duff for the language they used when they sexually assaulted her. Back in 2013, she was arrested after offering legal advice to a 15-year-old who was being stopped and searched. Her treatment that followed at the police station was disgusting. Female police officers handcuffed her and used leg restraints, pinned her to the floor, and cut her clothes off her while male officers were watching.

    Duff describes her experience in Novara Media:

    Imagine you are surrounded by an armed gang. They tie your hands and legs together, pin you to the ground, and cut off your clothes with scissors. While grabbing you all over, ripping out your earrings and hitting your head off the concrete floor, they crack jokes about the benefits of strapless bras. They call you childish for objecting.

    That was my experience of being strip-searched at Stoke Newington police station.

    CCTV, obtained by Duff and shown to the Guardian, shows the vile language the police used. A female officer comments on her having “a lot of hair” on her body, while the male officers make disgusting ‘jokes’ about a smell coming from her possessions (“oh, it’s her knickers, yeah?”). One of the men tells his female colleague that she needs “defumigating” after touching Duff. Then they comment on whether they find Duff’s body “rank”.

    One police officer is even caught on camera bragging about the size of his dick and how his former partner couldn’t keep all his sperm in her mouth.

    Misogyny is instrumental for the police to thrive

    It makes me feel sick to read that Duff was talked of like this. But at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me at all. In the UK, comments about women and teenage girls being “rank” is commonplace, as are comments about their body hair, or misogynist insults about the smell of women’s genitalia. Nothing ever improves, and this CCTV footage is one more example of what campaigners and activists have shouted time and time again: that the British police force is a misogynist institution.

    In fact, misogyny is key to the police thriving. Toxic masculinity, macho violence, and a desire for dominance over other human beings are traits that police officers need to do their job well enough to suppress the population. As is the ability to dehumanise people so much that either you get a kick out of treating them like scum, or you’re apathetic about their safety.

    As Duff points out, it doesn’t matter what gender the person is when they’re working for a structure that’s misogynistic to its core:

    In my experience, female officers can be cruel and vindictive with the best of them. They throw misogynist insults and impose the diktats of normative femininity just as readily as their male counterparts – in fact, they often take this as their distinctive prerogative.

    Punishment for refusing to cooperate

    It’s important to note that the police haven’t apologised to Duff for the strip-search itself, nor have any of the police officers been disciplined, even after this disgraceful footage was released.

    Back in 2018, the police officer who ordered Duff’s strip search was cleared of gross misconduct, saying that her treatment was “for her own safety”. It’s completely unbelievable that pinning someone down, hitting their head on the ground, cutting their clothes off, and then giving them injuries could ever be for their own benefit, and yet the officers involved got away with it, and they will continue to get away with it around the country.

    The police use their strip-search powers as a way to punish those who don’t comply with their questions, or who passively or actively resist their arrest. And they know that for those who aren’t cisgendered men, the experience is likely to be even more degrading and traumatic. The Canary’s Emily Apple says:

    I’ve been strip-searched several times by the police. On several occasions by force. And predominately, it’s been a punishment because I’ve refused to co-operate.

    Apple describes one of these incidents:

    I was dragged to a cell, pinned down by male officers, and only realised what was happening when other officers started removing my clothes. Other male officers, including the custody sergeant, watched from the corridor.

    Apple talks about the psychological impact that this misogynist, violent policing has had on her:

    writing the facts of what happened to me, or reading what happened to Duff doesn’t covey the physical sickness I feel. It doesn’t convey the pain I’m feeling in my arms, neck and back. It doesn’t convey the fact that I have to keep pausing this narrative due to flashbacks and waves of nausea.

    And this is important. Not because I want sympathy. But because I think it’s crucial that we recognise the impact repressive and vindictive policing has on mental health. Sometimes the mental scars take far longer to heal than the physical ones.

