The latest set of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry concluded on 13 May, but victims of police spies have expressed their anger at what is a farcical, excruciatingly slow “cover-up”.
Beginning six years ago, the inquiry was set up to investigate the actions of police spies since 1968, as well as the units that ordered the officers to spy. Fraught with delays and deliberate obstruction by the police, it’s set to become one of the longest inquiries in British history. Vital police files are being withheld from the victims who were spied upon.
Towards the end of April, the inquiry announced that the next set of hearings, which will continue to cover the period of 1968-1982, won’t take place until 2022. For the victims who were spied upon in the 2000s, this means it will be 2025 before they give their evidence: a full decade after the inquiry began.
“Continuing nightmare”
Canary editor Emily Apple was spied upon by undercover police officer Jason Bishop between 2001 and 2005, while involved in anti-militarist activism. She is one of the inquiry’s many core participants still waiting to receive files from the police which would, potentially, show her exactly what information Bishop gave to his bosses.
She said that the news of further delays is “deeply traumatic” and argued:
So far the inquiry only seems to care about the distress the inquiry has caused to undercover cops, not to us, the actual victims of police spying. Not knowing what my files say, or when they will be released is a continuing nightmare. I know it’ll be a traumatic experience to read what the police hold on me, especially relating to the officers who I know were spying on me when my child was young and coming with me to meetings and protests.
Adding to victims’ trauma
Apple went on to talk about the massive effect that undercover policing has on a victim’s mental health. She said:
I already suffer from PTSD as a result of policing. This delay only exacerbates this. I know that I was spied on since at least 2000 by numerous spycops, but it’s going to be at least 2025 – and probably later – that I’ll get to understand why this happened. This will be at least ten years since the inquiry was set up.
This is disgusting behaviour from the inquiry that totally ignores the trauma that core participants have faced not only since the inquiry started, but since we first learned the depth of the spying operation against us through the work of activists and journalists.
There are hundreds of victims like Apple, who have become friends with undercover officers. They have trusted them, let them into their homes, and allowed them to spend time with their families. And there are more than thirty women who have been deceived into romantic relationships with undercover cops and systematically abused by the police. The inquiry should by putting these victims first. Yet time and again it shows that protecting the police is its priority.
Apple went on to say:
It is us, the people who were spied on who are the victims in this inquiry and we are being treated with utter contempt.
Release the files immediately
The inquiry will continue to plod on at snail’s-pace, but not until 2022. We have watched as it continues to protect the anonymity of the undercover police who abused women. And we have seen how it glosses over police corruption. Meanwhile, the evidence that has been heard has shown that the police’s intelligence-gathering is extremely flawed.
The inquiry has had six years to gather evidence. Apple and other core participants are demanding that their files are immediately released so that they can begin to reclaim their lives. This is the very least the state can do.
Jonathon Seed, the Swindon and Wiltshire Tory candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), is currently making headlines after being disbarred from the election. ITV News has revealed that Seed has a historic drink driving offence, which makes him ineligible to stand. It’s unclear whether the Conservative Party knew of the offence. Seed insists he declared it, while ITVunderstands that the Tories were not aware of the conviction.
Seed is an ex-army major and ex-fox hunt master. Animal rights campaigners have worked tirelessly for the past year, giving extensive reasons why Seed was not fit to run for PCC. Wiltshire Hunt Sabs and Bath Hunt Saboteurs told The Canary:
Without the constant scrutiny and campaigning by Bath and Wiltshire sabs, this wouldn’t have come to light. Jonathon Seed certainly thought no-one would look into a role that no-one previously cared about.
But it’s disgraceful that it has taken this long for the Tories to disbar Seed. Campaigners have previously documented many other reasons why the man should have been disqualified, and all were ignored. Earlier this year, it was even revealed that Seed had failed to mention his connection to an organisation campaigning to repeal the hunting ban in his register of interests.
Robert Pownall, founder of anti-hunting organisation Keep The Ban, told The Canary:
It is frankly disgusting that it’s taken a historic drink driving charge for Jonathon Seed to withdraw himself from proceedings. Why on earth was somebody with such an extensive history of wildlife abuse even allowed to stand for Police and Crime Commissioner in the first place?
Serious questions must be asked of Wiltshire Conservative Party as to how and why Jonathon Seed was deemed a suitable candidate for the role.
Wildlife abuses
Back in March, The Canary extensively covered Seed’s history of fox hunting, as well as his current close ties to the barbaric sport. Seed was master of two local hunts for 20 years, from 1992 to 2012, while fox hunting with hounds was made illegal in 2004. When Seed was master of Avon Vale Hunt, he insisted that hunting foxes was “important for freedom“, and was determined to get the ban “overturned in due course”.
During his time as hunt master, Seed was was accused by hunt saboteurs of being violent. Wiltshire Hunt Sabs and Bath Hunt Saboteurs previously told The Canary:
When Seed was hunt master of the Avon Vale, from around 2000-2012, they were an exceptionally violent hunt. Sabs were often ridden at by Seed on his horse, and sabs were injured as a result of being sent flying by him. He had a hotline to his “Welsh militia” who he would call in to assault and abuse sabs and monitors on a routine basis.
Meanwhile, in 2013, two Avon Vale men pled guilty to interfering with a badger sett the year before, while they were under Seed’s watch. Charges against Seed for the same incident were dropped.
This is not the first time Seed has hidden the truth
Seed’s drink driving conviction is not the only thing that the councillor has kept quiet about while campaigning to be PCC. Earlier this year, a leaked document revealed that Seed was listed as one of This is Hunting UK’s (TiHUK) regional coordinators in 2018. TiHUK is an organisation whose main aims include repealing the hunting ban. And yet, Seed’s register of interests completely fails to mention his involvement with TiHUK. In fact, Seed has stated:
My declaration of interests has always been correct and up to date throughout my time as a councillor.
This brazen willingness to hide the truth is shocking, highlighting that Seed can’t be trusted, not just as a PCC, but also as a councillor and Tory party member. Wiltshire Hunt Sabs and Bath Hunt Saboteurs told The Canary:
The Conservative Party surely can’t stand behind a candidate bound to bring constant controversy, but more than that it’s election fraud. It’s a criminal offence, and he could go to prison. He can’t possibly continue to be the public face of a political party.
Meanwhile, Wiltshire’s other PCC candidates are calling for a criminal investigation into Seed.
The public is footing the bill
Of course, the public had already voted for Swindon and Wiltshire’s PCC candidate before the controversy against Seed came to light, and the results are being counted right now. If Seed receives the most votes, another election would need to be held.
Pownall argues:
The question is why the British taxpayer should have to fit the bill for the re-run of this election and why the Conservative Party should even be allowed to stand another candidate.
Seed needs to be expelled
Although Seed admits that he is disappointed that he isn’t running for PCC, he is still keeping his prestigious Tory councillor position. He said:
I will continue with my work as a local councillor and within the local community, to which I have dedicated my life for the past 20 years.
With his family ties to barbaric fox hunting practices, his business ties to the hunting industry, and his habit of hiding the truth, it’s clear that Seed can not be trusted in any positions of power. What will it take for him to be sacked from his council role, too?
Previously ignored research into policing in Dublin makes for scandalous reading. Because it reveals a potentially “sinister” two-tier policing system operating in Dublin’s north inner city. This system allows people with money to use their influence to get a better response from senior gardaí, whereas people without money can’t do the same.
And the belief that “police don’t give a fuck” about inner-city Dublin could hold some truth. Because five years after the publication of this research, An Garda Síochána‘s [Irish police force] still hasn’t responded.
Former garda (Irish police officer) Eunan Dolan conducted this research as part of his 2016 professional doctorate in criminal justice at the University of Portsmouth. Dolan interviewed a broad selection of local people, politicians, and gardaí living and working in the inner city. And sadly, since completing his doctorate, he told The Canary ”not a whole lot has changed”.
Policing is not the solution to the problems of Dublin’s north inner city. They’re much more deeprooted. But the manner in which policing protects an already heavily resourced business community while allowing problems to “fester and develop” in its working-class community, is an outright scandal.
C district, the “defence of privilege”
Dolan’s research roughly covers a 10km squared area of Dublin’s north inner city. In policing terms, this is C district and its main garda station is Store Street. In 2016, it had a population of around 72,000 and is home to O’Connell Street, Dublin’s main thoroughfare, and the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). Dublin city has a population of just over one million people. The report notes that:
Within its boundaries all facets of modern urban life can be observed from extreme poverty to extreme wealth.
And while there were efforts to renew the poorer parts of this district, they were:
efforts to sell the city for private investment
Which in turn:
could have an impact on how policing is carried out. The distribution of a public policing service in a deeply divided urban area presents police managers with choices.
This turned the north inner city into a:
city…(where)…that defence of privilege leads to the reactionary urbanisation of gentrification, involving the recommodification of previously working-class neighbourhoods for middle-class consumption…meanwhile, the city’s working class… and homeless populations experience, a deepening villianisation…through interlocking scripts of violence, drugs and crime.
Community opinion
A community worker had a damning assessment, saying there was “selective policing”, while a youth worker described it as “no policing”.
The community worker also said:
It has become kind of endemic now by kids that are… two, three, four, five years of age – six…are looking at the damage that is being done on a daily basis by the thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-year-olds, and it has become a kind of cycle now, especially, in the Sheriff Street [working class part of C district] stretch.
You can do anything you want to do, to whoever you want to, what you want – there will be no comeback. There will be no charge either police wise or Dublin City Council wise… the attitude is a sure, ah fuck, it is only Sheriff Street… That police don’t give a fuck!
An anti-drugs worker blamed the chronic heroin problem on a lack of policing in certain areas:
possibly because there is more political pressure being put on them (the Gardaí) to do certain things in certain areas
They also said the lack of registered voters allows politicians to neglect the area because:
nobody from the political perspective is going to drill down to find out what is going on
Two-tier policing
C district has large business and residential areas. There’s an affluent and a working-class residential area. But here’s the worrying part. There’s a much closer relationship between gardaí and the business community than between gardaí and working-class residents.
In December 2013, the chief superintendent said gardaí carried out 13,904 drug-related stop and searches “in the O’Connell Street area”. A Dublin city centre business association was then interviewed for an article which covered these figures. According to Dolan:
The thrust of the article was that due to all this Garda activity, O’Connell Street was a safe place to do business, as was reflected in the headline “O’Connell Street, one of the safest, says garda chief”
However, around that same year in Sheriff Street, two primary schools said:
The general level of lawlessness has reached an all-time high and drugs are being sold openly outside the school in front of the children. Each weekend stolen cars are burned out on the street and twice part of a wall and railings were rammed and demolished.
And despite the number of stop and searches, there were just 1,336 controlled drug offences detected. That’s a detection rate of around 10%. So what purpose or who exactly are those stop and searches serving?
According to the research says, local residents believe policing in their area is much different to the financial district:
open drug dealing in the community was being ignored whilst issues in the IFSC were dealt with straight away
Community first
A city councillor said gardaí tolerate drug dealing and antisocial behaviour to monitor it and stop it spreading to other areas. Whereas a CEO of a local business organisation described policing in the area as “excellent” and “very successful”. Another CEO described an operation on O’Connell Street to target drug dealers as “bloody marvellous”. This difference in perception is striking.
Dolan told The Canary, that policing needs to attune itself to the needs of the community. But this mixture of police harassment and neglect is anything but attuned. And if resources exist to police the business community, surely there are resources to address the chronic needs of the working-class community.
And it gets worse
A long-time resident of the area said gardaí won’t interfere with crime as long as it stays on working class streets and away from the financial district. They said:
I think because we are the back of the finance, keep them contained there, in that little street, as long as they don’t go near the financial centre, you’re okay. I have noticed that, in a lot of stuff, people who do stuff in the financial, they come after them, if they do it in Sheriff Street, it’s okay.
A local school principal discussed how openly drug dealing happens. They said:
drug-selling is so open here… I was coming back from a meeting and a parent of one of the pupils in school, he said:’ hi-ya [teacher’s name] as he was selling drugs to somebody. …
I think there is a group kind of attitude by everyone in society that we [in Sheriff Street] should just be left; we are reckless, we are lawless down here. …
I don’t think that would be happening in the better off areas…We are [on] prime real estate here… Is there something bigger at play?
A “sinister” development
An opposition TD (Irish MP) for the area said:
it seemed to me, just watching the scenario, there was a period of time, while An Garda Síochána stood away from the situation and allowed it to fester and develop, and then, an initiative was taken to move-in and clean up the area. I always had the sense, and I know it is reflected in this area that, it had more to do with business interests in the city, rather than, residents of the city.
Then, even more worryingly, they added:
I couldn’t tell you the number of times people who live in that area would say, listen, there is a character down here dealing drugs. We see them, all the neighbours see them, the kids see them, and you could set your clock by them. They know their routine, yet the Gardaí are staying off them; this is in the mind of the community….
From a community perspective, they read the message as either, the Garda Síochána doesn’t care or that they are prioritising other places, and other things they might be doing. Or – and this can be really the most sinister reading of all – what is the relationship then between these guys who are at this behaviour and the Gardaí.
It’s about the land
Professional people working in the area also feel two-tier policing is at work. They believe because the land is so valuable, people in power are allowing the area to decline. This in turn would push out the community. A cleric said the aim is to:
slowly strangle the non-middle and nonupper- class to death and that big money is behind this
Moreover, a local youth worker said there’s a concerted effort to allow the area to deteriorate so it will eventually be handed over to developers. Dolan attributes this to “core policies of neo-liberalism”.
Another researcher described it as a:
new phase of capital accumulation in the city that excludes the working class on many levels, economic and social and cultural
Garda admissions
One civilian member of An Garda Síochána said even correspondence was divided because:
Correspondence from the businesses would go directly to the superintendent and they themselves would draft a reply, whilst other correspondence will be sent to a sergeant and the superintendent would not see it, unless it was about a particularly serious matter
They added:
because the business community have a louder voice
A garda inspector revealed why this bias towards business might exist when they said:
I come from a business background myself
While one garda believed policing in O’Connell Street was different because:
people from so-called good areas of Dublin or Ireland go through there, and people like that have the influence in the country, they don’t want to see drug dealers or drug addicts hanging around in the streets. Whereas nobody has any real reason to visit Sheriff Street, nobody cares what goes on in there.
Another garda described the power of business people:
if they are unhappy with the policing in the area, they would go to the media and politicians, with whom they pack a fair punch…someone will say to me, if you can’t do it, we will find someone who will
Extremely concerning
Finally, another garda told Dolan:
they expected to be sanctioned if they failed to police the “low-level low impact” issues on O’Connell Street, in the same way that they would be sanctioned for failing to properly investigate murders and serious crime in the residential area.
So in their eyes, responding to low impact crime in the business district is equal to responding to murder in a working-class area.
The Canary contacted An Garda Síochána for comment on all of Dolan’s findings. A spokesperson said:
An Garda Síochána does not comment on third party materials.
Classist policing as normal
Over forty years Dolan was a garda, garda sergeant, and detective superintendent in C district. His research paints a “sinister” picture of profit before people. Yet when he submitted his doctorate to the garda research unit five years ago, he got no response.
So unless people attune themselves to this working-class community’s needs, two-tier and neo-liberal policing will continue.
A Bristol resident has told The Canary about experiencing two years of racial harassment from her neighbours. She alleges that in spite of video and photographic evidence of the abuse local agencies, including Avon and Somerset Police and Bristol City Council, have treated her and her partner with contempt, and have taken little action to support them as the victims of a race hate crime.
Two years of racial harassment
The Bristolian told The Canary about suffering two years of racial harassment and intimidation from her neighbours, including mocking her, placing objects with subliminally racist messages outside their house, and making monkey noises at her. She is a mixed-race woman who’s experienced racist abuse in the past. She lives in Brislington, a predominantly white suburb of Bristol with a history of race hate crimes and attacks.
According to the Brislington resident, her garden has become a “no-go area”. Sharing her experience of feeling unsafe in her own home, she told The Canary:
I just keep the doors and windows shut all summer.
‘Openly biased’ police officers
Regarding Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s treatment of the case, the Brislington resident told The Canary about the “appalling”, “aggressive”, “arrogant”, and “totally biased” attitude of Broadbury Road police officers who attended the scene. On a number of occasions, she heard officers “laughing and joking” with her racist tormentors next door. She alleges that another officer told the victim that her racist aggressors are “great people”. In an email to Bristol City Council, inspector Paul Bolton-Jones dismissed the severity of her allegations, explaining that with the “exception [of] the allegation of the monkey noises”, the case is a straightforward neighbour dispute.
A spokesperson from Bristol Copwatch told The Canary:
In some cases, white officers attending the scene seemed to either side with the racist abusers, or were actively defensive when issues of race were raised.
They added:
If making monkey noises at someone doesn’t qualify as racial harassment, what does in the eyes of Avon and Somerset police? The officers at Broadbury road police station are comprehensively failing to support someone who has come forward to complain that they are being racially harassed.
Regarding her racial harassment, the Brislington resident told The Canary:
They’ve never taken it seriously.
She added:
Before this I had total faith in the police. … I never realised how openly biased they are.
Collective failure
Stand Against Racism and Inequality (SARI) has been working with the Brislington resident since April 2020. They have pushed for a coordinated response to the allegations of racially motived harassment. However, as exemplified by the alleged unsupportive police response, this has been unsuccessful.
Although SARI sent the neighbour’s letting agents D W Smith & Co letters explaining that their client is “at high risk of being racially abused again”, they have not acted to deescalate the situation. The Brislington resident contacted Bristol City Council “out of sheer desperation” but says she received a “cold” response.
A spokesperson from SARI toldThe Canary:
This has been a long and protracted case and has been very difficult to resolve. So many of the incidents [SARI’s client] has reported are underhand and can be seen as micro-aggressions. We say such abuse can be like death by a thousand cuts as it chips away at people gradually ruining their life.
Mediate, move, or put up with it
SARI, Avon and Somerset Police, and Bristol City Council have told the Brislington resident that they are not able to resolve the situation as it stands. Rather than taking decisive action, these agencies offered the victim “two options” – to mediate with her racist aggressors or to move home. The Brislington resident told The Canary that this felt like each agency placed the onus on her to resolve her neighbours’ abusive behaviour. She added that the responses she received from these agencies made her feel like “a problem” for not wanting to move home or mediate with her racist aggressors. She explained:
I had a Zoom meeting with SARI, the council and the police. And they told me that if these men were kicking a football around the street it would be classed as anti-social behaviour. But making monkey noises… in their own home, that’s not.
Insisting that they “would never penalise clients who choose not to go for this option”, a spokesperson from SARI toldThe Canary:
It is very hard to take criminal or civil action when people make noises or say things inside their home. You must prove their intent to target. Ultimately, however, we know that the situation has led to our client feeling under siege and like a prisoner in her own home. Such cases can take a long time to tackle effectively as intention is hard to prove and evidence.
They added:
whilst mediation can be a good way forward with neighbour based cases – we appreciate that victims of hate crime often don’t feel safe to mediate with their abuser.
In a joint statement, Avon and Somerset Police and Bristol City Council said:
These cases are often complex and sufficient evidence for prosecution or other enforcement action can be difficult to gather.
They added:
When we don’t have the evidence for enforcement action, dialogue through mediation is often the most important tool we have to establish the facts and find solutions, whilst continuing to record and investigate any further reported incidents.
Expressing her dismay at the lack of policies in place to deal with cases like hers, the Brislington resident told The Canary:
Bristol City Council needs to be exposed for its lack of race relations policies. They’ve got Black Lives Matter on their website. It’s just a logo, Black lives do not matter.
Parallels with the racist murder of Bijan Ibrahimi
A spokesperson from Bristol Copwatch highlighted that this case is particularly concerning given its striking parallels with the events that led up to the brutal murder of Bijan Ebrahimi – another Brislington resident. In 2013, Lee James – Ebrahimi’s neighbour – beat him to death and set his body alight.
In the seven years leading up to Ibrahimi’s murder, Avon and Somerset Police failed to record “at least 40” of the 73 racially motivated incidents he reported. According to the mutli-agency report which was published after Ebrahimi’s death, the police and Bristol City Council treated him like a “problem”, rather than the victim of multiple race hate crimes. Meanwhile SARI only supported him until 2011. The report asserts “that there was a collective failure of both Avon and Somerset Constabulary and Bristol City Council to provide an appropriate and professional service to Bijan Ebrahimi”. As set out in the 1999 MacPherson report, it identifies institutional racism as:
The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.
It concludes:
There is therefore, based on the above definition from The Macpherson Report, evidence of both discriminatory behaviour and institutional racism on the part of Bristol City Council and Avon and Somerset Constabulary.
A spokesperson from SARI told The Canary:
We know Bijan’s case all too well and have supported his family since his murder in 2013. Bijan suffered horrific assaults, threats, malicious allegations and still was not believed as he should have been. We never want that to happen again and that is why we do not close cases even when incidents appear low level and are hard to resolve.
No lessons learned
Regarding the multi-agency failures that led up to his murder, Independent Police Complaints Commissioner Jan Williams said:
Bijan Ebrahimi self-identified as a victim of race hate crime, but was never recognised as a repeat victim of abuse who needed help. Instead, his complaints about abusive neighbours were disbelieved and he was considered to be a liar, a nuisance and an attention seeker.
In 2017, Police and Crime Commissioner Sue Mountstevens said that she is “satisfied that the constabulary has recognised the mistakes that were made and put in place wide-reaching changes which are already embedded today”.
Bristol Copwatch is concerned that the police and council are following the “same pattern of behaviour” in dealing with the Brislington resident’s case. A spokesperson set out that neither agencies seem prepared to take action to protect the victim. They added that officers at Broadbury Road station – the same station that failed Ebrahimi – have attempted to actively defend the victim’s racist tormentors. They told The Canary:
Despite conducting reviews and making promises to change, it seems that neither Avon and Somerset Police or Bristol City Council have learnt any lessons after the racist murder of Mr Ebrahimi.
Calling for urgent change, the Brislington resident told The Canary:
there’s going to be a tragedy because people can be crushed up mentally, honestly, the strain of it. Like in Broomhill [where Ebrahimi’s murder took place], or someone doing something to themselves, because the strain is immense.
An institutionally racist police force?
According to SARI, they currently have “400 active cases […] ranging from bricks through the window, to attacks on children at school to murder”. Bristol has seen a rise in race hate crimes in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. These include an attacker deliberately driving into a young NHS worker, and the brutal murder of Mikhael Hanid.
In spite of the area’s high incidence of race hate crimes, a 2016 report revealed that Avon and Somerset Police was ranked the worst of Britain’s largest forces at responding to hate crimes. And a 2019 freedom of information request revealed that although individuals have lodged 160 allegations of racism against the force since 2014, only 1% of outcomes were upheld.
In a joint statement, Avon and Somerset Police and Bristol City Council said:
Complaints of racially-aggravated harassment are always taken seriously and we work together to record concerns, investigate and support those affected. Where evidence supports further steps we work together to take enforcement action in line with legislation.
They added:
Local organisation Stand Against Racism and Inequality have supported the family during this process and we welcome the opportunity to work with them to find solutions where possible.
SARI told The Canary:
We are working with the Council and police as much as we can to ensure the situation is taken seriously. We are also looking at a number of other options that we hope will make a difference.
Living in fear
In the meantime, the Brislington resident’s neighbours’ behaviour is escalating. She lives in fear that local agencies won’t provide sufficient support until it’s too late.
Two police officers have been charged with misconduct over allegations that they shared photographs of the scene of a double murder. It’s previously been alleged that the officers took ‘selfies’ with the victims.
“Inappropriate”
PC Deniz Jaffer, 47, and PC Jamie Lewis, 32, of the Metropolitan Police have been charged after an investigation into pictures which were taken and circulated of sisters Nicole Smallman, 27, and Bibaa Henry, 46. The sisters were stabbed to death at Fryent Country Park in Wembley, North-West London, in the early hours of 6 June 2020.
Social worker Henry, from Brent in North-West London, and photographer Smallman, from Harrow in North-West London, had met friends the previous evening to celebrate the elder sister’s birthday.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct watchdog carried out a criminal investigation into allegations that the officers took “non-official and inappropriate photographs” of the crime scene before sharing them on WhatsApp. This has previously been reported by the BBC as an allegation that the officers:
took selfies next to their bodies.
The Crown Prosecution Service said on 28 April that both men will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in May charged with one count each of misconduct in public office.
Danyal Hussein, 18, of Guy Barnett Grove, Blackheath, South-East London, is facing trial in June, accused of the sisters’ murders.
As protests for racial justice erupted around the globe last summer following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of former Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin, many activists called upon corporate America to step up and fight for racial equality in the workplace and beyond, bringing to light a long history of discrimination toward workers of color. The push prompted a series of sweeping apologies and broad action plans, shifting the goalposts for what would be expected of corporations in their relatively new status as “corporate citizens.”
Nearly a year later, many major corporations have assumed a similar posture following Chauvin’s conviction on murder charges, reminding the American public of their purported commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Amid mounting evidence that many police departments routinely display both implicit bias and outright racism, reports show that corporate America continues to pour millions of dollars into the police.
One way corporations funnel money into law enforcement is through police foundations. As nonprofits, police foundations allow police departments to raise unregulated slush funds from undisclosed sources, generally meaning corporations or private foundations associated with wealthy families or individuals. Police have historically used this money to expense weaponry and special equipment that is not covered by their municipal budgets.
“Police foundations are really good at hiding what they’re actually spending their money on,” Arisha Hatch, vice president of Color of Change, told Salon. “These foundations exist completely off the books.”
According to Nonprofit Quarterly, there are about 251 police foundations across the U.S. A report last year by the government watchdog LittleSis found that a whole host of well-known corporations have been intimately involved with police foundations throughout the nation.
One notable example is AT&T. Last year, Sludgefound that AT&T was “an active donor” to the Seattle Police Foundation, which according to IRS filings amassed more than $1.5 million in contributions and grants in 2019 alone. Gothamist reported in 2019 that AT&T made an appearance as a “deep-pocketed donor” at the New York City Police Foundation, which collected $9.2 million in contributions and grants over the fiscal year ending in June 2019. Because these foundations are not subject to typical IRS disclosure laws, neither of them reported how that money were spent.
AT&T is also a “Platinum Partner” of the National Sheriffs’ Association, a pro-police lobbying group that fights to preserve the 1033 Military Surplus Program, a government-run initiative that distributes surplus military-grade weaponry and supplies to police departments throughout the nation. In order to become a Platinum Partner, a corporation must donate at least $15,000.
Asked about the company’s relationship with law enforcement, an AT&T spokesperson told Salon that the company supports “many civil rights organizations” and is “working with them to redefine the relationship between law enforcement and those they serve to advance equitable justice for all Americans.”
Kevin Walby, an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg, told Salon that any company that makes strong rhetorical commitments to racial equality should not donate to police foundations at all, saying that in doing so, “they are actually backstopping very racist policing practices.”
Target is another corporate giant with deep ties to the police. On Tuesday, Target CEO Brian Cornell postponed a speaking event in anticipation of Chauvin’s verdict, later telling his employees in an internal memo: “The murder of George Floyd last Memorial Day felt like a turning point for our country. The solidarity and stand against racism since then have been unlike anything I’ve experienced. Like outraged people everywhere, I had an overwhelming hope that today’s verdict would provide real accountability. Anything short of that would have shaken my faith that our country had truly turned a corner.”
One might assume such concern for racial justice would translate to the company’s spending habits. However, according to government watchdog LittleSis and Sludge, the Minnesota-based retail giant has donated to at least nine police foundations since 2015, including those in Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles. Back in 2014, Target quietly donated $200,000 to the Los Angeles Police Foundation so that its affiliate department could gain early access to surveillance software engineered by Palantir, a company accused of whitewashing systemic racism with its supposed data-driven solutions to policing. Target has also supplied thousands of dollars in grant money to various law enforcement agencies throughout the country. The company reported that by 2011, it had given “Public Safety Grants” to over 4,000 law enforcement agencies. In that same year alone, Target said it had distributed more than $3 million in grants to “law enforcement and emergency management organizations.”
A Target spokesperson declined to provide more recent figures on grant money. The company also declined to clarify whether its relationships with police foundations remain active, instead providing the following statement: “We also believe that team members and guests should feel safe in their engagements with law enforcement. We support holistic changes in policing that advance more equitable, community-centric policing that is grounded in innovative law enforcement reform best practices.”
Numerous tech giants, including Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft, also support the police in ways outlined above. Amazon, for example, which claimed to “stand with [its] Black employees, customers, and partners” following Chauvin’s verdict, has supported the police in a variety of different ways. In 2019, the tech giant reportedly donated up to $9,999 to the Seattle Police Foundation. A company representative told Salon that the company has not donated to the Seattle Police Foundation within the last two years. Salon was unable to confirm this, since the foundation reportedly scrubbed all information pertaining to its corporate sponsors shortly after LittleSis released its report.
Additionally, Amazon board member Indra Nooyi serves as a trustee on the board of the New York City Police Foundation, according to digitally archived information on the foundation’s website from last year.
Meanwhile, AmazonSmile, the company’s charity initiative — which allows Amazon to donate 0.5% of proceeds from a sale to the buyer’s chosen charity — has helped pass along donations from customers to numerous police foundations, including those in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and Cleveland. (This relationship has been publicly advertised via Twitter.)
A company representative said that Amazon defers to guidance from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center on what organizations meet AmazonSmile’s eligibility requirements. These requirements state that eligible organizations cannot “engage in, support, encourage, or promote … intolerance, discrimination or discriminatory practices based on race.” Just this year, however, the SPLC published a feature calling racial bias in policing a “national security threat.”
Neither the Seattle Police Foundation nor New York City Police Foundation responded to Salon’s request for comment.
Coffeehouse giant Starbucks has visibly attempted to go above and beyond in demonstrating its commitment to racial justice. Last year, at the height of the racial unrest following George Floyd’s death, the coffee chain said it would distribute 250,000 shirts bearing the “Black Lives Matter” slogan to employees, flouting its existing ban on any apparel that “advocate for a political, religious or personal issue,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Just this year, Starbucks invested $100 million in “small business growth and community development projects in BIPOC neighborhoods.”
Following the Chauvin verdict, Starbucks the company released a statement from CEO Kevin Johnson, which read in part:
Today’s jury verdict in the murder trial of ex-police officer Derek Chauvin will not soothe the intense grief, fatigue and frustration so many of our Black and African American partners are feeling. Let me say clearly to you: We see you. We hear you. And you are not alone. Your Starbucks family hurts with you … We will be here for our partners in the Twin Cities and for each and every BIPOC Starbucks partner as we try to understand the systemic wrongs that lead to inequality.
One might argue these “systemic wrongs” have been exhibited by the Seattle Police Department. In a 2019 “Use of Force” report released by the Seattle Police, the department revealed that it used force against Black residents at a disproportionately higher rate than white residents. According to the report, more than 31 percent of cases of police force used against males involved Black males, even though they make up around 7 percent of the city’s population. A subsequent “Disparity Review” that year found that residents of color were frisked at higher rates than white residents, even though white people were statistically more likely to be carrying a weapon, and that Seattle officers drew their guns in encounters with residents of color at a higher rate than with white residents.
In that same year, Starbucks donated two grants totaling $15,000 to promote “implicit bias training” within the Seattle police and help the department host its “2019 banquet gala,” a spokesperson told Salon. The company also “contributed $25,000 to the New York City Police Foundation to help provide protective equipment such as masks, gloves and hand sanitizer, and coordinated the delivery of meals to precincts.” The representative did not say whether there were any accountability mechanisms in place to ensure the money was used appropriately, but did note that the company does “not currently have any funding with the Seattle Police Foundation.”
When corporations like Target and Starbucks give money to police foundations, it not only presents an ideological contradiction; it also presents a conflict of interest within the department itself, noted Walby, of the University of Winnipeg. “We only hear about donations” to police “when corporations want to celebrate them,” he said. “They want that halo effect. However, there are lots of instances in which the transfers and purchases aren’t made public. It’s an even bigger problem if they’re spending it on money that pertains to the corporation.”
In 2014, for instance, the Los Angeles Daily News reported that the Los Angeles Police Foundation received $84,000 in donations from stun-gun maker TASER International (now known as Axon) prior to TASER’s contract with the LAPD. In another case, Motorola, a donor to the New York Police Foundation, was later awarded several NYPD contracts, as reported by Politico in 2017. “There’s a real potential for private influence in public policing through police foundations,” Walby said. “It’s appropriate to call this money dark money. Because we can’t really see this money going in. We can’t really see this money going out.”
As the negative impact of police violence and criminalization becomes increasingly apparent in communities of color, Walby and Hatch argued, continuing to donate to police undermines corporations’ claims to awakened social consciousness. “Police departments across this country have plenty of money,” Hatch said. “They are well-resourced in a way that undermines other programs that could lead to safer and healthier communities.”
“Any money for police reform just enhances the power base of police as an institution,” Walby said. “The institution can’t change conduct that is institutionalized. The funds should be given directly to community and social development groups, groups that actually have a chance of creating something like equality in our world.”
Avon and Somerset police have issued an apology to four protesters they arrested for peacefully demonstrating in support of the ‘Colston Four’. The force has recognised that its blanket ban on protests and subsequent arrests of protestors was “unlawful”.
On 25 January, Avon and Somerset Police arrested Ros Martin, Paula Richardson, Rolland Dye and Taus Larsen. The force issued them with fixed penalty notices (FPNs). It had issued a blanket ban on protests, warning that demonstrators could be given a £10,000 fine. Exercising their right to peaceful protest, the four individuals demonstrated outside Bristol magistrates’ court. This was to express solidarity with the Colston Four, the people accused of toppling slave trader Edward Colston’s statue during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Unlawful arrests
Martin and Richardson wrote messages of solidarity on the pavement using chalk. Dye held up a placard, and Larsen cycled around the area playing music. According to Bhatt and Murphy solicitors, they all “wore masks and practised social distancing”.
In February, Martin told The Canary that police immediately arrested her. Moreover, they failed to follow recommended practice to engage, explain, and encourage those breaching lockdown rules to disperse. Martin said:
I was alone at the time, there was no other protester, I had a mask on and socially distanced, wrote three words and was immediately arrested.
In a statement made after Avon and Somerset police’s apology, Larsen said:
The whole thing was ridiculous. I wasn’t posing any risk to the public, but the police put me in a position which increased the risk to me and to the officers dealing with me.
Following a legal challenge, Avon and Somerset Police acknowledged that the force’s blanket ban on protests was unlawful. The ban was in breach of Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protect freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. As a result, the arrests and FPNs were also unlawful.
According to solicitors Bhatt Murphy:
The correct approach would have been to consider whether the individual protest was safe to proceed in its particular circumstances.
‘Vindicated’ in their right to protest
A statement Avon and Somerset Police issued on 22 April said:
we now accept we misinterpreted the regulations and that the arrests and the issuing of FPNs were unlawful.
It added:
We have apologised to them and explained officers’ actions were motivated purely by a desire to protect the health of the public at the height of the pandemic.
The force has cancelled the fines for the four protesters. And it has payed compensation for their wrongful arrests in a “substantial” out of court settlement.
Martin said:
In the week that justice has been served for George Floyd, it is vital that the right to peaceful protest in support of the Colston 4 has prevailed. It is fundamental to our democracy. The locking up of peaceful protestors should never happen.
Alex Raikes, director of Stand Against Racism and Inequality (SARI), said:
It is welcome that the Chief Constable has apologised and that justice has been done for our clients. SARI supports peaceful, safe protest as it has been a key aspect throughout history for upholding and protecting human rights.
What could this mean for other protests?
Tony Murphy of solicitors Bhatt Murphy concluded:
The Chief Constable’s acceptance that an outright ban on protest will never be lawful, including during a pandemic, is important. My clients regard chalking messages of solidarity on the pavement as a peaceful, safe and lawful form of in-person protest.
According to lawyer Gus Silverman, this could be the first time a police force has admitted to unlawfully arresting protesters under coronavirus regulations. This is a significant ‘legal first’ in the wake of ‘brutal‘ policing of Kill the Bill protests in Bristol and elsewhere under coronavirus regulations.