    Holding the police to account is almost impossible

    I myself am another woman who has been strip-searched by the police (for my own safety, of course). I also tried to take a civil case, but after a long, drawn out process, my solicitor didn’t think I had much chance of winning, and the case was dropped. It’s only Duff’s gruelling persistence that’s ensured she received her apology and the CCTV footage of her assault.

    Duff, Apple, and myself are in positions of privilege: we’re all white women, we know the legal system pretty well, and we know of lawyers who take cases against the police. But most people who have been arrested and strip-searched won’t realise that they can try to take a civil case. And so most incidents continue to happen behind cell doors, and police officers usually aren’t held accountable for what goes on. Even if people do realise that they can take a civil case, the whole system is rigged so that you can’t succeed.

    Duff says:

    The costs of a civil action against the police are prohibitive. …

    Legal aid is paltry and unavailable to most. The application procedure is so complicated that trained lawyers struggle to fill in the forms.

    If this is how they treat privileged people…

    After reading Duff’s account of how she was treated as a white woman, I can’t help but think about all the BAME women and gender-queer people who are strip-searched. We know that the police are institutionally racist and we know the way BAME people are treated behind cell doors is likely to be worse than anything we face as white women.

    And then there’s children. A 2019 report concluded that a “high proportion” of children were strip-searched by the Metropolitan Police. And we know of cases like Georgia Wood, who was strip-searched by South Wales Police at the age of twelve without an appropriate adult present.

    There are also all those in prison, the majority of whom are working class, who are subject to extensive strip-searches. We know that more than half of female inmates are victims of sexual or domestic abuse. Strip-searches will only re-traumatise people who have been abused by men.

    Duff’s case perfectly portrays the police force as an institution that isn’t willing to change its misogynist ways. This is a Met Police force with a staff member who murdered Sarah Everard, and with other staff members who took photos of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman’s bodies as they lay dead. So it’s perhaps no wonder that the Met can’t even be bothered to discipline its officers over Duff’s treatment. But make no mistake, it is yet another example of why the public should never put their trust in the rotten, violent institution that is the British police.

    Featured image via The Guardian / Screenshot

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The anniversary of Mohamud Hassan’s death is a stark reminder why the police shouldn’t get more powers

    On 9 January 2021, 24-year-old Mohamud Hassan suspiciously died after being detained by South Wales police. Mohamud had been arrested by the police and then released without charge the next morning, but died in his flat that day. Witnesses say he had been severely beaten, with blood on his clothes and bruises all over his body. A post-mortem did not state the cause of this death.

    At the time, Mohamud’s cousins said:

    He told our family members that he was tasered twice and through images they could see bite marks all over his body. Additionally, he stated that he was brutally kicked in the head and suffered injuries to his face and knee- it was dislocated, and he struggled to walk. Witnesses say that he was covered in blood with significant injuries to his mouth.

    The police involved haven’t even been suspended

    Disgracefully, the six police officers who were put under investigation following Mohamud’s death haven’t been suspended from duty. Back in March 2021, it came to light that one police officer:

    saw [Mohamud] collapse, literally slumping over in the back of the police van, and still did not report this to his senior officer.

    In failing to report and get urgent medical attention, the officer missed a real opportunity to have potentially prevented Mohamud’s untimely death.

    And yet, this police officer, as well as the others who had contact with Mohamud, has kept his job. This is a prime example of the blasé attitude of a police force that is institutionally racist and sees Black people as second-class citizens. South Wales police doesn’t even consider Mohamud’s death as serious enough to suspend those who are suspected of being responsible. Can you imagine the public outrage over this if Mohamud had been a white person?

    Lee Jasper, spokesperson for the campaign to get justice for Mohamud, argued:

    In no other profession can you be under investigation for suspicion of causing death and remain at work.

    It doesn’t bear thinking about that those who are responsible for inflicting the brutal violence on Mohamud that might have led to his death, are still free to ‘police’ others in a similar way.