Sixteen-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant’s TikTok is going viral. In one particular video, her eyes sparkle. For a cheeky moment, her smile is wide. As she listens to Bryson Tiller, she is styling her hair and reveling in her Black girl adolescence. Devastatingly, now, millions of people are mourning the loss and remembering the life of this Black teenage girl killed in Columbus, Ohio.
Nicholas Reardon of the Columbus Division of Police shot her four times on Tuesday. As many were celebrating the Minneapolis jury’s decision to convict Derek Chauvin for his murder of George Floyd while others insisted that a conviction would not build a more just world, Ma’Khia died in a local hospital. Her killing is a reminder of the urgency of the ongoing struggles against a murderous system that disproportionately kills Black people and for a world where Ma’Khia would still be with us today.
Protests started almost immediately at the foster home where Ma’Khia was shot. They have continued since — at the police headquarters and the Ohio State House.
On Wednesday, students at Ohio State University occupied the student union and held 16 minutes of silence in her memory before they marched downtown. They are renewing their demands from last summer’s student government petition — which garnered over 17,000 signatures — calling on Ohio State University to cut its contracts with the police department, to divest from military gear and to invest in student life. The campaign to remove police from Columbus city schools also released a statement condemning the local police and honoring Ma’Khia.
We still don’t know much about Ma’Khia, or even who called 911 from a neighborhood in southeast Columbus. In fact, most early reports about Ma’Khia misspelled her name. The only major things we know about this specific police-perpetrated murder are that someone called the police to report being attacked, Ma’Khia had a knife in her hand when police arrived and Reardon shot Ma’Khia multiple times within seconds of arriving.
Given these scant details coupled with the police body camera footage that shows Reardon shooting at close range into a crowd of Black people, many people have already concluded that the police acted rightly. A growing number of people are arguing that the killing of this 16-year-old girl is justifiable, even though the body camera footage includes no indication that the police ever asked her to put the knife down. The footage includes no indication that the police attempted to break up or deescalate a fight between children.
Proclaiming the killing of Ma’Khia as justifiable requires erasing the long and inglorious history of police violence against Black people. It normalizes police violence against and criminalization of Black children. More specifically, we must understand her death in the context of the recent history of the Columbus Division of Police’s interactions with Black communities.
Just last week on Monday, April 12, Columbus police killed 27-year-old Miles Jackson as he lay in a hospital bed in the emergency room of a local hospital. On December 20, 2020, officer Adam Coy of the Columbus Police Department killed Andre Hill as Andre left a friend’s house. Two weeks before Hill’s killing, Columbus police killed 23-year-old Casey Goodson, Jr. as he returned home from running family errands.
In December 2018, a Columbus police officer killed 16-year-old Julius Tate Jr., allegedly for attempting to sell a stolen item — and then prosecutors charged his 16-year-old girlfriend Masonique Saunders for Julius’s murder. Masonique was not even present when police killed Julius. But the police alleged that Masonique was Julius’s accomplice, and prosecutors relied on that allegation to charge Masonique through the “felony-murder rule.” Masonique pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and serving a three-year sentence in juvenile detention for a murder she did not commit.
These are just some of the names of Black people recently killed and criminalized by police in Ohio’s capital city. It’s important to understand what policing of Black communities looks like in Columbus to begin to grasp why so many Ohioans are protesting and chanting in solidarity with Ma’Khia, calling for everything from police reform to police abolition.
The everyday violence of policing warrants our attention and frankly, our rage. And yet, it often feels like a steep uphill battle to discuss how police criminalize, target, harm, and kill Black girls and women all over the U.S. The hesitancy some folks have around mobilizing around Ma’Khia because she had a knife and was engaged in a fight is at least partially rooted in our collective inability to see Black girls as vulnerable and in need of protection.
This invisibility prompted the release of the #SayHerName report by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Andrea Ritchie and the African American Policy Forum. It’s not hard to imagine a police officer responding to a violent situation involving white teenage girls in a less lethal way. We’ve seen video after video of police de-escalating scenarios with armed white people who are acting violently, even threatening the lives of police officers. But that’s not what policing offers Black girls like Ma’Khia.
Yet Ma’Khia deserved more than somewhat less-violent policing. She warranted care and investment. She deserved a full life.
Policing is never about care. And that is why so many are demanding that we rethink the meaning of public safety. Police do not make us safer. Police do not make Black children safer. Not at school. Not on university campuses. Not at home. As the body camera footage shows, police escalate. The killing of Ma’Khia is yet another painful reminder of why a growing number of people are focusing their energies on building alternatives to policing and demanding that we defund the police. It’s a reminder why so many people are agitating to remove the police from our homes, communities, and schools — and eventually abolish policing altogether.
Ma’Khia Bryant isn’t a mythical, perfect victim, nor does she need to be for us to unequivocally affirm that her death was unnecessary. She’s someone who forces us to contend with our values and challenge our continued investment in a system of policing that sees killing a Black girl with a knife as the only reasonable and effective response. The question we need to ask is not whether Reardon had the legal right to kill her, but rather: Didn’t Ma’Khia and the other people involved in the altercation deserve to live? Someone in that altercation called for help. We believe in a world where everyone involved lives to share their stories and their needs. We are fighting to build a world where Ma’Khia’s needs, and the needs of the girls around her, are met. We are fighting for a world in which Ma’Khia could still be making TikTok videos and showing off her hair-styling techniques. She should be here to see her video go viral.
At least 90 percent of charges against Black Lives Matter protesters in a dozen jurisdictions have been dropped, dismissed or not filed, according to an analysis by The Guardian. Such a high percentage suggests that the police may have been arresting people simply to suppress dissent.
In Houston and Los Angeles, The Guardian found, 93 percent of charges were either dropped or never filed; in some cities like Dallas and Philadelphia, that number rose to 95 percent of charges dropped or never prosecuted. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, 100 percent of 127 cases related to peaceful protesting were dropped.
The extremely high percentage of protest-related charges ultimately being dropped or dismissed suggests that police may have been using arrests as a tactic to prove that the protests were unruly and unlawful. As political commentators from both parties disparaged the movement for racial justice, media outlets kept tallies of arrests from the protests.
Arresting more people and racking up charges, even if they’ve now been shown to be baseless, became a way for police to justify officers’ violent and deadly behavior.
“What they try to do is spin it and say ‘Look at how unlawful protesters are as is evidenced by all of these arrests that we’ve made,’” Tyler Crawford, director of mass defense at the National Lawyers Guild, told The Guardian. “Then they hope people have stopped paying attention after six, 10, 12 months when prosecutors say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to drop these charges because these people shouldn’t have been arrested.’”
Arrests at the Black Lives Matter protests helped fuel a false version of events being pushed by people like former President Donald Trump. Trump painted protesters, not police, as violent and called for “law and order” — a call the right latched on to during the presidential election.
Even though activists across the country pointed out last year that it was the police who initiated violence at most protests, the right wing has still taken the opportunity to pass anti-protest bills aimed at punishing and suppressing demonstrators.
The charges analyzed by The Guardian bolster the idea that protester suppression was the end goal. Though police sometimes used curfews as excuses to cruelly tear gas protesters and disperse crowds in 2020, officers rarely filed charges for low-level transgressions like curfew violations, the publication found. Instead, officers filed felony charges like assault and looting with no evidence, ultimately forcing the charges to be dropped or dismissed.
In Detroit, where 93 percent of charges have been dropped, one district court judge dismissed more than 100 cases because the police refused to provide basic evidence like body camera footage. Perhaps more egregiously, most tickets issued by Detroit police were written by officers who were not even at the protests and thus could not have witnessed the alleged crime, according to National Lawyers Guild and Detroit Justice Center attorney Rubina Mustafa.
Police often forced these charges onto people. In manyinstancesacrossthecountry, police “kettled” protesters by corralling demonstrators into a closed area, not allowing them to leave, and then charging them with refusing to comply with orders to leave or for violating curfew. The thousands of arrests and charges made during last year’s protests served to fill out police departments’ false narratives, even as they forced protesters to defy orders.
The high proportion of charges being dropped is also a stark illustration of how left-wing protesters are punished or face the threat of punishment much more often than right-wing protesters. An analysis of protests from last year found that police are three times more likely to use force against left-wing protesters than right-wing ones.
There’s evidence that protest suppression, especially against left-wing protesters in the U.S. and internationally, is getting worse. A recent letter filed by 400 leading experts shows that people demonstrating for the climate movement, for instance, are being criminalized for protesting.
Meanwhile, state legislators, largely Republicans, are filing a stunning number of anti-protest laws. Some bills criminalize protesting in what appears to be a stark infringement of First Amendment rights to assembly and freedom of speech that the right wing pretends to revere. Others propose legal protection for people who run over protesters with their vehicles or shoot them.
After she heard that police had killed Daunte Wright during a traffic stop outside of Minneapolis, Eilanne Farhat said she first reacted with “deep exhaustion, heartbreak, and sadness.”
Then she was disturbed. Farhat, executive director of Take Action Minnesota, told The Appeal she was struck by how frequently stories of police killings of unarmed people, often people of color, have made headlines in recent years.
Since 2015, at least 135 unarmed Black men and women have been killed by police during traffic stops, according to a January investigation by NPR. Now, after Wright’s death and other recent violent encounters between Black people and police, experts and advocates say it’s past time for cities to move traffic enforcement away from law enforcement.
Protesters in Chicago took to the streets to condemn the police killing of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latinx boy, after bodycam video released by the Chicago police showed Toledo had his hands up in the air when a police officer shot him dead on March 29. Police initially described the incident as an “armed confrontation,” but the video shows Toledo raised his hands after being ordered to do so. He was killed within 20 seconds of the officer leaving his car to chase him down a dark alley following a report of gunshots in the area. “A Chicago police officer murdered Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old. There is no other way to describe what we saw in the video,” says Rey Wences, a community organizer based in Chicago’s Little Village. We also speak with Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez, a Chicago alderperson, who says city officials spent weeks disparaging Adam Toledo before releasing the bodycam footage. “Lori Lightfoot ran as a reformer. She ran on transparency,” Rodríguez-Sanchez says of Chicago’s mayor. “She’s doing exactly the opposite of that.”
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: A warning to our viewers: The following story contains graphic descriptions and footage of police violence.
Protesters took to the streets of Chicago Thursday night to condemn the police killing of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latinx boy. Police bodycam video released by the Chicago police shows Adam had his hands up in the air when a police officer shot him dead March 29th. Adam was a seventh grader at Gary Elementary School. The Chicago police initially described the incident as an “armed confrontation,” but the video shows Adam raised his hands after being ordered to do so. He was killed within 20 seconds of the white officer leaving his car to chase him down a dark alley following a report of gunshots in the area. The shooting took place on Chicago’s West Side in the largely Latinx neighborhood of Little Village. The Toledo family’s attorney, Adeena Weiss-Ortiz, described the killing as an “assassination.”
ADEENAWEISS–ORTIZ: By now, all of you have seen the videos of Adam Toledo. They are especially moving, saddening, distressful, to see a 13-year-old boy shot at the hands of an officer. For those of you with children, you can relate to some of the pain that the Toledos are feeling today. Those videos speak for themselves. Adam, during his last second of life, did not have a gun in his hand. The officer screamed at him, ‘Show me your hands!’ Adam complied, turned around. His hands were empty when he was shot in the chest at the hands of the officer. He did not have a gun in his hand, contrary to the reports made earlier today.
AMYGOODMAN: The police officer who shot Adam Toledo has been placed on administrative duty. Eric Stillman had four use-of-force reports and three complaints filed against him since 2017.
This comes as Chicago police have faced intense scrutiny since 2014, when a white officer shot and killed Black teenager Laquan McDonald, and police were accused of a cover-up.
We go now to Chicago, where we’re joined by two guests. Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez is a Chicago alderwoman and Rey Wences is a community organizer based in Chicago’s Little Village.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Rey, let’s begin with you. You’ve been in the streets. In fact, you went to Adam’s elementary school. Is that right? You, too, went to Gary Elementary School. Talk about what you understand took place and what you’re calling for.
REYWENCES: Yes. What I understand took place is that a Chicago police officer murdered Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old. There is no other way to describe what we saw in the video, as a cold-blooded murder.
AMYGOODMAN: So, talk about the progression of when you heard that Adam was killed and then how the police bodycam footage was released, in addition, what the mayor said.
REYWENCES: Yes. I live in Little Village. This community is pretty close. There’s many groups that just communicate via different text message groups and things like that. So, the night that Adam was murdered, the community already knew that something had happened. Myself, I live in a block a couple of blocks away where he was murdered. And the reaction was instant. Community members already knew that the Chicago Police Department would try to cover this up.
It is also disgusting, the way in which the city has managed this. Shortly after finding out that Adam had been murdered, we also found out that his mom had gone to the Chicago police district office, District 10, to report that Adam had been missing. And it took two days for his mother to find out that he had been murdered by the Chicago Police Department.
So, the reaction and the feeling in the community is of outrage, anger, disgust. And really, what we’re asking for is the same thing that we’ve been asking for years. Since Laquan McDonald was murdered and before, we’ve been asking to defund the police, to invest in our communities. And when the city — when the mayor goes on a press conference and cannot answer the question of how the city could have prevented this, that means that she’s not listening to the people that have been telling her, “Defund the police.” These are the reasons why people get murdered, because they think that more training will save lives, but actually it’s the complete opposite, as we have seen.
AMYGOODMAN: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke at a news conference Thursday ahead of the release of the police bodycam footage of the officer fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo.
MAYORLORILIGHTFOOT: Even as our understanding of this incident continues to evolve, this remains a complicated and nuanced story. And we all must proceed with deep empathy and calm and, importantly, peace. … As the investigation into the police shooting that took Adam’s life continues, I urge everyone: Reserve judgment until the Civilian Office of Police Accountability — that’s COPA — has done its work.
AMYGOODMAN: And this is another clip of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaking yesterday.
MAYORLORILIGHTFOOT: We have to do more, starting with reforming the Chicago Police Department’s policies, and particularly the foot pursuit policy. I said this in August of 2018, and here we are now in 2021. Foot pursuits put everyone involved at risk — the officers, the person being pursued and bystanders. We have to do better.
AMYGOODMAN: So, that’s the Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. I want to bring in Chicago Alderwoman Rossana Rodríguez. If you can respond to the release of the footage, and what you learned from this footage — clearly, the city was preparing, the mayor was preparing the city for it — that was different from what you understood happened before?
ALD. ROSSANA RODRÍGUEZ-SANCHEZ: Well, absolutely, it was a very different — very different story, once we had an opportunity to see the video. And I feel like, for almost two weeks, we kept hearing arguments disparaging the character of a 13-year-old, talking about two sides, talking about the feelings and the trauma of officers. And when we had the opportunity to finally see the video, what we saw was a very scared 13-year-old kid that was complying with the orders of the officer, that was raising his hands. And it has been devastating for all of us. We feel a little bit more broken today in the city.
AMYGOODMAN: Rossana Rodríguez, you’re a mom, as well?
ALD. ROSSANA RODRÍGUEZ-SANCHEZ: I am. I cannot watch that video without seeing my child’s face on it, because that could be any of our children that are outside in the community.
AMYGOODMAN: You think about the way young people are treated who are white versus Black and Latinx. I think of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, who had a long gun, who was given water by police, who gunned down two Black Lives Matter activists. And even as people pointed to him and the police were there, he was able to walk away. He gunned them down and killed them.
ALD. ROSSANA RODRÍGUEZ-SANCHEZ: Oh, absolutely. The lack of respect for the lives of people of color nationally by police, but particularly in the city of Chicago, what we have seen, it’s incredible. This would not have happened in a white neighborhood in Chicago. This would not have happened in a wealthy white neighborhood. A young person in that context would have been given the benefit of the doubt. And that did not happen with Adam. Adam was executed without even being given a chance to fully comply with the orders of the officer.
AMYGOODMAN: So, what are you calling for, as an alderwoman in Chicago?
ALD. ROSSANA RODRÍGUEZ-SANCHEZ: So, we have been making a really big push in the city of Chicago with other socialists and progressives to reallocate money from police and put it into services for our communities and into resources for our communities. It seems to me that this city — and nationally, but particularly in Chicago — we continue to be obsessed with punishment, obsessed with deploying the police to communities. COVID has hit us, and the service that we have readily available to provide to people was police. Police was doing wellness checks. The mayor of Chicago spent $281 million reimbursing the police for COVID expenses, at a moment when there is so much need.
If we don’t want young people to be in gangs, then we need to give them the resources that they need. We need to meet the needs of communities. And it is unquestionable that we are spending $1.7 billion in police in Chicago to have these results. The Chicago Police Department has not complied with a consent decree for the third year in a row. They have missed the majority of the deadlines for the consent decree trying to reform itself. The Chicago Police Department has demonstrated that it is resistant to reform.
And the only way forward now is to reduce contact with the public, to defund police so that we can fund the services that are actually going to keep our communities healthy and whole and are going to be able to heal our communities. One of the things that I introduced was Treatment Not Trauma, which would deploy clinicians and EMTs to deal with mental health emergencies and nonviolent emergencies, just like the CAHOOTS model in Eugene. We’re being fought on this. And there’s no need to. The mayor allocated $1 million for a pilot for emergency crisis response, when what we’re seeing in cities like L.A. or New York is $23 million, $25 million allocated for this kind of work. It is impossible to heal this city if we continue putting money into the police.
AMYGOODMAN: And what about Lightfoot’s response, appointed as president of the Chicago Police Board by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel before she became mayor?
ALD. ROSSANA RODRÍGUEZ-SANCHEZ: Lori Lightfoot ran as a reformer. She ran on transparency. She’s doing exactly the opposite of that. We have a unity ordinance right now that could create a civilian police accountability board. She’s resisting it. She doesn’t want it, even though she ran on it. So, I am incredibly disappointed in this mayor. And we’re going to continue to fight to get transparency despite of the mayor.
AMYGOODMAN: Adam’s mother, Elizabeth Toledo, released a statement about her son. She said, “He had a big imagination and curiosity since he was a little baby. He was goofy and always cracking jokes, making everyone laugh. He loved animals and riding his bike. Adam was really into zombies. And the zombie apocalypse. He even had this zombie apocalypse bag packed and ready to go.”
Rey Wences, if you can talk about the narratives that were put forward before this video was released, in the last weeks, to demonize him, particularly around gangs?
REYWENCES: Yeah. I mean, just listening and reading the statement that the mom gave, it really breaks my heart.
The ways in which Adam has been characterized in the last two weeks have been really disturbing. There were many instances that media, even local media, played into this by basically questioning his humanity, asking why he was out there at 2:30 in the morning. And the reality is, is that this is an ongoing narrative about young people, about Black and Brown boys in neighborhoods like Little Village, like North Lawndale, like Englewood, where it’s dangerous to be a young boy and be out.
You know, part of this community has also been organizing against the gang database, because we know just how entrenched this idea of, like Rossana was saying, punishing is in the Chicago Police Department and how they surveil us. And what happened to Adam is the culmination of just a lot of things that have been happening in this neighborhood.
AMYGOODMAN: Rey, what are the plans, as we wrap up, for the weekend in terms of protests in the streets?
REYWENCES: Yes, we’re taking the streets. We’re going to Logan Square, which is the neighborhood where Lori Lightfoot lives. This is the message that we’re sending to Lightfoot: She must resign. So should the superintendent. There’s just no room for reform, and there will not be room for reform. We are calling for abolishing the police, and we are calling for the funding of our communities and divesting from police.
And part of the reason why we’re doing this is because things like this will happen, continue to happen, if change doesn’t come. Adam was two weeks ago. But before Adam, there was Mike. Before Mike, there was Trayvon. And we can come back as to Rekia Boyd and Laquan McDonald. This city is failing young people. And we must take the streets and demand justice for Adam, but also justice for our communities. This is not fair.
AMYGOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Of course, we will continue to cover this. Rey Wences, community organizer based in Chicago’s Little Village, and Chicago Alderwoman Rossana Rodríguez, both of them speaking to us from Chicago.
When we come back, we look at how one of Derek Chauvin’s expert witnesses, the former medical examiner of Maryland, is being sued by the family of Anton Black, a teenager killed by police in Maryland. Stay with us.
It’s 32 years since 96 men, women, and children died at an FA Cup semi-final on 15 April 1989. It became known as the Hillsborough disaster. The tragedy would come to symbolize Thatcher-era Britain – a byword for class war, corruption and gutter press lies.
All of those who died that day were Liverpool fans. In the aftermath, the right-wing gutter press and other sections of the British establishment launched a war of slander and obfuscation against the city and its people. This included false accusations that fans had tried to steal from those who lay injured and dying. And that a police officer trying to administer first aid was beaten up.
Establishment lies
But the 2012 Hillsborough report laid to rest many establishment lies. Because it found that crowd management plans had been inadequate and too focused on potential fan disorder. It was also discovered that South Yorkshire police (SYP) and police lawyers had altered initial statements:
Some 116 of the 164 statements identified for substantive amendment were amended to remove or alter comments unfavourable to SYP
The report said that many of the worst headlines about the disaster, such as drunken violence by fans, had emerged from the police and a local MP, but that the claims were not borne out by the evidence:
Yet, from the mass of documents, television and CCTV coverage disclosed to the panel there is no evidence to support these allegations other than a few isolated examples of aggressive or verbally abusive behaviour clearly reflecting frustration and desperation.
Families speak out
Margaret Aspinall, the chair of the recently disbanded Hillsborough Family Support Group, recently spoke to the Liverpool Echo. Her son James died at Hillsborough, and she urged families to “stay strong” and said that her “thoughts go out to all of the families and survivors”.
32 years ago today, 96 children, women and men lost their lives at Hillsborough.
Our thoughts, as always, are with all those affected by the tragedy at Hillsborough and the 96 fans who will never be forgotten.
In 2016, an inquest ruled that the 96 had been unlawfully killed. Yet in 2019, a court ruled that the police commander David Duckenfield was not guilty of gross negligence.
As The Canaryreported at the time, the daughter of one victim told the judge:
With all due respect, my lord, 96 people were found unlawfully killed to a criminal standard. I would like to know who is responsible for my father’s death because someone is.
Solidarity
In January 2021, it was reported that two police officers and a solicitor would face trial in relation to the Hillsborough disaster. According to the Liverpool Echo, each will “face a charge of doing acts with intent to pervert the course of public justice”.
For the Hillsborough families, justice has not yet been delivered. We stand in solidarity with them today.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) blasted the police department of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, this week for suggesting that the police-perpetrated killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was merely an “accident.”
At a press briefing on Tuesday, the police department released the body camera footage of Wright being shot in his car. In the video, Kim Potter, the officer who shot Wright (and has since resigned), is shown pointing her gun at close range at Wright while shouting “taser,” before shooting him.
Police Chief Tim Gannon, who also resigned from the department on Tuesday, described Potter’s action as an “accident.” Ocasio-Cortez disparaged that assertion on Tuesday night, explaining that Wright’s death was emblematic of deeper problems with policing in the U.S. altogether.
“Daunte Wright’s killing was not a random, disconnected ‘accident’ — it was the repeated outcome of an indefensible system that grants impunity for state violence, rewards it w/ endlessly growing budgets at the cost of community investment, & targets those who question that order,” the congresswoman wrote on Twitter.
In a second tweet immediately following her first one, Ocasio-Cortez continued to explain her view, pointing out that no reforms could change the system of policing enough to prevent killings like these in the future.
“Cameras, chokehold bans, ‘retraining’ funds, and similar reform measures do not ultimately solve what is a systemic problem,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That system will find a way — killings happen on camera, people are killed in other ways, retraining grows $ while often substituting for deeper measures.”
Cameras, chokehold bans, “retraining” funds, and similar reform measures do not ultimately solve what is a systemic problem.
That system will find a way – killings happen on camera, people are killed in other ways, retraining grows $ while often substituting for deeper measures.
Indeed, the so-called reforms that Ocasio-Cortez describedin her tweet do not address the underlying problems that exist in policing. For example, increased police training won’t teach officers to be more sympathetic to cries of help from their victims when they’re struggling to breathe, which is what happened to Eric Garner and George Floyd.
Instead, many have advocated for defunding or divesting from police departments, and using the money usually allocated to policing to improve conditions for communities typically targeted by police.
“We must consider what it would mean to remove policing from all areas of life,” Lacino Hamilton, a formerly incarcerated individual and activist, wrote last year. “That it is an opportunity to build a more caring, more inclusive, and a more economic and politically just society.”
“Funneling so many resources into law enforcement instead of education, affordable housing, and accessible health care has caused significant harm to communities,” the American Civil Liberties Union wrote last summer.
A growing number of voters support at least partial defunding of the police. A Data for Progress poll published this month found that 65 percent of voters in the U.S. support “reallocating some of law enforcement budgets to support such non-police first responder programs.”
Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t the only one critical of the claim that Wright’s death was a mere accident. Upon hearing that rationale from the Brooklyn Center chief of police — who also has since resigned under pressure — Wright’s family members expressed outright skepticism on Tuesday.
“An accident is knocking over a glass of milk. It’s not an accident to take your gun out of the holster,” Jeff Storms, an attorney representing Daunte Wright’s family, said. “It’s not an accident to point your gun. It’s not an accident to ignore the fact that what you’re holding doesn’t weigh the same amount as the Taser you’ve used in training hundreds of times. So don’t tell us it’s an accident, because it undermines the tragic loss of life that this family has experienced.”
Jurors in Minneapolis heard another series of dramatic testimonies during the third day of the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd. A teenage clerk named Christopher Martin at the Minneapolis convenience store outside which Floyd was killed told jurors during questioning that he felt guilty for reporting the fake $20 bill to his manager, who called the police on George Floyd. Jurors also heard a recording of Charles McMillian, who witnessed George Floyd’s death last year, approaching Chauvin to say, “I don’t respect what you did,” as Floyd’s body was being loaded into an ambulance. We air dramatic excerpts from witness testimony on the third day of the murder trial in Minneapolis.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: Jurors in Minneapolis have heard another day of dramatic testimony in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who’s on trial for killing George Floyd last May by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Chauvin, who is white, is charged with second- and third-degree murder, as well as manslaughter, for killing George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black father. Floyd’s death sparked international protests calling for racial justice.
Floyd’s arrest and death on May 25th last year occurred after the Cup Foods convenience store called the police accusing Floyd of using a counterfeit $20 bill. To this day, it’s not known if Floyd even knew he had used a counterfeit money. Moments after police arrived at the scene, officer Thomas Lane pointed a gun at Floyd and then pulled him out of a parked car, cursing at him. On Wednesday, a teenage clerk at the store named Christopher Martin told jurors during questioning he felt guilty for reporting the fake $20 bill to his manager, who called the police on Floyd.
MATTHEWFRANK: What was going through your mind during that time period?
CHRISTOPHERMARTIN: Disbelief and guilt.
MATTHEWFRANK: Why guilt?
CHRISTOPHERMARTIN: If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided.
AMYGOODMAN: One of the most moving moments of the trial came Wednesday when Charles McMillian, who also witnessed George Floyd’s death, rewatched a police bodycam clip of George Floyd begging for his life after he was handcuffed by police. A warning to our audience: This clip contains graphic video of police violence.
GEORGEFLOYD: I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
THOMASLANE: Thank you.
GEORGEFLOYD: I can’t breathe.
ALEXANDERKUENG: Stop moving!
GEORGEFLOYD: Mama!
DEREKCHAUVIN: [inaudible], Hobble?
GEORGEFLOYD: Mama! Mama!
ALEXANDERKUENG: Yeah, it’s in the —
GEORGEFLOYD: Mama!
ALEXANDERKUENG: — I think, one of the front pouches —
GEORGEFLOYD: Mama!
ALEXANDERKUENG: — on my right side bag.
GEORGEFLOYD: Mama! Mama!
THOMASLANE: Can we get EMS Code 2, for one bleeding from the mouth?
DEREKCHAUVIN: You’re under arrest, guy.
GEORGEFLOYD: All right. All right. Oh my god.
DEREKCHAUVIN: So you’re going to jail.
GEORGEFLOYD: I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
THOMASLANE: Affirm.
GEORGEFLOYD: I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe, man.
ERINELDRIDGE: Stop it right here, please. Mr. McMillian, do you need a minute?
CHARLES McMILLIAN: [weeping] Oh my god.
MATTHEWFRANK: Just take your time. Let us know when you’re ready.
ERINELDRIDGE: We’ll just give you a moment, Mr. McMillian. I’m not sure if there’s water for you, as well. If you need a break to get some water, let me know. We can take a break.
AMYGOODMAN: After the break, the 61-year-old African American bystander, Charles McMillian, returned to be questioned about what he saw when police killed George Floyd.
ERINELDRIDGE: What stood out to you about what Mr. Floyd was saying when you saw him on the ground?
CHARLES McMILLIAN:When he kept saying, “I can’t breathe,” and when he said, “Mama, they’re killing me.”
AMYGOODMAN: During the trial Wednesday, jurors also heard a recording of Charles McMillian approaching officer Derek Chauvin moments after George Floyd’s limp body was put in an ambulance. McMillian told Chauvin, quote, “I don’t respect what you did.”
DEREKCHAUVIN: Sir.
DISPATCHER: Can you advise the fire department, if they’re still with you, they need to go to 36th and Park —
CHARLES McMILLIAN: What you did, well, I’m objecting. But that’s your job.
DEREKCHAUVIN: All right. That’s —
DISPATCHER: — to assist with a [inaudible] arrest?
CHARLES McMILLIAN: But I [inaudible] respect what you did.
DEREKCHAUVIN: That’s one person’s opinion.
CHARLES McMILLIAN: But no, no, no. I’ve got to get in — I’ve got to get in [inaudible].
DEREKCHAUVIN: We’ve got to — we’ve got to control this — we’ve got to control this guy, because he’s a sizable guy.
CHARLES McMILLIAN: Yeah. And I tried — I tried to get him — get in the car.
DEREKCHAUVIN: That looks like he’s — looks like he’s probably on something.
AMYGOODMAN: On Wednesday, jurors were also shown police bodycam footage of the bystanders who attempted to save George Floyd’s life as officer Chauvin kneeled on his neck.
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: I’m a firefighter for Minneapolis.
DONALDWILLIAMS: He’s not responsive right now!
TOUTHAO: OK, so you wouldn’t know. Get off the street!
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: No, I do know.
TOUTHAO: OK.
DONALDWILLIAMS: He’s not responsive right now! He’s not responsive right now, bro!
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Does he have a pulse?
DONALDWILLIAMS: No, bro, look at him! He’s not responsive right now, bro!
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Check for a pulse, please. Check for a pulse.
DONALDWILLIAMS: Bro, are you serious? You’re going to just let him sit there with that on his neck, bro?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Let me see a pulse!
DONALDWILLIAMS: Is he breathing right now? Check his pulse!
TOUTHAO: All right. How long are we going to have this conversation?
DONALDWILLIAMS: Check his pulse!
TOUTHAO: OK.
DONALDWILLIAMS: Check his pulse, Thao.
TOUTHAO: All right.
DONALDWILLIAMS: Thao, check his pulse. Thao, check his pulse, bro. Bro, check his pulse, bro. You’re bogus, bro!
TOUTHAO: All right. Don’t do drugs, guys.
DONALDWILLIAMS: You’re bogus. “Don’t do drugs,” bro?
TOUTHAO: Exactly.
DONALDWILLIAMS: What is that? What do you think that is? You saw — you call what he doing OK?
TOUTHAO: Get back on the —
DONALDWILLIAMS: You call what he doing OK? You call —
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Badge number 7162.
DONALDWILLIAMS: You call what you doing — you call what he doing OK?
TOUTHAO: Are you really a firefighter?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Yes, I am, from Minneapolis.
TOUTHAO: OK, OK. Then get on the sidewalk!
DONALDWILLIAMS: Bro, you call — you think that’s OK?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: You show me his pulse!
DONALDWILLIAMS: Check his pulse!
TOUTHAO: OK.
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Check it right f—ing now!
TOUTHAO: Get back on the sidewalk.
DONALDWILLIAMS: The man ain’t moved yet, bro. The man ain’t moved yet, bro.
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: [inaudible] on the street.
TOUTHAO: OK. Where? Where?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Minneapolis!
TOUTHAO: OK.
DONALDWILLIAMS: Bro, you’re a bum, bro.
AMYGOODMAN: One of the eyewitnesses to George Floyd’s murder, the mixed martial artist Donald Williams, told prosecutor Matthew Frank he called 911 after seeing Chauvin put Floyd in what Williams had earlier called a “blood choke.”
MATTHEWFRANK: At some point, did you make a 911 call?
DONALDWILLIAMS: That is correct. I did call the police on the police.
MATTHEWFRANK: All right. And why did you do that?
DONALDWILLIAMS: Because I believe I witnessed a murder.
MATTHEWFRANK: And so you felt the need to call the police?
DONALDWILLIAMS: Yeah, I felt the need to call the police on the police.
AMYGOODMAN: Another one of the eyewitnesses was an off-duty firefighter and EMT named Genevieve Hansen, who was out for a walk. On Tuesday, she told prosecutor Matthew Frank she wanted to check George Floyd’s pulse and give him chest compressions, but she was prevented from doing so by the police.
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: I was really concerned about — I thought his face looked puffy and swollen, which would happen if you are putting a grown man’s weight on someone’s neck. I noticed some fluid coming from what looked like George Floyd’s body. And in a lot of cases, we see a patient release their bladder when they die. I can’t tell you exactly where the fluid was coming from, but that’s where my mind went. He wasn’t moving. …
MATTHEWFRANK: What’s the point of doing chest compressions?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Pumping — pumping the blood for somebody that’s not doing that themselves, trying to get a pulse back.
MATTHEWFRANK: And were you able to do that, any of those steps?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: No, sir.
MATTHEWFRANK: Why weren’t you able to do any of that?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Because the officers didn’t let me into the scene. I also offered — in my memory, I offered to kind of walk them through it, or told them, “If he doesn’t have a pulse, you need to start compressions.” And that wasn’t done, either.
MATTHEWFRANK: Is this — are these things that you wanted to do?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: It would have — it’s what I would have done for anybody.
MATTHEWFRANK: When you couldn’t do that, how did that make you feel?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Totally distressed.
MATTHEWFRANK: Were you frustrated?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: Yes.
MATTHEWFRANK: Ms. Hansen, you know, as I told you, we can take our time, so feel free to just take a minute to — if you need a drink of water, go ahead.
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: OK. …
MATTHEWFRANK: How were you doing that, trying to get the officers to focus on you and get help?
GENEVIEVEHANSEN: I think, in my memory, I tried different tactics of calm and reasoning. I tried to be assertive. I pled and was desperate.
AMYGOODMAN: That’s Genevieve Hansen, a Minneapolis firefighter and EMT. Jurors on Tuesday also heard from Darnella Frazier. She was just 17 years old when she used her cellphone to film the killing of George Floyd. Her image was not broadcast on the court television feed because she was a minor at the time of Floyd’s death.
DARNELLAFRAZIER: I heard George Floyd saying, “I can’t breathe. Please, get off of me. I can’t breathe.” He cried for his mom. He was in pain. It seemed like he knew. It seemed like he knew it was over for him. He was terrified. He was suffering. This was a cry for help. …
JERRYBLACKWELL: Now, Mr. Nelson asked you a few questions about your video going viral and how that’s changed your life. Remember that, at the end?
DARNELLAFRAZIER: Yes.
JERRYBLACKWELL: Would you tell the ladies and gentlemen how your viewing, experiencing what happened to George Floyd has affected your life?
DARNELLAFRAZIER: When I look at George Floyd, I look at — I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles, because they are all Black. I have a Black father. I have a Black brother. I have Black friends. And I look at that, and I look at how that could have been one of them.
It’s been nights I stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life. But it’s like, it’s not what I should have done. It’s what he should have done.
JERRYBLACKWELL: All right. Thank you, Darnella.
JUDGEPETERCAHILL: That’ll finish the answer. Thank you.
AMYGOODMAN: Now 18 years old, Darnella Frazier, who filmed the police killing of George Floyd. When we come back, we’re going to speak to Mel Reeves of the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, the oldest Black-owned newspaper in Minnesota, plus Rashad Robinson of Color of Change. Stay with us.