    Release the bodycam footage

    It’s disgusting that one year on, Mohamud’s family are still campaigning for the release of the police’s bodycam footage. This begs the vital question, what is South Wales Police hiding? Mohamud’s family has stated:

    The Police and the IOPC [Independent Office for Police Conduct] have conspired to cover up, obscure, frustrate, delay and dispute our search for the truth.

    The family continued:

    most families who suffer a death in custody are routinely denied access to this footage because the IOPC wishes to dampen down public outrage whilst the police, we believe, use these body cam videos to construct a plausible legal defence.

    Had the footage of Mohamud’s last moments been released to us, then we would have been spared the slow torturous agony of consistently speculating day by day on precisely what happened to him that awful night.

    Defund the police

    According to Inquest, in England and Wales there have been 1,803 deaths either in police custody, or following contact with the police, since 1990.

    The organisation says:

    people with Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnicities (BAME) die disproportionately as a result of use of force or restraint by the police, raising serious questions of institutional racism as a contributory factor in their deaths.

    Black people have always known that the police aren’t here to protect the people. But those of us who are white are brainwashed from a very early age to believe that the police are there to do exactly that. As white people, we can never know what it is like to be singled out, stopped and searched, arrested, or even murdered, primarily because of the colour of our skin.

    But there is some hope. 2021 saw greater calls from both BAME people and white people to defund the police. We are coming together to question the police’s role in society, and why they wield the complete power to brutalise the public, which has no right to defend itself. Whether it be the police officers responsible for the death of Mohamud Hassan, the Met police officer who murdered Sarah Everard, or the disgusting police officers who took selfies of themselves next to the bodies of murdered women Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, we are, as a society, finally waking up to the brutality of the police. We are scrutinising the police’s role full-stop, questioning whether that role is even necessary, and talking about alternatives.

    This spring will see the passing of the new police bill, which will give the police terrifying new powers. Once enacted, we are likely to see the police using greater violence, safe in the knowledge that the law is there to protect them. This will, of course, disproportionately affect Black and Traveller communities the most. The government will introduce Serious Violence Reduction Orders, giving police significantly more power to stop and search people on the street. Statistics from 2019 showed that Black people were 9.7 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched. Meanwhile, the way of life of Travellers will effectively become unlawful.

    Mohamud’s case is, sadly, not an exceptional case but an example of the systematic rot that exists across UK police forces. But it highlights exactly why the police don’t need more powers.

    15 January will see a National Day of Action to protest the bill as it passes through the Lords. Once more, it is time to show up in numbers to stop this racist and classist bill before it’s too late.

    Featured image via Lee Jasper

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • LAPD Releases Footage From Police Killing of Valentina Orellana-Peralta

    Flowers and balloons are left along with a sign reading "Release the Footage Moore" at a makeshift memorial for the teenage girl who was killed by a police stray bullet at a Burlington Coat Factory in North Hollywood, California, December 27, 2021.

    The Los Angeles Police Department released video footage Monday showing the moment when an officer fatally shot 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta while firing three rifle rounds at an assault suspect inside a Burlington Coat Factory store in North Hollywood.

    Orellana-Peralta was with her mother trying on clothes in a Burlington dressing room on Thursday when she was shot and killed by an officer whose name has yet to be released by the LAPD. Police said Monday that a bullet bounced off the floor and went through the wall of the dressing room.

    The officer also fatally shot 24-year-old Daniel Elena Lopez, who was accused of striking store customers with a bike lock. As The Guardian’s Sam Levin described the scene: “Roughly a dozen officers showed up at once, guns drawn. One officer in charge appears to briefly try to deescalate by saying ‘slow down’ and ‘get distance,’ but as soon as the officer actually sees Daniel, he escalates to lethal force, firing three bullets without pause or commands.”

    “The video did not show the officer assessing whether there were any bystanders before shooting,” Levin observed.