As opening statements begin in Minneapolis for the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, we speak withUCLAhistorian and author Robin D.G. Kelley, who says a guilty verdict alone would not represent justice for George Floyd. “The real victory would be to end policing as we know it, to end qualified immunity, to end the conditions that enabled Derek Chauvin to take George Floyd’s life and his colleagues to kind of stand there and watch,” says Kelley.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN:Professor Kelley, I wanted to move on to a couple of other subjects before we end today. I want to turn to the opening statements beginning today in Minneapolis for the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd last May by kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes. Floyd’s death set off a worldwide protest movement. Chauvin is charged with second- and third-degree murder, as well as manslaughter, the jury made up of one Black woman, three Black men, three white men, six white women, and two women who identify as multiracial. George Floyd’s family and friends came together yesterday for a vigil in Minneapolis. This is one of Floyd’s brothers, Terrence Floyd.
TERRENCEFLOYD:We’re asking the system for the justice. But this gathering we’re doing right now is what’s needed. We’re going to take not one knee, but both knees. Get down. And we’re going to ask God for the justice, because our justice can’t compare to his.
AMYGOODMAN:Still with us,UCLAprofessor Robin D.G. Kelley. Can you respond to what’s happening today in Minneapolis to this trial?
ROBIND.G.KELLEY:Sure. First, I’m not really holding my breath over whether or not Derek Chauvin will be convicted. I mean, the jury selection is pretty extraordinary. I mean, given the history of jury selection in this country, it’s great that it’s a little bit more representative.
But there are two important things to keep in mind. One is that the fact that the city has already provided a settlement to the Floyd family suggests some effort at accountability, but this trial is not so much about accountability. It’s about whether or not the killing reaches a threshold of second-degree murder. But, you know, I’m not — I have to say, I’m not excited about anyone being in a cage, even if you’re a killer. That, to me, is not the victory. The real victory — the real victory would be to end policing as we know it, to end qualified immunity, to end the conditions that enabled Derek Chauvin to take George Floyd’s life and his colleagues to kind of stand there and watch, and to really divest from the kind of death-dealing systems like policing, and invest in life-sustaining policies and institutions that make us safe. I mean, that, to me, that hasn’t been lost. And that’s what that struggle was about in the first place. And to me, that’s what can vindicate, if vindication is even possible, the murder of George Floyd.
AMYGOODMAN:And I also wanted to ask you about this historic moment in Evanston, Illinois, historic for the whole country. The City Council has agreed to pay Black residents reparations for historic housing discrimination, making it the first U.S. city to adopt such a measure. Wetalkedto Evanston City Councilmember Robin Rue Simmons Friday about this vote.
COUNCILMEMBERROBINRUESIMMONS:What we passed, actually, was in 2019, a resolution to provide reparations to Black Evanston residents. We passed it with funding from our cannabis sales tax, with an initial commitment of $10 million. And what we passed on this last Monday was the first disbursement or the first remedy, which is going to be in the form of a housing remedy, $25,000 direct benefit to eligible Black residents for home equity, home wealth, acquisition or purchase, any type of improvement, but something that will build wealth through home equity.
AMYGOODMAN:Professor Kelley, your response to what’s taken place? And do you see this as a grassroots approach to dealing with this from the bottom up, considering federally it has not been dealt with?
ROBIND.G.KELLEY:Exactly, yeah. I mean, I think it’s historic. And we’re seeing the same thing happening — beginning to happen in places like Vermont and elsewhere across the country. Ten million dollars is a good start. And I get the idea, which is that part of what this reparations campaign is trying to do is address the wealth gap, especially around real estate. But I have to say, I’m a little bit — I’m concerned sometimes, because, one, when you pay out — when reparations are paid, sometimes that shuts down all conversations about other kinds of inequalities that are produced by historic racism.
And we have to ask ourselves really hard questions, like, for example: What does it mean to secure Black property ownership as reparations on stolen land? How does that change kind of racialized property values? I mean, if the property values in Black communities are still lower, how do you address that? Even if you can provide people startup money to put down on a home, how do we address the reasons why Black people are poorer and go to inferior schools? How do we disentangle, say, property values and property taxes from school expenditures or school budgets, like how we actually fund schools?
And then we have the wealth gap. We also have the wage gap. And part of what I’m going to talk — I have this conversation with Reverend William Barber this afternoon at 3:00 about the Amazon workers, but it’s also about, you know: How do we address these kinds of gaps, even through multiracial, working-class organizing? Because my question, of course, is: Will reparations ensure not just equality, but the dismantling of the kind of racialized structures that devalued our lives, our experiences, our property, our wages in the first place? I mean, and this is something that is really important, because racialized wage differentials are also compounded by gender. How are we going to address that, that women make, women of color make, Black women make less money? How do we deal with other kinds of violences, sexual violence, for example, reproductive violence? You know, that goes way beyond the loss of property. Now, so, I’m not saying I’m against it. I’m just simply saying, as we move forward, this is just the beginning, an opening for a larger question.
AMYGOODMAN:And, Professor Kelley, before we end, I wanted to ask you about thepieceyou wrote in theBoston Reviewheadlined “Why Cornel West’s Tenure Fight Matters_. Earlier this month, Cornel West announced he’s leaving Harvard to rejoin Union Theological Seminary, after he was denied tenure at Harvard. In this last 40 seconds we have, explain.
ROBIND.G.KELLEY:Right, right. Very quickly, I think Dr. West shows enormous integrity by making the decision to leave Harvard to go to Union — go back to Union, in many ways. Why do I say that? Because he could have stayed at Harvard. I mean, the chances of him being fired are pretty slim. And he understands that. He was making a larger statement about what tenure is supposed to represent. That is, the protection of our intellectual and academic freedom. And there’s a relationship between the story you told about Bandy Lee, for example, with Cornel West, that if we can’t speak out, if we can’t do our work and make controversial stands —
AMYGOODMAN:Three seconds.
ROBIND.G.KELLEY:— and not be protected, then we don’t need tenure.
AMYGOODMAN:Robin D.G. Kelley, professor of history atUCLA, studies social movements. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition formed to address anti-Asian violence during the pandemic, reported that Asians and Asian Americans reported approximately 3,800 racist incidents, including threats and physical attacks, this past year. More than two-thirds of those reports were about violence against Asian women.
Reported anti-Asian violence has soared since Donald Trump initially blamed the coronavirus on China, calling it “the China virus” and “kung flu” from his bully pulpit as president. Even after his ouster from the White House, his remarks linking the coronavirus with China continues to spark harassment, threats and violence against Asians and Asian Americans across the U.S.
On March 16, this violence caught national attention after suspected gunman Robert Aaron Long, a white 21-year-old, opened fire on three Atlanta-area massage parlors, killing eight, six of whom were Asian and Asian American women. Long’s arrest did not deter others from engaging in random violence against Asians, particularly those seen as vulnerable. The following day in San Francisco, a 39-year-old white man reportedly attacked first an 83-year-old Vietnamese man, and then attacked 75-year-old Xiao Zhen Xie, who picked up a stick and fought back, sending her assailant to the hospital handcuffed to a gurney. Xie, who was also taken to the hospital for treatment, suffered two black eyes, one of which is still swollen and cannot open, as well as severe post-traumatic stress disorder from the unprovoked attack. In New York City, five attacks were reported over the weekend.
Politicians in cities with large Asian populations have condemned these assaults, calling for increased policing. Police departments have announced they will increase policing in Asian communities. These announcements have been denounced by many Asian and Asian American advocacy organizations, which have noted that law enforcement, including police and immigration authorities, have not kept their communities or residents safe, and instead act as perpetrators of racialized and xenophobic violence.
“Policing Has Never Kept Sex Workers or Massage Workers or Immigrants Safe”
On March 18, two days after the shooting, more than 200 racial justice, sex worker, and a wide variety of advocacy organizations co-signed a statement by Red Canary Song, a New York City-based collective of Asian sex workers, massage workers and allies, highlighting the stigma against sex work, as well as the racialized and gendered nature of the Atlanta attack, and refuting the claim that police provide safety.
“Policing has never been an effective response to violence because the police are agents of white supremacy,” the statement read. “Policing has never kept sex workers or massage workers or immigrants safe.”
Red Canary Song was created in response to police violence against sex workers and massage workers. In November 2017, police raided a massage parlor in Flushing, New York. Yang Song, a 38-year-old massage worker, fell to her death from a fourth-floor apartment when police attempted to arrest her for allegedly engaging in sex work. Song had previously been sexually assaulted by a person claiming to be a police officer and arrested on sex work allegations two months before.
Red Canary Song initially formed to provide legal support for Song’s family and assist with funeral expenses. The group then expanded to offer support for other massage workers, connecting them with legal help and medical resources. Organizers also worked with other groups to monitor the city’s human trafficking courts and joined Decrim New York, a coalition demanding that New York decriminalize sex work.
By the time COVID hit the U.S., Red Canary Song had built relationships through two years of door-knocking, assistance and advocacy. Learning that many of their contacts had lost income, the collective shifted to mutual aid efforts — providing groceries and cash assistance to out-of-work massage workers on a bimonthly basis.
Yves Nguyen, a Red Canary Song organizer, told Truthout that the organization typically plans to provide groceries and cash to 50 people, but at times, more people show up than anticipated, forcing volunteers to recalculate both funds and food on the fly.
“Our big dream is community support,” Nguyen said, adding that Red Canary Song would like to see “more community-designated resources, not just our small collective handing out groceries and giving out cash aid.” This dream goes hand in hand with decriminalization, which would prevent police from exploiting and assaulting people who engage in massage work, regardless of whether they are also engaging in sex work.
Meanwhile, “mutual aid is keeping people safe [by] meeting people’s needs in the immediate that are not being met by the systems that are in place,” Nguyen said, noting that these same systems criminalize Asian migrants, including massage workers, assuming that they are all engaged in criminalized activity. “We’re meeting people’s needs by giving them money, food, supplies, etc., so that they can survive and build and transform the world.”
Cayden Mak, executive director of 18 Million Rising, a national digital advocacy organization for Asian Americans, noted that the actors’ offer “completely takes agency away from the community. Asian American community orgs have been working on police alternatives here for ages.”
18 Million Rising began in 2012, the same year that Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was murdered. His death immediately set the stage for the group to challenge members to think about safety beyond policing. At the same time, organizers partnered with groups supporting people in prison and immigrant detention, writing letters to incarcerated and detained people and participating in anti-deportation campaigns.
“White supremacy is invested in pitting us against each other,” Mak told Truthout. In 2020, 18 Million Rising put out “Call On Me, Not The Cops.” It was an abolitionist tool for Asians and Asian Americans to use when talking with family members about safety, policing and police violence against Black people. It also served as a way to talk about the racial divides encouraged by decades of government policies restricting resources, sensationalist media stories pitting Black and Asian communities against one another, and fears about street violence.
The letter, which is available in 12 languages, notes the desire for safety — and that that desire should not come at the expense of Black lives. “We want the world to be safer, and that means changing what we do,” it states, urging family members to call each other, a friend or a neighbor when they are scared or need help. “Calling someone else instead of the police is a safer option for you and everyone involved. I want you to know I love and care for you and we can make a safety plan together that doesn’t involve the police.”
Mak also points to ongoing efforts in Oakland to ensure community safety — efforts that would have benefited greatly from Kim’s and Wu’s $25,000 offer. This includes the Community Ambassador Program, originally established by Asian Health Services and the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, to allow formerly incarcerated people to rebuild their relationships with the community. Now, members, who are not always formerly incarcerated, act as volunteer patrols to both deter random street violence and help residents, including acting as escorts to elders and others on their daily errands around the neighborhood.
“We’re Here for Our Community”
There is a rich (and often underreported) history of cross-racial solidarity in the United States. Some of the newer safety efforts continue that legacy.
In Oakland, Jacob Azevedo, a 26-year-old Latino, put out a call to provide an escort to anyone in Chinatown who felt unsafe on the streets. Four others immediately responded to his call and in February 2021, Compassion in Oakland was created. The group now has hundreds of volunteers who work in pods to escort seniors and other vulnerable people on their daily errands, as well as provide translation services and help those with limited English or computer skills.
In New York, what started as a safety initiative to prevent assaults against women quickly expanded to encompass safety for Chinatown residents. Peter Kerre, a Black Brooklyn resident and founder of Street Riders NYC, saw photos of several women who had been badly beaten at the Morgan Avenue subway station in Brooklyn. Kerre put out a call on social media for volunteers to escort residents who felt unsafe. Hundreds responded. Now, people who need an escort can send a message in English, Chinese or Spanish through SafeWalks NYC’s webpage or Instagram and be walked home by a pair of escorts sporting bright yellow and orange safety vests.
In February, SafeWalks expanded to Manhattan’s Chinatown, where volunteers spread the word through fliers and word-of-mouth. “We’re here for our community and ready to go into the fire, not to fight but to just show up for our neighbors,” Kerre told Bushwick Daily. “It’s about compassion.”
“We Have to Build Relationships”
The Massage Parlor Outreach Project (MPOP) began in 2018 to support massage workers in Seattle’s Chinatown/International District. Organizers took inspiration from labor organizers in Hong Kong and China, who utilized hot pot and shared meals to cultivate space for worker resistance.
In 2019, the Seattle Police Department raided nearly a dozen massage parlors on the pretext of rescuing trafficking victims. But, said MPOP organizer Shuxuan, the people arrested were charged not with trafficking, but with money laundering and promoting prostitution. Those not arrested were displaced, leaving them more vulnerable to economic exploitation and violence.
The raids pushed MPOP organizers to organize around safety in spite of policing and raids. But doing so, Shuxuan told Truthout, meant building relationships, a process that takes time. “If we don’t have trust, then no matter what happens, they won’t look [to us] for support. We need to build relationships before another raid or deportation happens.”
MPOP visited massage workers each month, bringing care packages containing candy, fruits and feminine hygiene supplies. Each package also contained a zine in Chinese with information about Seattle labor laws and health care, including places that did not ask about immigration status.
When COVID hit, MPOP continued visiting on a bimonthly basis. The group included information in Chinese about COVID, including prevention, testing and now vaccinations, as well as local politics, such as the Black Lives Matter/Defund the Police protests that were either underreported or demonized in Chinese-language media. Shuxuan said that many of the workers saw their incomes drop by half or even two-thirds; some began asking for MPOP’s assistance in navigating unemployment insurance or for assistance applying for small-business grants.
The day after the Atlanta shootings, Shuxuan and other MPOP organizers visited the dozen massage parlors that remain in the International District. Half of the workers they spoke to had not heard about the shootings, which had yet to be covered in the Chinese-language media. Those who had felt unsafe. COVID had already decreased the number of workers in some parlors; in one instance, a woman was attacked by a man who noticed that she often appeared to be the only person working in the parlor. They discussed safety strategies — leaving for work earlier, walking with their boyfriends, and being more cautious when opening the door to an unknown client. Some suggested that community-based patrols and self-defense classes would help. None said they wanted more policing.
At 9:30 am on Monday, March 22, approximately 200 people gathered at Seattle’s Hing Hay Park for a vigil commemorating those killed in Atlanta. The morning vigil was scheduled so that massage workers could attend before work. The attendees included Native organizers with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, who tied the shootings to the legacy of colonialism, as well as Black sex workers who showed up in solidarity for their Asian sisters.
Incarcerated Asian and Pacific Islanders penned a solidarity statement (which did not arrive before the vigil). “The message is about cross-racial solidarity,” Shuxuan reflected. “We all need to see white supremacy and colonialism as the enemy.”
When eight people, six of them Asian and Asian American women, were killed in a mass shooting at three massage parlors in the Atlanta, Georgia, area last week, we learned that a white man targeted these parlors to get rid of a “temptation.” His reasoning made transparent the disregard for the lives he took.
“He made human beings — mothers, sisters, daughters — into something less than human,” said Kai Zhang of the Asian Pacific American Taskforce in New York and co-founder of Red Canary Song during a vigil to mourn lives lost.
We know so little about these women. Information is passed in trickles and spurts, heavy with silences, unknowns. In the days following the attack, we slowly learned some of their names. However, we don’t know many of the stories that their lives hold. There are things we’ll likely never know, nor should we have access.
An act of spectacular violence brought these six women into our collective awareness and exposed many other everyday forms of violence that often go unnoticed: the moments of rupture, war and geopolitical upheaval that prompted their migration; the harassment and vitriol that service workers face daily; the compounded indignities brought about by housing insecurity and precarious immigration status.
Exceptional Forms of Violence Rely Upon and Coexist With Non-Exceptional Forms.
The targeted killing of Asian American women in a claimed attempt to eliminate sexual temptation is bound up in politics of race, gender and sexuality. Asian American women and femmes being killed and attacked because of toxic masculinity, which is a form of racist, classist and heterosexist entitlement that brings together white supremacy and rape culture, is not new.
The long history of U.S. racism and imperialism creates forms of violence that draw people in and out in different ways.
The U.S. permanent war and military occupation in Asia at different points in history — including the Philippine-American War, World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War, to ongoing geopolitical tensions with China in the present — is connected to long-standing violence against Asian women. The targeting of Asia as a foreign threat and an enemy to be eliminated alongside U.S. desires for dominance over Asia work in tandem with the imagination of Asian women as submissive fantasies to be conquered.
Military encounters were often “first encounters” U.S. soldiers had with Asian women. Local sex industries were created through military occupation. Soldiers presumed sexual access to women’s bodies.
The desires for Asian submissiveness are also connected to fears of Asian women as dangerous and deviant with regard to the norms of white society. The regulation of race, gender and sexuality through restrictive immigration measures creates ongoing precarities and vulnerabilities for Asian working-class migrant women.
For example, the Page Act of 1875 was introduced to target Chinese women as sex workers and prohibit entry of immigrants deemed to be undesirable. Or, while many migrants from Asia were formally barred from entering the United States, policies such as the War Brides Act enabled women to migrate with U.S. soldiers. Later, the 1965 Hart-Celler Act would allow large numbers of Asian migrants into the United States, primarily through family reunification provisions and sponsorships.