    Watch the compilation released by LAPD, which includes body-cam footage, surveillance clips, and audio from 911 calls (warning: the video is disturbing):

    The family of Orellana-Peralta, who arrived in the U.S. from Chile just six months ago, has hired civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represented the families of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor. Crump and Orellana-Peralta’s parents are expected to hold a press conference Tuesday outside LAPD headquarters as the shooting sparks outrage nationwide.

    “Just days before Christmas, Valentina Orellana-Peralta was trying on Quinceañera dresses with her mom when police started shooting at a suspect outside of the dressing rooms. A stray bullet from an officer’s assault rifle struck and killed Valentina,” Crump tweeted Monday. “Her death was preventable!”

    The California Department of Justice is investigating the deadly shooting. As of Friday, according to the Los Angeles Times, “LAPD officers had shot at least 37 people in 2021, killing 17 of them — substantially more than they shot or killed in either of the last two years.”

    “They have killed four people just in the last week, with two men killed in separate incidents on Saturday, and in the latest incident shot another man Christmas Eve,” the LA Times noted.

    Orellana-Peralta’s attorneys on Monday sent the LAPD a letter demanding a transparent probe into Valentina’s killing and warning of possible legal action.

    Albert Corado, a Los Angeles City Council candidate whose sister was shot and killed by police officers in 2018, told the LA Times on Friday that “there’s not a lot of will in the LAPD for them to change and there’s not a lot of will in City Hall, in city government, to hold the police accountable.”

    “That gives the green light to police to keep doing it,” said Corado.

    No officers were charged over the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Melyda Corado in July of 2018.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Wet’suwet’en Retake Checkpoint A Month After Police Crackdown

    On Saturday, December 19, activists leading the Wet’suwet’en resistance against the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline project declared that they evicted workers of the project from the drill site. This development comes exactly a month after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) violently dismantled a blockade led by the Gidimt’en clan near Camp Coyote and arrested dozens of protesters and even bystanders.

    The declaration of reclaiming Camp Coyote was made over a statement released by the Gidimt’en Checkpoint, on Sunday, December 20. “This courageous action took place one month after a wave of militarized raids on Gidimt’en land,” the statement read.

    The post Wet’suwet’en Retake Checkpoint A Month After Police Crackdown appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Bristol ‘rioter’ sentenced to 14 years in prison, while violent police walk free

    On Friday 17 December, Ryan Roberts was sentenced to 14 years in prison for fighting back against police violence at Bristol’s 21 March Kill the Bill demonstration.

    Grassroots prisoner support group Bristol Anarchist Black Cross called the sentence “brutal”:

    Ryan Roberts was sentenced on the 17th December 2021 at Bristol Crown Court to a total of 14 years in prison. He was convicted of riot and four counts of arson. Three of the sentences run consecutively and only one concurrently, hence the brutal sentence of 14 years. As it is over seven years, it means he has to do two thirds of the sentence. He will do just under a decade in prison.

    This weekend, mainstream media outlets are full of the pompous words of judge Patrick decrying Ryan’s actions. Precious few words have been spent, however, discussing the police violence meted out against demonstrators.

    I was there on 21 March, and I sat through Ryan’s week-long trial. I am writing this article today in defence of Ryan Roberts, and as a call for people to support him through his sentence.

    Ryan – along with his fellow demonstrators – fought back against the police’s violence, racism, and misogyny. The actions of the demonstrators on 21 March were part of the same struggle as the actions of people fighting back against state violence around the world, and we should be proud of them.

    So I am calling on you to ignore Patrick’s words of condemnation, and stand with Ryan and the other Kill the Bill defendants. Because in standing together, we will find strength, power, and the will to struggle on with a renewed determination.

    What really happened on 21 March

    On 23rd March, The Canary wrote:

    On Sunday 21 March thousands of people joined a #KillTheBill demonstration in Bristol, part of a weekend of action that saw protests held in many UK cities. By the end of the day in Bristol, at least three police vehicles were on fire, while a hundreds-strong crowd laid siege to a police station.