However, these conditions of migration created economic vulnerability and dependency, often exposing women to abuse and violence. Roadblocks to naturalization, such as two-year waiting periods and the loss of immigration status for separating from U.S. citizen spouses enabled and incentivized — and continues to enable and incentivize — intimate partner violence by criminalizing attempts to leave. Meanwhile, the U.S.’s lack of adequate social safety nets, such as aid for food and housing, forecloses possibilities for migrant women to independently sustain access to care and safety.
The collapse of social safety nets and the expansion of carceral systems have worked in tandem to expose working-class Asian migrant women to everyday violence.
In 1996, the passage of three federal laws further criminalized working-class migrants: the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA); the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA); and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). First came AEDPA, which expanded local law enforcement’s authority to make arrests for immigration law violations and expedited processes of detention and deportation. It has been devastating to Southeast Asian communities — just a week prior to the murders in Georgia, 33 Vietnamese community members were deported. AEDPA also extends U.S. “counterterrorism” measures by giving the FBI more jurisdiction to surveil organizations.
Later, PRWORA passed, further repealing welfare provisions with a sweeping $54 billion in budget cuts, almost half of which came out of denying benefits to immigrants. This included cutting off undocumented immigrants from federal funding and barring immigrants from benefits during their first five years. Paired with the 1994 Crime Control Act and expanded criminalization of drugs, this also removed benefits for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense. (Notably, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is included as part of the 1994 Crime Bill, effectively linking mainstream feminist anti-violence movements with law enforcement. VAWA affirms law enforcement as the default response to gender-based violence.)
Additionally, IIRIRA worked to curtail family migration by raising the minimum income guidelines for sponsors as a barrier to petitioning. It also limited immigrant access to temporary public assistance. IIRIRA has also been devastating in its expansion of detention and deportation.
With reforms to welfare, migration and policing, technologies of surveillance and punishment once applied to domestic welfare recipients also became routinely leveraged against migrants, with the double threats of deportation and detention close at hand.
Death is deployed through different systems of racialized, gendered and sexualized difference. Feminist scholar Grace Kyungwon Hong reminds us that under our current “structures of disavowal,” existing forms of protecting and preserving life, such as access to benefits, care and safety, coexist with the dispersal of death.
As We Grieve, We Need to Have Responses to Violence That Don’t Rely on More Violence.
The U.S. use of military force globally, the militarism of policing and white supremacist attacks on people of color are all intertwined. Thus, police are not the solution for safety from anti-Asian violence. In the wake of the Georgia murders, some cities are deploying specialized police forces and increasing patrols into Asian American communities. However, the presence of heightened policing in Asian American communities has long been tied to ongoing violence against Asians, especially massage parlor workers and other working-class Asian migrants, who have been harassed and targeted by police, and has also resulted in deadly raids.
In their public statement, members of Red Canary Song, a New York City-based collective of Asian and migrant sex workers, emphasize, “The criminalization and demonization of sex work has hurt and killed countless people — many at the hands of the police both directly and indirectly.”
We must direct our energy away from systems of police and punishment and toward alternatives to what justice can be. While it may seem we have limited options to respond in moments of loss, grief and tragedy, we can work more expansively and creatively to change our systems to prevent future forms of violence.
We need ongoing feminist solidarities to address the intertwining of movements for abolition, demilitarization and sex worker rights. This means continuing to work toward ongoing efforts to end policing; for the decriminalization of sex work; for safe and accessible housing; and for building stronger social safety nets. If the Biden-Harris administration means to make good on its promise that “hate can have no safe harbor in America,” it must begin by dismantling the carceral and punitive system that undergirds our immigration policies, many of which they are responsible for.
As Yves Tong Nguyen of Red Canary Song says, “I want you to care when people are still alive.”
Note: As of publication on Tuesday, March 23, we are not publishing a full list of the women’s names to respect families’ and loved ones’ wishes. This may change in the future as we get updated accounts from those on the ground. Readers who wish to support families can donate directly.
The message from the streets of Bristol on Sunday couldn’t have been clearer. The fight against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has started. And people are ready to struggle against it tooth and nail.
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 protesters have been called a “mob of animals” by Avon & Somerset Police, and ‘thugs’ by Priti Patel. Politicians from Labour and the Green Party were quick to line up to express their condemnation too.
If you’re looking for more condemnation, you won’t find it here. The people who besieged Bridewell Police station were fighting against state violence and authoritarianism, standing up for freedom and for the oppressed. We need to carry on resisting the bill, and standing with those arrested.
Several Canary reporters joined the protests on the streets of Bristol throughout the day. Here’s the real story of what happened on 21 March.
Kill the Bill
Under the cover of a national health emergency, the Tory government has launched the biggest attack on our freedoms since the Public Order Acts of the ‘80s and ‘90s. The controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Billpassed its second reading in parliament last week. The bill will give the police unprecedented draconian powers to arrest protesters, and will criminalise trespass, effectively outlawing the livelihoods of the UK’s Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.
The timing of the bill’s passage through parliament is no coincidence, coming during the UK’s strictest ever lockdown where protest is completely banned. The government must have hoped that people’s attention would be on the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis, and that even if people did notice, they wouldn’t be able to take to the streets. It was wrong.
Footage of police brutalising women 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.
What really happened in Bristol
At 2pm on Sunday 21 March, thousands of people gathered on Bristol’s College Green to protest the bill. They were met straightaway by police officers filming them. Avon & Somerset Police announced later that day that they planned to prosecute people retrospectively.
The crowd was the largest seen in Bristol since last June’s Black Lives Matter demonstration, where Bristolians pulled down a statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston and threw it in the River Avon. Their action has been widely celebrated in Bristol, but Priti Patel called it “sheer vandalism”. The proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes a clause that makes damaging national monuments punishable by up to ten years in prison.
The march made its way through central Bristol, accompanied by a samba band and sound systems. As the demonstration reached Castle Park at around 4pm, it became apparent that the marchers weren’t going to be willing to be pushed around by the police. Police officers moved in to give warnings to a small group of protesters sitting in the road. The crowd quickly rushed to their aid, seeing the police off with sheer force of numbers.
As the evening drew on, police unsuccessfully tried to clear protesters off the streets. According to a statement by Bristol Anarchist Federation:
as things were dying down that police manhandled and attempted to remove a protester who was sitting down. It was after this provocation, at about 6pm that those still up for marching headed down the hill next to the Galleries towards Bristol’s central police station – Bridewell.
When the crowd arrived at the police station, a group of “young” people reportedly sat down outside the station and chanted. According to the report by the Anarchist Federation:
At this point, approaching 6.40pm the police had a choice, line up defensively to protect their station perhaps even pull back a little, or escalate and create a dangerous and increasingly violent situation. They chose the latter, and sent in the dogs, literally in the case of the canine units who would soon deploy, and metaphorically in the case of the human officers who baton charged the crowd, striking at the heads of those standing, kicking folks on the floor, and even hitting a young woman sat on the floor hands raised telling them this was a peaceful protest.
‘I’m not sure what response they expected’
The Canary’s Sophia Purdy-Moore was at the scene. She gave us a similar description of the police attack on the protesters:
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), many sitting down shouting: “this is a peaceful protest” in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. It soon became clear that the police were not going to listen. I’m not sure what response they expected.
People are sick and tired of the police acting with impunity. This is what happens when the state refuses to listen to our demands for justice.
A statement from the #KillTheBill coalition points out that:
Ordinary people were charged with police horses, and pepper sprayed
Self defence
Myself and another of The Canary’s reporters arrived at the scene shortly after the police attack on the crowd. Several people were on the floor, suffering from the effects of pepper spray. The crowd had successfully defended itself against the police charge, even seizing a police riot shield. A police van that had been driven into the crowd had been graffitied. Protesters were occupying part of the Bridewell Police Station building, as well as a nearby car park. The windows of the police station were cracked.
After the demonstration, the police told the media that several of their officers had suffered broken bones and other injuries. We know from past experience that police do exaggerate the injuries sustained by officers. But even if police claims are true, the crowd’s self defence might have prevented greater injuries. Protesters have beenkilled or sustained brain damage after a police attack on a crowd like the one on Sunday. I personally know several comrades who have suffered broken bones at the hands of the police during protests.
The police drove several more vans into the protest. But the crowd would not be moved from their siege. Eventually, several police vehicles were set alight. One car was emblazoned with the words: ‘Defund the police’.
An act of resistance against daily acts of police violence
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.
Since the killing of Sarah Everard, Sisters Uncut and others have been making efforts to highlight the deaths of women at the hands of the police. A document called #194andcounting shows that at least 194 women have been murdered by the police and prison system in England and Wales, either in state custody or in prison, since the 1970s.
These figures are heartbreaking. But instead of focusing on the suffering caused by police violence, politicians and mainstream media pundits are busy wringing their hands over a few burnt police cars.
The violence faced by people in the UK at the hands of the police on a daily basis is a reminder of how important it is to resist this bill, and to stand with those facing police violence.
Defund the police
So what do those words, carefully inscribed on the bonnet of a burning police car, really mean? The call to ‘defund the police’ became popular last year, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the US police. According to Kailee Scales of Black Lives Matter:
So a lot of people are asking, ‘well why defund the police, why not police reform?’ So we’ve tried that. We’ve tried police reform over many many years and still it stays the same. We’ve tried to find out different ways to train police, still things stay the same. Still to this day, every year more than a thousand men, women and children are killed by police. It’s out of control.
Defunding the police is the only way to stop pouring resources into a system that does not make us safe.
Solidarity
Right now – in the aftermath of the siege of Bridewell – we need to look at the real story of what happened, and to listen to the voices of those who took part. The mainstream media is reporting that at least seven people have been arrested, so it’s also of paramount importance that we stand with them and offer them support.
We need to remember that if we are going to defeat the Policing Bill, then the struggles of the past week are only the first step. We have a long battle ahead of us. We need to stand strong together, and to organise.
Tom Anderson is part of the Shoal Collective, a cooperative producing writing for social justice and a world beyond capitalism.
As The Canaryreported, loyalist terrorist organisations have withdrawn their support for the Belfast peace agreement. This withdrawal was to protest the EU and UK Brexit protocol which started on 1 January 2021.
However, despite this threat to peace from British loyalists, it’s Irish republican communities who are predominantly under the police radar. And republican activists also allege MI5 involvement targeting ordinary family homes.
A double standard?
On 2 February, there was an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) “show of strength” in east Belfast. A group of masked people assembled. One media report said the gathering is “linked to internal tensions over drugs”.
Gatherings of more than six people aren’t allowed in the north under coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown regulations. But despite the size of this gathering, police didn’t appear to intervene. In fact, Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly said the police “made minimal efforts to intervene”. Kelly added:
the PSNI [police] merely shepherded the gang out of the area.
Just three days later, a group met to commemorate the 1992 loyalist killing of five people in the Irish republican community. On this occasion, police arrested Mark Sykes after attempting to break up the gathering. Sykes was one of the survivors of the 1992 attack.
Monitoring republicans
On 22 February, the “Revolutionary Republican Party” Saoradh, claimed it found “a high tech and advanced military grade listening device” in a working class housing estate in Derry. Saoradh believes this device:
was deliberately constructed and planted by British Military Intelligence with the sole purpose of eavesdropping and recording potentially months of audio/sound. They then collect the device to charge and extract the collated data and return it to a spot of their choice.
armed members of the British Crown Forces who were protecting MI5 agents in civilian clothing, who themselves were installing a new camera onto the mast.
Arrest of republicans
Writing in junge Welt on 20 March, Dieter Reinisch said the PSNI and secret service have intensified their activities against Irish republicans. Reinisch notes there’s been a continuous stream of arrests and house searches in early March.
In fact, on 4 March, the PSNI arrested a 35-year-old woman as part of Operation Arbacia. This operation is part of the PSNI’s investigation into the activities of the New IRA.
Then, on 18 March, the PSNI raided a family home in a working class republican estate in Derry city’s Creggan area. Saoradh said:
members of the British Crown Forces were on the streets of Creggan yesterday [18 March], where they invaded a family home, assaulted the occupants, stole property, terrorised children, damaged the house and ransacked it from top to bottom.
They assaulted children and caused public disorder for almost 12 hours in a heavily built up area, disrupting the lives of residents including the elderly, putting them at risk of injury or worse.
PSNI response
Chief superintendent Darrin Jones of the PSNI claims:
The vast majority of the public welcome the action we are taking against those who are causing serious harm to the community.
The PSNI told The Canary:
The operation was led by detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland Terrorism Investigation Unit (TIU) with assistance from District Policing colleagues and Operational Support Department.
The operation, called Ledging, is a discrete, stand-alone strand of Operation Arbacia, looking specifically at the New IRA’s bomb making activities as well as the group’s storage of explosive devices and equipment.
Threat to peace?
The Canary recently reported on British loyalists “blood-soaked” contribution to the 30-year conflict in Ireland. Loyalists called a ceasefire at the end of that conflict, but The Canary article also highlighted how loyalists breached their ceasefire since they signed the peace agreement.
Now that they’ve officially withdrawn from the agreement, it’s telling that the PSNI is failing to hold loyalists to account. It’s preoccupied with targeting republicans instead.
Campaigners, MPs, and peers have written to home secretary Priti Patel. They’re calling for changes to coronavirus (Covid-19) legislation to allow for protests to take place during lockdown.
Protecting the right to protest
The letter was organised by Liberty and Big Brother Watch. It calls on the home secretary to provide guidance for police on how to facilitate protests during the pandemic. And it also asks for clarity around laws on the right to protest. The letter emphasises that protest is a human right.
This comes ahead of further “Kill the Bill” protests to challenge the government’s draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The protests are due to take place nationwide on 20 and 21 March.
MPs from various parties have signed the letter. However, Network for Police Monitoring co-ordinator Kevin Blowe highlighted that the Tory MPs who signed the letter previously voted for the bill which proposes to “clamp down on protest“:
Note: the Tory MPs who signed the letter – Baker, Chope, Fuller, Green and Mitchell – all voted for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. https://t.co/HOLcwdCyF8
— Kevin (Aggravated Activist) Blowe (@copwatcher) March 20, 2021
Banning protest
Earlier in March, campaigners tried to secure exemption from lockdown legislation to attend a vigil commemorating Sarah Everard. The judgement handed down suggested “that the human rights of expression and gathering might be considered reasonable excuses in some circumstances”. But police still proceeded to harass and arrest vigil attendees.
Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said:
The harrowing scenes of police officers using force against women at Clapham Common recently were avoidable and wrong. Over the past week, many more demonstrators and even legal observers have been arrested or fined. This stain on our democracy is a direct consequence of this government’s disrespect for the most basic of British democratic freedoms.
Sam Grant from Liberty added:
Last week, the police conceded protest is not banned under the lockdown regulations, but used them to threaten then arrest demonstrators anyway. The home secretary must immediately issue guidance to all police forces to ensure socially distanced protests can go ahead and create an explicit exemption for protest in the current regulations.
Doughty Street Chambers barrister Adam Wagner highlighted – as set out in the judicial review – that any police force with a blanket ban on all protest would be acting unlawfully:
Mr Justice Holgate's judgment in the @ReclaimTS Judicial Review interim hearing from last Friday has been published.
This is Wiltshire's Chief Constable, not knowing that the clear duty to facilitate protests has not been suspended or that Mr Justice Holgate's judgment in the @ReclaimTS case says any police force with a policy that bans all protest would be acting unlawfully (h/t @Carrie_e_b) https://t.co/8ER6BKbLJipic.twitter.com/ovRsvKlIiS
The absence of clear guidance on these issues has created an entirely unsatisfactory situation, which has persisted to varying degrees for almost a year now. The police have no legal certainty as to their duties and powers, protestors have no legal certainty as to their rights, and there is inconsistent application of the Regulations across the country. This cannot continue.
Netpol suggested that the confusion created by “state-of-emergency laws and enforcement” is “a very effective way of making people fearful about exercising” their rights:
It is underappreciated how state-of-emergency laws and enforcement is intended to create uncertainty about our rights: it's a very effective way of making people fearful about exercising them.
This is also true of continually introducing more and new public order laws
Protests to “Kill the Bill” will be held across the country on 20 and 21 March.
The bill
The Tory government’s authoritarian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will not only clamp down on protest but will also target marginalised communities, criminalising the Gypsy and Romany Traveller (GRT) community and introducing more stop and search powers. As the call to action from Cornwall explains:
The new bill gives the police more power to impose conditions on a protest, including ones they view as too noisy…
And it’s not just protest. The bill will make trespass an offence, criminalising Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. And it introduces new stop and search powers that will increase racial profiling and harassment.
The Bill will ban protests that block roads around Parliament. It also allows the police to impose conditions on one-person protests. And it will introduce a new offence, punishable by up to ten years in prison, of ‘public nuisance’ for actions that cause “serious distress”, “serious annoyance”, “serious inconvenience”. Yes, that’s right. If you cause serious annoyance on a protest, you could go to jail for a decade!
Oh, and then there’s the ten year sentences for damaging a memorial or statue. Yep – you could get a longer sentence for damaging an inanimate object than the average sentence given to rapists.
The coalition
As a result, a coalition of groups is coming together to oppose the bill.
Sisters Uncut have led the charge against the bill and in women’s demonstrations. In a press release, an anonymous member urged supporters to keep up the pressure:
The last week has shown that protest works. That’s why they want to ban it, and that’s why we’re fighting back. The coalition that is coming together shows just how many people are angry about the brutal reality of policing in this country, and who are determined to roll back this dangerous extension of state power. Saturday night has shown us that the police are drunk on power, and should not be rewarded with more.
Policing by consent is a story this country likes to tell about itself. The reality is that policing is unaccountable, aggressive and violent. Targets of police repression – working class people, racial minorities, sex workers and many others – have had enough.
Take action!
Not all details have been announced yet, but protests against the bill will be held in:
Liverpool at 4pm, Saturday 20, location to be decided.
London, New Cross, Telegraph Park Hill, Saturday 20, information here.
News that the bill has been delayed is welcome and a victory. But the battle is far from over. And everyone still needs to take urgent action to ensure this repressive bill doesn’t become law.
Our right to protest is under attack. Protest is being criminalised and it’s urgent that we act now before it’s too late.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is being rushed through parliament. It will give the police powers to impose conditions on protests that they view as too noisy or cause “serious unease”.