    The Canary‘s Sophia Purdy-Moore witnessed the police violence on 21 March. She said at the time:

    I saw police in riot gear hitting protesters round the head with batons. I did also see people at the front throwing bottles at police, but the response seemed disproportionate. The power imbalance felt completely off. At one point it looked as though their horses were going to charge into the crowd of peaceful protesters. The atmosphere was horrendous. There was a real sense of unpredictability and danger in the air after what had been an uplifting day. This all happened while there were still hundreds of people in the crowd (including children)

    An October statement in support of Ryan and the other defendants from grassroots groups Bristol Defendant Solidarity and Bristol Anarchist Black Cross wrote:

    Protesters sitting in the road were violently attacked [on 21 March]. People were pepper-sprayed, and hit with batons and shields. 62 people were injured in the KTB protests that took place in Bristol in March.

    Police repression

    82 people have been arrested so far – most of them for riot – following the 21 March Kill the Bill demonstration in Bristol.

    Ten of those arrested have pleaded guilty so far. They’ve now received sentences totalling over 49 years in prison. Grassroots groups in Bristol, meanwhile, have condemned the police violence against protesters on 21 March, and have said that they’re proud of the defendants for fighting back against the police.

    Ryan has been on remand in HMP Horfield since his arrest in April.

    “A fight for the freedom of our speech”

    I was in Bristol Crown Court during Ryan’s trial this October.

    Ryan joined the protest to demonstrate against the government’s draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. He told the court – in his evidence back in October – that he thought the Bill:

    would be an end to the right to protest

    He went on to say that the struggle against the Bill was:

    a fight for the freedom of our speech

    The court heard that Ryan was a van dweller. People who live in vehicles are one of the many groups of people who will be criminalised by the police bill.

    Ryan also spoke about the murder of Sarah Everard. When asked about why he was chanting “Whose streets, our streets!”, he said it was about the need to:

    Reclaim our streets basically, it relates to the Sarah Everard case, and other incidents that have happened with other police forces throughout the country.

    The March protest happened against the backdrop of Sarah Everard’s murder by a serving Metropolitan Police officer. Footage of police brutalising women a week earlier at a vigil for Sarah Everard spurred more people to take to the streets against the bill in the days before its second reading. As protests erupted in London and across the UK, the government announced that the bill’s progress through parliament would be delayed. But that didn’t stop people’s anger from spilling onto the streets.

    Ryan explained to the court that the turning point in the protest was the police putting on their riot gear and pushing the crowd. This was backed up by Kathryn Hobbs – a defence witness – who was part of an independent group of legal observers on 21 March, and who gave first aid to those injured during the police violence.

    Ryan told the court that after the police donned their riot gear what followed was:

    pushing, shoving, and hitting with shields and batons

    He went on to recount how a close friend was injured by the police, and how he saw several people being hospitalised.

    Nicholas Lewin – the barrister defending Ryan – showed the jury footage from the Ruptly news agency – taken on the 21 March – showing a line of police officers in riot gear knocking two people to the ground while repeatedly hitting them with riot shields and kicking them.

    Lewin asked detective constable Withey – the officer in charge of the case – whether violence was used on demonstrators. Withey responded:

    you can call it violence or you can call it lawful force.

    But PC Foster – a prosecution witness – admitted under cross-examination that the violence shown in the Ruptly footage wasn’t “appropriate”.

    Defund the police

    During his evidence, Ryan explained to the jury why he thought it was necessary to defund the police. He said the police needed to be defunded “because of their actions in Bristol and elsewhere”. Ryan said that government funding that was not channelled towards policing could be spent on:

    suicide prevention, protecting people on the streets… child safety, there are lots of other areas that aren’t funded correctly.

    The charges

    At the end of the trial, Ryan was convicted of riot – a serious offence which carries a maximum ten year sentence. He was also convicted of arson with ‘intent to endanger life’ and several other counts of arson against police vehicles. He was additionally found not guilty of a second charge of arson ‘with intent to endanger life’.

    Ryan was – as part of the riot charge – accused of throwing several missiles at the police and kicking at a police riot shield. However, during cross-examination he maintained that his actions were in self-defence.

    During the demonstration, Ryan picked up a police baton and used it to smash the windows of Bridewell police station and attack police vehicles. He told the court that he had wanted to cause damage to them.

    One of the charges that Ryan was found guilty of was of attempted arson ‘being reckless as to whether life was endangered’. This charge related to a video where Ryan can be seen waving a lit piece of cardboard under a moving police vehicle as it drove away. The court heard evidence from the officer who was driving the vehicle, who said that he was unaware that this had happened until he watched footage from the demonstration later on. The prosecutor in the case implied that Ryan had intended to endanger the life of the seven police officers inside.

    The assertion that waving a piece of lit cardboard under the chassis of a moving police vehicle – in wet conditions – could lead to it bursting into flames is – in my opinion – absurd.

    The Canary reported what Ryan said during his trial about the other arson charges:

    Ryan admitted setting light to rubbish and cardboard underneath police vehicles. When asked why, Ryan said it was:

    “to make space between the police and the protesters, seeing as the violence that had occurred before – I didn’t want to see any more.”

    Similarly, when questioned about pushing bins up against an already half burnt Ford Cougar police vehicle, Ryan said that it was because the police:

    “were going to push us back.”

    Footage seen by the court showed that the police did advance on protesters only a short time later

    ‘They only call it violence when we fight back!’

    Judge Patrick has said that Ryan will have to spend two thirds of the sentence in prison. This means he is likely to spend almost a decade in prison for his actions resisting the police on 21 March before being released on license.

    In stark contrast, none of the police officers who injured protesters have been punished in any way. At least 62 people were injured by police during Bristol’s Kill the Bill protests in March, but no action has been taken by the police to punish the officers responsible. During Ryan’s trial, DC Withey said that none of the complaints of police violence had been substantiated. This is a small wonder, however, seeing as most complaints are investigated by the police themselves.

    The footage shown during Ryan’s trial showed extreme violence against protesters, including the practice of blading – a police tactic which involves striking people with the bottom of a rectangular riot shield. The use of blading in Bristol has been condemned by an All Party Parliamentary Group as “unjustified, entirely excessive” and possibly amounting to “criminal offences against the person“. Despite this no officer has been charged with an offence.

    The unevenness of Ryan’s situation reflects the unjust society that we live in.

    Anger

    People responded angrily at the news of Ryan’s sentence. London Anti-Fascist Assembly tweeted:

    After hearing the verdict, people took to the streets of Bristol – marching from the steps of the Crown Court:

    Ryan’s actions were part of our common struggle against state violence

    What happened on 21 March wasn’t just about a group of police officers pushing a crowd, or even about officers kicking and punching people on the ground.

    What happened concerned an authoritarian bill that would criminalise Travellers and van-dwellers like Ryan; a bill that would see more people sent to prison for longer, and would massively restrict people’s ability to take to the streets and protest.

    More broadly, the Kill the Bill demonstration should be seen in the context of the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police office who was part of a misogynist police force, and against the background of the global Black Lives Matter movement, which – less than a year earlier – had risen up against racist police violence.

    In the months preceding the demo, two young People of Colour – Mohamud Hassan and Mouayed Bashir – had died after being in Police custody in Newport and Cardiff.

    What happened on 21 March was about all of this. It was about the daily acts of repression and violence carried out by the police in all of our communities. It was also about the 1,802 people (at least) who have died in police custody since 1990, about racialised police violence, and about racist policing.

    Non-white people are twice as likely to be shot dead by the police in the UK, and a Person of Colour is more than twice as likely to be killed in police custody. In Bristol – if you’re Black – you’re seven times more likely to be stopped and search by the police than if you’re white (according to figures recorded in 2017-18).