The Bill will ban protests that block roads around Parliament. It also allows the police to impose conditions on one-person protests. And it will introduce a new offence, punishable by up to ten years in prison, of ‘public nuisance’ for actions that cause “serious distress”, “serious annoyance”, “serious inconvenience”. Yes, that’s right. If you cause serious annoyance on a protest, you could go to jail for a decade!
Oh, and then there’s the ten year sentences for damaging a memorial or statue. Yep – you could get a longer sentence for damaging an inanimate object than the average sentence given to rapists.
Home secretary Priti Patel doesn’t like protests. She thinks Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter protesters are ‘extremists’. She wants the police to take more action against anyone who dares to stand up to this government.
Meanwhile, a government report into policing is labelling anyone who takes direct action as an “aggravated activist”. It states that the police have gone too far in allowing protests to go ahead. It is also calling for increased surveillance, including the use of facial recognition technology on demonstrations.
Make no mistake. This is the biggest threat to our freedom to protest that we’ve seen in generations. The police already abuse their powers. This new bill will give them unprecedented power to crackdown on protests. The UK has a long and proud history of protest. And it’s through taking to the streets that we’ve won many of the rights that we now take for granted.
Our opposition to this bill cannot wait. We need to take action now before many of us end up behind bars for trying to make the world a better place.
The Network for Police Monitoring is leading the fight against these extra powers with a charter that calls for the protection of protestors’ rights. Over 150,000 people have already supported the campaign to protect the right to protest.
Get involved today and stop this bill becoming law!
This past year of the pandemic has seen a horrifying uptick in anti-Asian violence and hate crimes in the U.S., many targeting the elderly. FromVicha Ratanapakdee, an 84-year old Thai man who was knocked to the ground, toNoel Quintana, a 61-year old Filipino man who was slashed in the face, many Asian elders have been assaulted and attacked since the pandemic’s onset. Asian people, especially Chinese folks have been subjected toverbal and physical violence — much of which has been fueled by Trump’s anti-Asian rhetoric pertaining to COVID-19’s origins. Racial epithets such as “kung flu” and “Chinese virus” have only exacerbated the situation. While some people have donated or raised awareness,othershave expressed their grief by calling on more policing as a means for justice. The problem is that more policing rarely results in justice for anyone, and only puts Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color (BIPOC), including Asian people, at risk for more violence.
From1977 to 2017, state and local spending on policing increased from $42 billion to $115 billion. Policing is not only problematic, but would further negatively impact the health, well-being, safety, and livelihood of BIPOC and other marginalized people.Researchhas shown that police brutality has ramifications on Black health, underscoring the importance of reallocating police funds to community-based interventions. It’s linked to death and excess morbidity including fatal injuries, adverse physiological responses, racist reactions that exacerbate stress, arrests and incarceration, and systematic disempowerment.
Policing is a system deeply rooted in upholding white supremacy and anti-Blackness, while enabling racist systems to inflict harm on communities of color. The origins of policing have been linked to slave patrols that date back to the1700swho chased down runaway slaves and prevented rebellions from occurring. We see the legacy of this policing today in the mass killing of unarmed and innocent Black people fromTrayvon MartintoEric Garner.
Additionally, more policing only catalyzes racial tensions between Asian and Black communities — a racial divide that has persisted in large part due to themodel minority myth. The stereotype ahistorically and dangerously portrays Asian people as “successful” and able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps even in the face of racism and systemic oppression. It’s used as a weapon to pit Asian people against Black communities by implying that anti-Blackness and white supremacist systems — like policing — benefit Asian people.
This is a lie. Far from protecting us, policing has also harmed and taken the lives of Asian Americans, such asAngelo Quinto, a 30-year old Filipino American man who was knelt on and killed by Antioch Police, andFong Lee, a 19-year old Hmong man who was killed in 2006 by the Minneapolis police — the same institution and system that would killGeorge Floyd, a 46-year old Black man, 15 years later. Policing is a harmful and inequitable system of justice and advocating for more policing in our communities does not mean we will see more justice orless crime. It would only call for more violence against BIPOC communities, especially police brutality andunfair treatmenton Black and brown lives, violence that Asian Americans have taken part inas police officers themselves.
Instead of calling on more policing, we need Asian solidarity with Black and brown communities as a catalyst for tackling white supremacy and the systems that continuously uphold and enable racism. Dismantling these divides requires unlearning the “scarcity mindset,” a belief that tells us that there are not enough resources for everyone’s needs. In Audre Lorde’sSister Outsider, Lorde highlights “the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us … So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie.”
Scarcity mindset underpins the lie that we should fight solely for Asian liberation at the expense of others, and ignores an existing history of alliance and successful collaboration between Asian Americans and Black and brown communities. For example, Jesse Jackson, a Black political activist, called for justice for the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American draftsman who was beaten to death by two white men. Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American civil rights activist and Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American social activist advocated alongside the civil rights and social justice movements for Black liberation–which served as inspiration that was used to advance Asian American liberation. So much of Asian American rights that we see today are in large thanks to Black activists and their fight and struggle for freedom. Further,the Delano Grape Strike, one of the most important economic movements in U.S. history, resulted from the collaboration of Filipino and Mexican farmworkers, led by Larry Itliong, César Chávez, and Dolores Huerta. Sadly, much of this history is erased and ignored while conflicts between Asian American communities and other BIPOC, particularly Black communities, are amplified to the benefit of the white supremacist systems that oppress us all.
While the fight for racial justice is a collective effort, working in solidarity does not mean that we should expect Black communities to do or lead the work. Asian Americans must talk directly with family and friends who believe that “police keep us safe,” giving family members the opportunity to share how they feel before speaking, because family members are more likely to listen when you hear them out first. We must remind our communities of the many examples ofAmerica’s racist history toward Asians,such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the colonization anddenigration of Filipinos, and Executive Order 9066–which incarcerated a disproportionate amount of Japanese people who were “under suspicion as enemies” during WWII, and how this was a prelude to more recent hate crimes such as themurder of Vincent Chin,the targeting of South Asians since 9/11, and prominent Asian Americans likeJeremy Lin speaking about the racist harassmenthe’s experienced on the NBA courts. You can learn more about having these conversations by following organizations such asAAPI Women LeadandSouth Asians for Black Lives, both of whichhave created and shared informative content about speaking with elders or loved ones who might not speak English about breaking anti-Black stereotypes in the household.
Another way to engage is by learning how to stop xenophobia and harassment targeting Asians in America through bystander training. In collaboration with Hollaback, Asian Americans Advancing Justice offers freebystander and de-escalation trainingto learn how to intervene when anti-Asian hate and harassment occurs.
White supremacist systems like policing thrive on the dissonance between BIPOC communities. Asian lives cannot afford to have hate and racism win. Instead of looking to more policing as a solution, we must redirect our grief toward positive healing in the form of solidarity. We must organize together, mobilize together, and stand alongside one another in all spaces, and not just in performative ways. There is a long history of Asian American communities working in collaboration with Black and other communities of color that offers far richer and more beneficial pathways to justice than more police, and as we’ve seen time and again, we’re stronger and safer when we work together for our mutual liberation.
Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places and issues currently underreported by national media.
CONTENT WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS REFERENCES TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN THAT SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND DISTRESSING
It should possibly come as no surprise that the government is seizing upon the murder of Sarah Everard to roll out more Stasi-like undercover policing, all in the name of protecting women. Boris Johnson has announced that the government is going to send plain-clothes police officers to spy on people in bars and clubs around England and Wales. It’s part of a pilot scheme, Project Vigilant, which was launched by Thames Valley police in 2019, and is now going to be rolled out nationwide. The mainstream media is calling it a “drive to protect women“, and a scheme “to catch sexual predators“.
Spy cops abuse women. They don’t protect them.
But we’ve seen time and time again that undercover police abuse their powers, deceive women into relationships, and wreck their lives. More than 30 women have been tricked into relationships with spy cops. The exact figure is likely to be higher, because the government likes protecting the identities of undercover policemen who have infiltrated women’s lives. And they don’t like telling us whether the police are still doing it now.
This latest announcement about deploying undercover police makes a mockery of the Undercover Policing Inquiry that is currently taking place, which should be investigating the disgraceful actions of undercover officers and their bosses. It’s a kick in the teeth to the women participating in that inquiry whose lives were torn apart by police spies.
People have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration:
Undercover police hanging around in bars “to protect women”?
Tell that to the heroic women activists who were subject to systematic and coordinated human rights & sexual abuse by undercover #SpyCops.
— Dave Smith – Join A Union: Save Lives Save Jobs (@DaveBlacklist) March 16, 2021
How could you look at a cop being charged with murdering a woman, police being investigated for failing to investigate him properly, an officer joking about her murder, and police violence against mourning women, and conclude that undercover police in nightclubs is the answer?
A serving Metropolitan police officer has been charged with Sarah’s murder. And the subsequent police violence towards protesters on the streets, showed the world that the police are definitely not here to protect women.
And Sarah’s murder was just the tip of the iceberg. A document called #194andcounting shows that at least 194 women have been murdered by the police and prison system in England and Wales, either in state custody or in prison, since the 1970s.
The Canary’s Steve Topple reported on statistics which show that between January 2009 and September 2020 there were:
11 murders [of women] involving serving or ex-police officers. Eight were convicted. Three cases are ongoing. But nine of the 11 victims were police officers’ wives or girlfriends.
Over 90 charges of, or convictions for, rape among [employees of the criminal justice system]. The majority were against women and children. Several of the offenders committed multiple crimes. Dozens of these were serving police officers.
And there are a number of other disgusting misogynist incidents involving police officers. I will list just a couple. On 15 March, the Sun reported that a Metropolitan policeman, who was guarding the spot where Sarah Everard was murdered, sent out a meme “containing six images of a uniformed officer abducting a woman”. In 2020, Metropolitan police officers took selfies of themselves next to the bodies of murdered women Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.
Also in 2020, a police officer from Avon and Somerset was found guilty of gross misconduct for his treatment of a domestic abuse survivor whose ex-partner broke into her house and “punched her head into a wall”. The policeman described the survivor as “anti-men”. The Canary spoke to the woman, who said:
When you call the police, you expect to be treated with respect. You don’t expect to be treated with prejudice by an officer who clearly has an issue with you as a woman. Misogyny has no place in any police force. Misogyny kills.
Giving the police more powers to act with impunity
It’s all too clear to women that the police are institutionally violent towards us. But instead of addressing this, the Tory government is giving them sweeping new powers. The recently passed Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act legalises the criminal activities of undercover officers and agents working for the police, MI5, and other state agencies. The Act doesn’t prohibit murder or torture in the name of undercover work. So, essentially it means spies and their agents will be able to act with impunity.
Meanwhile, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill currently being rushed through parliament will give police officers even more powers. Sisters Uncut argues:
As the actions of police at peaceful vigils this weekend show, police abuse the powers that they already have – and yet the government plans to give them more powers in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
The death of Sarah Everard must be seen in context of the structures of violence against women in this country, which include the police who brutally manhandled grieving women on Saturday, and the routine failures of the police to investigate rape cases as well as their own record of domestic abuse against women.
It continues:
The police are institutionally violent against women. Handing them more powers will increase violence against women.
We need systemic change
While the government pretends to care by promising to provide us with undercover cops and better-lit streets, the reality is we need complete systemic change. Women are unsafe, whether they’re walking home or already in their house. In fact, 62% of women murdered between 2019 and 2008 were killed by men who were currently, or had previously been, in an intimate relationship with them. No amount of spy cops or street lighting will protect us from the misogyny and patriarchy within our society, ingrained in boys from an early age.
We don’t trust the police, or the criminal justice system, to protect us. The number of successful rape convictions is at an all-time low. The Centre for Women’s Justice’s Harriet Wistrich has argued that rape has virtually been “de-criminalised” because it’s so rare that a man will be convicted of the crime. It’s therefore unsurprising that, according to the Office for National Statistics, “less than one in five victims of rape or assault by penetration reported their experience to the police”.
We are tired Johnson and Patel’s crocodile tears. We are tired of our behaviour being policed, of being told that we must not walk alone at night, just because we’re women. We are tired of being victim-blamed for being assaulted. Together we must fight for radical change.
Featured image via a Bristol activist, with permission
Organisers of a vigil in response to the disappearance of Sarah Everard are taking legal action after claiming police reversed a decision on allowing it to go ahead.
Restricted
They said there had been an “about-face” by the Metropolitan Police and they were told the Reclaim These Streets event planned for 13 March would not be permitted due to the coronavirus (Covid-19 ) lockdown.
The group said in a statement on the evening of 11 March that they would seek an order in the High Court the following day, challenging the force’s interpretations of coronavirus restrictions when read against human rights law. Scotland Yard said it understands the “public’s strength of feeling” and that the Met remains in discussion with organisers “in light of the current Covid regulations”.
The vigil, due to take place at Clapham Common bandstand in south London, was organised after 33-year-old Everard’s suspected kidnap and murder sparked anger over the safety of women on the UK’s streets.
Sarah Everard’s suspected kidnap and murder sparked anger over the safety of women on the UK’s streets (Family handout/PA)
Organiser Anna Birley told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that organisation for the vigil began on 10 March and the group had “proactively” contacted Lambeth Council and the Metropolitan Police. She said:
Initially, we had feedback that they were looking at ways to navigate this, that they would be looking at how they could proportionately and appropriately provide community policing to the event.
And we were in conversation about how we could do that safely so that people could express their anger and their grief without putting themselves or others at risk.
We then had an about-face mid-afternoon yesterday. We were being put under increasing pressure that, individually, we would be at risk for doing so, but as would everybody who attended and all of the women across the country potentially who have been organising sister vigils in their own areas.
Coronavirus
Under the current coronavirus lockdown in England, people are largely required to stay at home and can only gather in larger groups for limited reasons, such as funerals or for education. Police can break up illegal gatherings and issue fines of £10,000 to someone holding a gathering of more than 30 people.
Update: We have now reached our target. We are absolutely overwhelmed by the incredible response to this. We are now closing the crowdfunder: if you were planning on donating and haven’t yet, please instead make a donation to a women’s charity of your choice. #ReclaimTheseStreetshttps://t.co/lH5X4wL1Vj
Birley said that safety of the vigil had been a “priority from the get-go”, adding:
It would be ironic to organise a vigil to think about women’s safety in public spaces without also thinking about the health and safety aspects.
She said the location of Clapham Common was in part chosen because it is a “wide open space”, while organisers had emphasised wearing masks and the importance of social distancing.
She added:
We were trying to be very thoughtful. We had QR codes so that people could do track and trace, and just really trying to work out how we can do this in a really safe way.
In the statement tweeted on 11 March, Reclaim These Streets said the group had “initially” received a positive response when it approached Lambeth Council and Scotland Yard while planning and promoting the event. The statement read:
The Metropolitan Police said that they were ‘trying to navigate a way through’ and that they were ‘currently developing a local policing plan’ to allow the vigil to take place and to enable them to ‘develop an appropriate and proportionate local response’ to the event.
Since this statement, the Metropolitan Police have reversed their position and stated that the vigil would be unlawful and that, as organisers, we could face tens of thousands of pounds in fines and criminal prosecution under the Serious Crimes Act.
‘Silenced’
A Metropolitan Police statement said:
We understand the public’s strength of feeling and are aware of the statement issued by Reclaim These Streets with regard to a planned vigil for Sarah Everard in Clapham Common this weekend.
We remain in discussion with the organisers about this event in light of the current Covid regulations.
The group said by “forcing us to cancel” the vigil, the police would be “silencing thousands of women like us who want to honour Sarah’s memory and stand up for our right to feel safe on our streets”.
As George Floyd gasped for breath under the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, another officer turned to the gathering crowd and said, “This is why you don’t do drugs, kids.” Days later, Chauvin’s attorneys told a judge that prosecutors had no probable cause to charge Chauvin because Floyd tested positive for drugs and had medical conditions. Blaming the victim, a common practice particularly when the victim is Black or Brown, attorneys postulated that Floyd had overdosed and caused his own death. Two separate autopsies would confirm that Chauvin killed Floyd, but only after Chauvin’s lawyers spread the dehumanizing notion that Floyd’s alleged drug use made him unworthy of living.
Breonna Taylor, whose name was chanted with Floyd’s as the protests against police-perpetrated violence swept the country last year, was killed by police during a botched drug raid in March 2020. No drugs were found at the home in Louisville, Kentucky, where Taylor, a Black medical worker and aspiring nurse, was gunned down, but prosecutors argued the plainclothes officers who busted inside were justified in their use of force. A grand jury agreed and charges against the cops were dropped.
Democrats and some civil rights leaders applauded the passage of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 in the House this week as an important step toward curbing police violence. However, the suite of policing reforms does not reflect the transformational demands of the movement that erupted into view after police killed Taylor, Floyd, Daniel Prude, Tony McDade, Modesto Reyes, Patrick Lynn Warren and so manyothers. Activists envision reducing, defunding and ultimately eliminating policing, while redirecting police funding to meet community needs. In contrast, the police reform bill would give police more money in the form of grants that theoretically act as an incentive to adopt modest reforms — if local cops even want the funding. Congress would continue supporting the war on drugs, which looms as one factor behind the deaths of Floyd, Taylor, Reyes and so much of the violence that people of color and particularly Black people face at the hands of police.
Maritza Perez, national affairs director for the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that lobbies Congress to abolish the drug war, said the bill passed by the House on Wednesday falls “far short” of the kind of reform and accountability that is needed to end police violence. House Democratic leaders, Perez said, fast-tracked a version of the bill that passed last year before dying in the Senate, rather than listening to concerns raised by racial justice groups and members of ultra-policed communities.
“Last year we raised at various times while this bill was being put together that it didn’t go far enough, and the way that the Democrats are explaining this bill even isn’t accurate,” Perez said in an interview.
“The bill continues the misguided logic that more police equals more safety and better protections of human rights,” said Erika Maye, deputy senior director of criminal justice and democracy campaigns at the civil rights group Color Of Change, in a statement.
Standards and training have not been shown to have a profound effect on police-perpetrated violence. Activists argue that policing is inherently violent and racist, and only reducing and ultimately abolishing policing can reduce police violence.