    In the face of all this, the actions of Ryan Roberts – and the other Kill the Bill demonstrators of 21 March – can be seen for what they are: a brave act of resistance against police and state violence.

    Ryan’s actions are just one example of how people struggle against power globally. I have watched many times as people defended themselves against police attacking political demonstrations. I have seen these things playing out here in the UK, but also in Germany, France, and Italy. Further afield I have seen Palestinian protesters using rocks to fight back the Israeli police and army, and Egyptian revolutionaries preventing the police from entering Tahrir Square in 2011 after they torched police and government buildings. In 2015, I saw Kurdish youth barricading their neighbourhoods to prevent the Turkish police and army from entering.

    Don’t get me wrong, these situations are all very different, but – on another level – they are all part of the same struggle. In my opinion, what happened on 21 March was simply another manifestation of this global struggle against power, this time on the streets of Bristol.

    Police repression is also a global phenomenon. Wherever there are rebels, the state acts to stifle rebellion.

    Its up to us to support Ryan through his time in prison, and to take inspiration from the fight which the Bristol Kill the Bill protesters showed on 21 March.

    Now – in the face of this authoritarian Policing Bill – we need to carry on the struggle of those arrested after 21 March, and organise to defend our communities against police violence.

    Featured image via screenshot/TheBristolActivist

     

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Watchdog launches probe after armed Met officers kill a man in London incident

    Armed police have shot a man dead during an incident in Kensington.

    The police watchdog is investigating what happened in west London on the afternoon of Saturday 11 December. The man died after he sustained gunshot wounds.

    Three shots

    The Metropolitan Police said officers were called to reports of a man with a firearm seen entering a bank and bookmakers near Marloes Road at 3.04pm.

    The force said the man was then seen getting into a vehicle and leaving the area.

    Kensington shooting
    Police cordoned off Kensington High Street (Aaron Chown/PA)

    At 3.19pm, armed officers stopped a vehicle at the junction of Kensington Road and Palace Gate next to Kensington Gardens.

    Reports suggest officers shot at the man, fatally injuring him. According to the Met, the officers fired shots and “a man sustained gunshot wounds”, adding:

    The London Ambulance Service and London Air Ambulance were called and the man was treated at the scene.

    Police said that despite the efforts of the emergency services, he was pronounced dead at 4.08pm.

    Witnesses heard three shots, according to reports.

    Kensington shooting
    Police at the scene in Kensington (Aaron Chown/PA)

    Inquiry

    The Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards has been informed. And the incident has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

    The IOPC confirmed it has begun an investigation, with a spokesperson adding:

    After being notified of the incident… we sent investigators to the scene and the post-incident procedure to start gathering evidence

    Police said efforts are underway to confirm the man’s identity and inform his next of kin.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • India: Victory for farmers protesting fascist farm laws

    The Indian farmer’s movement is a demonstration that people power can preserve the public sector and has become an inspiration for labourers around the world to take on neoliberalism and fascism, writes Gauri Gandbhir.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • United States: Rittenhouse verdict gives vigilantes green light to kill

    Twelve jurors found teenage vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty for the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and for wounding Gaige Grosskreutz at a Black Lives Matter protest last year, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Diversifying the Police Force Won’t End Police Violence

    police officers

    After a white cop fatally shoots someone, prison reformers often suggest hiring more Black cops or more women. But diversifying the police force won’t end police violence, and neither will milquetoast reforms that have been tried and tried again.

    Benjamin Jancewicz, a Baltimore-based abolitionist, points out that around 62 percent of the American police force is white, and around 85 percent of cops identify as male. But that lack of representation is not where the issue of policing lies. Jancewicz asserts that police have an established culture of “oppression and dominance” that does not change even when the force has more women or BIPOC officers. “Baltimore,” he points out, “has a 40 percent Black police force” which has not affected the “already established culture of corruption and brutality.”

    In 2015, Freddie Gray died in police custody after being brutalized by Baltimore cops, and the police violence and misconduct in Baltimore hasn’t ended there. This is because a system will not and cannot reform itself, especially “when you dump more money and more personnel into it,” according to Jancewicz.

    How do we know when a reform is actually going to funnel more money and power to the prison-industrial complex? In an interview with Truthout, Sarah Fathallah, an Oakland-based abolitionist, points to a Critical Resistance framework that helps to determine if a proposed reform “is an abolitionist step that works to chip away at the scope and impact of policing, or a reformist reform that expands its reach.”

    The framework guides us to look at reforms critically and ask: Does the proposal reduce funding to police? Does the proposal challenge the notion that police increase safety? Does the proposal reduce the tools, tactics and technology police have at their disposal? And does the proposal reduce the scale of the police?

    When it comes to hiring more police officers as an attempt to diversify, we can immediately see that this reform will not lessen the scope of the prison-industrial complex.

    Instead, Fathallah says, “Hiring more diverse cops often expands the funding and bodies police departments have at their disposal.” Fathallah saw this firsthand in Oakland, where the City Council voted to approve a police academy in September 2021, citing “discrepancies between the gender and racial makeup of the police compared to communities” to justify the need to hire even more cops.

    Focusing on the identities of the police who are committing violence actually prevents us from taking aim at the real issues. Fathallah rightfully points out that these pushes for gender and racial diversity frame “police brutality and murder as individual issues to solve” while reinforcing the “‘bad apples’ narrative of policing, that the police are harmful because of individually blameworthy and racially biased police officers.”

    Pushing this narrative is imperative for those who seek to preserve the existing power structures, because it wrongly suggests that huge social problems are actually the failures of individuals, rather than structures.

    The violence and cruelty of the prison-industrial complex has been well-documented since its inception, and public consciousness is reflecting this reckoning. More and more people are becoming increasingly critical of the prison-industrial complex. In the summer of 2020, this criticism came to a head with the protests against police violence after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Brutal police violence and the horrors of incarceration never stop, but when examples of them are catapulted onto the national stage, people want answers and solutions.

    Because policing and incarceration are inherently violent and racist institutions, prison-industrial complex abolitionists have been working to dismantle them in the hopes of creating a safer and more just world. Without the prison-industrial complex, abolitionists argue that we can divert resources to life-giving resources and services, rather than death-making institutions.

    Prison-industrial complex reformers and preservationists generally argue that the system is “broken” — that it has problems that are ultimately solvable, but that maintaining its existence is imperative for public safety. The truth is that the prison-industrial complex is functioning exactly as it is meant to; its creation was never intended to provide justice, but instead it was born of the desire to maintain white supremacy and racial capitalism. When we reframe our understanding of the prison-industrial complex, it becomes clear that it is accomplishing its intended purpose.

    In this context, it becomes clear that reforms, such as hiring more Black cops or more women cops — as well as proposed changes like bans on private prisons, body cams on cops and requiring that police verbally warn before shooting — will never solve the problem of police violence.

    While police violence can be enacted by individual officers due to racial bias, it is not limited to that. Fathallah says it is also (if not more so) “the outcome of intensive over-policing and systemic criminalization of racialized poverty,” meaning diverse hires will not stop violence.

    When concerned people focus on reforming the police and removing the so-called bad apples, policing is able to continue existing in much the same way. Fathallah mentions the phrase “preservation through transformation,” coined by Professor Reva Siegel that describes the phenomenon wherein a violent institution shifts and changes just enough to remain legitimate in the eyes of most.

    Hiring diverse cops changes who is doing policing and what the police look like, but it doesn’t change what policing is. And it certainly doesn’t change the fact that the system is actually functioning exactly as it was designed to do.

    The only way to stop police violence is to abolish the police. “Policing itself is a form of violence,” says Fathallah, “and violence is a fixture of policing, not a glitch in its system.” Once we acknowledge that truth, then we can see that no reform will change what police are and what they were created to be: protectors of a white supremacist state, of racial capitalism and of private property.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.