For example, the bill would prohibit federal law enforcement officers from putting people in chokeholds and serving “no-knock warrants,” two policing tactics that are notorious for causing serious harm. However, the bill would not stop local and state police from using chokeholds and no-knock warrants; instead, it uses federal funding as an incentive for local cops to adopt federal standards and training. Besides, Floyd was killed by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation from a knee to the neck, not a chokehold. As Derecka Purnell points out at The Guardian, the Justice in Policing Act would not have saved Floyd’s life. It may not have saved Taylor’s either.
No-knock warrants involve police or a SWAT team barging into private property unannounced, most often to search for drugs inside a home, and are blamed for numerous injuries and deaths. Perez said the Justice in Policing Act does not prohibit “quick-knock raids” that can be just as deadly. During a quick-knock raid, which are also often used to serve drug warrants, officers simply knock before they bust into a home.
In Taylor’s case, police officers told investigators they repeatedly knocked and announced themselves before breaking down the door with a battering ram. Other reports indicate there was no warning at all. Taylor was in bed with her boyfriend, who reportedly thought they were being robbed; he pulled a gun and fired one shot. Police responded with a hail of gunfire. In the wake of Taylor’s death, Louisville banned no-knock warrants and set new guidelines for police raids. Even if Congress passes the Justice in Policing Act, states and localities would be left to pass their own reforms, as a few are already doing.
“A lot of these problematic policing practices, a lot of cases that we hear about where people are killed, are derived [from] drug investigations, or drugs are used as a pretext to question somebody and have that initial interaction,” Perez said.
Democrats say the House bill would “limit” the transfer of military-grade equipment to local police departments, but Perez said the legislation would not end the practice outright. The war on drugs has long been used to justify the militarization of police forces, with heavily armed SWAT teams busting into homes in the middle of the night and deploying smoke bombs and flash grenades. In 2014, a flash grenade critically injured a toddler during a no-knock drug raid in Georgia.
Activists have long called for an end to federal programs that transfer military equipment to local police, especially after the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, where military equipment was used against protesters after a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown. Federal programs that transfer military equipment to cops would be curtailed under the House bill, as they were during the Obama administration, but the programs would not be shut down.
“Most often when we say ‘militarized police,’ it’s in the course of a drug investigation,” Perez said.
The most substantive provisions in the Justice in Policing Act are also the most controversial in Congress, and organizers are skeptical that even these would make for real change. The bill would “reform” — but not eliminate — qualified immunity for police officers, which currently protects cops from civil lawsuits and prevents victims from collecting damages. (Meanwhile, many abolitionist activists question whether eliminating qualified immunity will save lives. As Black Lives Matter put it in a tweet, the solution is not to “end qualified immunity so we can sue cops AFTER they kill our babies.”) The bill would also loosen a federal legal standard that often prevents prosecutors from charging police with criminal charges. Democrats want to create a National Police Misconduct Registry meant to prevent cops who are fired for misconduct from being rehired by a different force — if police departments choose to use it.
Cops are notorious for getting off easy, even after they kill people, and mainstream civil rights leaders, such as Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, say national reforms like the George Floyd Act are necessary for pursuing justice at the local and state level. However, Republicans remain opposed to the qualified immunity proposal and other changes, posing a major hurdle in the Senate, where Democrats must convince 10 Republicans to support the bill or end the filibuster to pass it.
Perez said both Democrats and Republicans are mischaracterizing the bill, with Democrats claiming it goes much further than it actually does, and Republicans falsely claiming it would “defund the police.”
“I really don’t think this bill provides real accountability,” Perez said.
In October 2020, a coalition of racial justice and law enforcement reform groups sent a letter to top Democrats on the House Judiciary committee, alerting them that 50 Black people had died since the Justice in Policing Act was first passed earlier that year. They offered concrete proposals to improve the bill, including removing police officers from all schools, banning quick-knock raids for drug cases, strengthening the misconduct registry and making racial profiling data readily available to the public.
Perez said Democrats ignored these recommendations in favor of a quick political victory and appeasing the police. Police oppose real reforms because they threaten their power on the street, which so often involves racist suspicions about drugs. Under the bill, Congress would continue funding the drug war, rather than shifting those resources toward housing, education, harm reduction and other infrastructure that would strengthen communities, according to Perez.
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is pushing its own visionary bill, the BREATHE Act, which would divest federal resources from incarceration and policing and invest in new approaches to community safety that don’t involve legal sanctions and locking people up in jail. For racial justice activists, the only reforms worth fighting for would shrink the criminal legal system, center the protection of Black lives and provide new money to Black communities.
The Justice in Policing Act, on the other hand, provides new money for police.
“Giving hundreds of millions of dollars to police departments for hiring, additional equipment, and training fundamentally ignores community’s calls for public safety that prioritizes housing, health care, and good jobs,” Maye said.
The Justice in Policing Act fails to capture the spirit of the mass movement that took to the streets after Floyd’s death — a movement that demanded an end to policing and the repurposing of resources to defend Black lives and promote public safety by investing in communities. Defunding police would also mean an end to the racist war on drugs, which has empowered and enriched law enforcement since its inception, providing the perfect excuse to target and control communities of color. The war on drugs is a war on people, particularly Black and Brown people. The House Democrats’ proposal would not change that.
“We support drug decriminalization and legalization for that reason,” Perez said. “We want to stop interactions between members of the community and the police, because for vulnerable people — people of color, low-income and no-income people — we know those interactions are often deadly.”
Detroit Will Breathe was formed days after the mass uprising following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. Despite the hyper-militarized tools and tactics used by Detroit Police on anti-racist protesters in an attempt to stop the movement, activists kept mobilizing against police brutality. Instead of trying to meet the demands that Detroit Will Breathe developed with the community, DPD continued to use excessive force and brutality. Following a summer of state violence, Detroit Will Breathe was able to file a lawsuit against the City of Detroit: plaintiffs are suing the City for damages and violations to their first and fourth amendment rights. In addition to the lawsuit, a restraining order against DPD was put in place for 14 days until a judge granted a preliminary injunction for the remainder of the case stipulating that the police are no longer allowed to use chokeholds, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper-spray, batons, shields, force, or vehicles as weapons against protesters; protesters now cannot be arrested without probable cause. Detroit Police Chief, James Craig, responded to the ruling and stated that it “wouldn’t stop how the department handles demonstrations.”
While the lawsuit and restraining order might have provided some legal cushion room in protecting protesters against physical violence, DPD and the City continue to utilize intimidation tactics and political revenge against activists. In response to Detroit Will Breathe’s lawsuit, the City filed a counterclaim for civil conspiracy demanding that any damages are to be paid by individual members of Detroit Will Breathe. City officials disclosed that the claim was only filed in order to get Detroit Will Breathe to drop their lawsuit. Detroit Mayor Duggan stated that the claim is an “attempt to suppress their speech.” Detroit Will Breathe is fighting to have this baseless claim dismissed but continues to face legal obstacles.
On Tuesday, January 26, Detroit City Council voted 5:4 to approve additional funding for the counterclaim. In one of the poorest cities in the nation, $200,000 of taxpayer money was paid out to Clark Hill law firm, despite the fact that activists and residents repeatedly asked Detroit City Council to vote down the contract. The additional funds were requested by the Duggan administration and the city’s top lawyer, Lawrence Garcia. The same day that City Council approved this contract, 238 out of 245 cases against BLM protesters were dismissed due to lack of evidence. The council vote is motivated by political retaliation and is being used to intimidate and suppress protesters. Aside from vengeance, council members were also bribed by Clark Hill. Roy McCallister, a former police officer, was the only council member that voted in favor of the contract that did not receive a gift from the law firm. Detroit City Council doesn’t care about the interests of the people they serve; they are more inclined to fill their own pockets.
Not only is this funding a direct attack on BLM protesters, but it is also inappropriate and disrespectful to Detroiters who are living in poverty. Detroit residents are constantly told there isn’t enough money for the resources they need: housing, healthcare, water, education, transportation, and recreation services lack proper and sustained funding. Housing alone is a major crisis in Detroit: since 2009, $600 million has been stolen from Detroit homeowners in illegal property tax inflation on foreclosures and still, City Council continues to throw away taxpayer money. City Council’s priorities are concentrated on displacing Black and Brown people through state violence, rather than protecting the 85%-Black community that they serve.
In addition to this egregious counterclaim, DPD is asking for another $40 million to be added to their bloated $330 million police budget. If City Council approves this budget increase, it will be even clearer to Detroiters that their lives don’t matter and that there are no consequences for police brutality. Detroit Will Breathe demands that the City refuses to reward DPD additional funding for their violence and hostility and instead puts the money toward resources and services for the community.
You may have already heard that the G7 is being hosted at a luxury beach resort in Cornwall this June. The G7 is made up of some of the world’s richest and most powerful industrialised countries: “the UK, US, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, and Japan”. The bloc was previously the G8, before Russia was booted out.
The annual meeting is designed to maintain our unequal global capitalist system, where a handful of leaders in the Global North dominate the Global South – as well as the rest of us.
But while UK mainstream media and NGOs are gushing about the opportunities that the summit will bring, a coalition of activists has launched to oppose the G7 and everything that it stands for.
Resist G7 Coalition
The Resist G7 Coalition, made up of various groups and communities, is calling for international days of action, from 11-13 June. It’s also calling for a real – or virtual – big day of action on 12 June, although exact plans will depend upon the coronavirus (Covid-19) situation. The coalition respects a diversity of tactics.
The group also plans to organise a counter-conference, “aiming to create a legacy of resistance and alternatives for Cornwall and beyond”.
This isn’t about opposing one summit. It’s about building on and creating a legacy, of showing what’s possible when diverse groups come together and start organising the world we want to see. We believe in a world where we put people and planet before profit, where justice means justice on a global scale, where wealth is shared equally and not pocketed by the 1%. Our world should not be a play thing for the rich. It belongs to all of us. And it’s down to us, the people, to stand together, to resist, and to create the future we want to see. The world leaders at the G7 aren’t going to do it for us. The system needs changing. And if we want change, we have to act.
“Vaccine apartheid”
Resist G7 argues that by protesting against the summit, it will be taking a stand against global capitalism, which creates “vast inequalities” both in the UK and around the world. The coalition argues that capitalism:
is [a] system that is seeing our NHS sold off to the highest bidder, that allows people to queue in the snow for foodbanks while pandemic contracts worth billions are siphoned off to friends of government ministers.
It continues:
Globally, [the pandemic] has exposed inequalities in health care. Those richest nations setting the agenda at the G7 have already brought over 50% of the world’s vaccine supply. Vaccine apartheid is happening with pharmaceutical companies putting profit before world health, backed by the nations of the G7.
“Planet before profit”
The coalition argues that it’s these G7 nations that are responsible for the vast majority of arms sales:
They have a vested interested in upholding the system that facilitates weapons being sold to other murderous regimes to kill and repress people around the world. And it is this system that enforces the borders which people have to risk their lives crossing to flee from the bombs G7 countries have sold.
Others will, no doubt, be protesting the G7 leaders for wrecking our planet, and for causing irreversible climate change.
Local resistance
While the local police and crime commissioner has said that the summit will be a “huge opportunity” for the South-West, local people know better. Thousands of police, as well as the military, are likely to be deployed to the area, while freedom of movement for locals and tourists alike will be severely restricted. The summit, which has previously boasted 2,400 delegates from all over the world, will bring significant additional risks of spreading coronavirus.
The Canary spoke to Francesca (not her real name), who is part of Resist G7. She said:
I live and work in Penzance. I intend to protest when the G7 come to Cornwall. I have no confidence in a global system which supports growing personal wealth for a few individuals while so many are living in poverty.
Government figures from 2019 showed that one in six children live in poverty in Cornwall. In St Ives (the town next door to Carbis Bay where the G7 will take place) a staggering 36% are estimated to be living in poverty. These figures will surely be larger now due to the effects of the pandemic on jobs. This is on the doorstep of the G7 Summit but will go unseen unless local people highlight these issues themselves. Compare that to the personal wealth of Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon and became the first person whose net worth exceeds $200bn. He has made massive profits while others struggle.
Redistributing the wealth of the richest people in the world could solve the problem of world hunger, but governments are committed to serving the rich.
Boris and co. are no doubt hoping to be comfortably wined and dined in Cornwall. But rest assured, there will be resistance and it won’t be quiet.
According to a report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS), “forces still do not fully understand the impact on individuals and communities of the use of police powers”. The report examined police use of force and stop and search against people from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.
The report highlights that:
Over 35 years on from the introduction of stop and search legislation, no force fully understands the impact of the use of these powers. Disproportionality persists and no force can satisfactorily explain why.
The MacPherson report 22 years on
The people at Black Lives Matter UK shared their views on Twitter. They said that they – and the police – already know exactly why police disproportionately use their powers on people from BAME backgrounds. It’s because of institutional racism:
Hint: The word they are looking for begins with an R and ends with M. https://t.co/31LEpP00mi
The MacPherson report was published in 1999 following the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence and police mishandling of the case. It found the Met police to be institutionally racist and set out 70 recommendations on how they should tackle this. Institutional racism, as set out in the MacPherson report, is defined as:
The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.
It’s appalling that over 20 years after the MacPherson report was published, forces across the UK are still unwilling and unable to recognise the realities of institutional racism and disproportionate policing, let alone start tackling them.
More recent interventions
In response to the HMICFRS report, shadow justice secretary David Lammy pointed to an independent review which he led. It looked into the treatment of, and outcomes for, BAME people in the criminal justice system:
All people – regardless of their ethnic background – must be treated the same by police and the whole justice system.
The government "accepted" in my review that action must be taken to explain or change disproportionality. Now it must act like it. https://t.co/zkatVz3Jar
Lammy’s 2017 review found that very little had changed since the MacPherson report. And in some cases, things had regressed. Despite making up 14% of the UK population, people from BAME backgrounds made up 25% of prisoners. Meanwhile, the BAME proportion of youth prisoners rose from 25% to 41% between 2006 and 2016. And while Black people make up just 3% of the population, they “accounted for 12% of adult prisoners” and “more than 20% of children in custody”.
In spite of these high profile calls for institutional reform, we’ve seen little positive change in policing and the justice system. Black people continue to bear the brunt of racist policing. According to 2019/20 data, officers are:
9 times more likely to stop and search Black people – 18 times more likely to do so using section 60 powers.
“5.7 times more likely to use force against Black people than white people”.
8 times more likely to handcuff Black people.
9 times more likely to draw tasers on Black people.
3 times more likely to use spithoods on Black people.
Today, Black people account for 8% of deaths in police custody. It’s been over 50 years since Yorkshire police murdered David Oluwale. But since then, not one officer has been successfully prosecuted for killing a Black person in police custody. The joint enterprise doctrine and gang databases continue to target and criminalise young Black men. Meanwhile, forces continue to surveil and criminalise Muslim communities as a result of Prevent and the war on terror.
Institutional racism bolstered by the state
Racist policing doesn’t take place in a vacuum. The structural racism of the state bolsters institutional racism in the police. Here, it’s useful to refer to the Institute of Race Relations’ 1998 definition of institutional racism as:
that which, covertly or overtly, resides in the policies, procedures, operations and culture of public or private institutions – reinforcing individual prejudices and being reinforced by them in turn.
We see this manifested in the government’s racist immigration laws, border control practices, and the hostile environment. It’s in a civil service with a culture of racism and exclusion. Resistance to acknowledging the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and empire in schools, universities, and beyond. And failures to protect the human rights of Black people in the UK. Furthermore, the government is responsible for prison and police expansion.
We have ample evidence to suggest that Britain’s police are institutionally racist. Forces should be beyond getting to grips with the basics of racism and disproportionality. They should have been doing serious work to tackle it for decades. We don’t need any more reviews – we need action.
After the nation watched white supremacists take over the Capitol building, the failure of the national security state to appropriately recognize and address the threat became a national scandal. But this “failure” shouldn’t have surprised us. If there is one thing that the trillion-dollar national security apparatus is good at, it’s under-hyping and misinterpreting threats that aren’t based on threats from “outsiders,” while overhyping the threats that are.
It’s not just white supremacy that the national security state often overlooks. The downplayed threats are often those that aren’t suggestive of national security “solutions.” Everyone knows that bombs can’t stop climate change, a virus or a hurricane (with the exception of one former president). In the case of white supremacist violence, the failure to appreciate the danger reflects a reluctance to use the full violence of state power against white citizens, but the effects are similar. And when it isn’t ignoring them, the national security state co-opts these threats rather than relinquish power to other arms of government.
Of course, the bread and butter of the national security state is the idea that we need plenty of bombs (and ships, jets, troops and so on) to deal with threats posed by terrorists from “over there,” or countries that would threaten U.S. global primacy. The overhyping of a supposed threat posed by China is particularly insidious, as it threatens not only to ignite a new Cold War, but to drag climate negotiations, future pandemic preparations and the rest of the world down with it.
National security needs to be reimagined twice: once to refocus it on real threats like climate change, global pandemics and authoritarianism, and again to refocus the response to those crises away from a militarized response and toward real solutions. It will take significant outside pressure to make that happen.
Overhyped Threats and Military Overreach
The U.S. military reaches around the globe, with approximately 800 foreign military installations in nearly half the world’s countries, and takes up more than half the discretionary budget that Congress allocates each year. Every decade or two, there is a new rationale for all this, with a new threat.
In recent decades, the threats have shifted from Russia (the first time), to terrorists in the Middle East, to “rogue states” like North Korea and Iran, and most recently to economic and ideological rivals like China and Russia. Each of these overhyped threats has generated a military response out of all proportion to what might reasonably be deemed necessary, both because the U.S. military already has more capacity than it needs to rebuff any military threat, and because in most of these cases, the threat can’t be addressed through military means anyway.
Through the 1980s, the U.S. and Russia engaged in an arms race that led to the two countries possessing enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other, and the planet, many times over. The primary justification on the U.S. side was an ideological fear of communism — a problem (if you can call it that) without a military solution. To this day, no other country comes even close to the number of nuclear weapons these two nations still hold, and the national security state continues to demand more resources for nuclear weapons. The same fear of communism was used to justify the U.S. war in Vietnam.
The next big threat was terrorism. Twenty years after the “war on terror” began, the U.S. continues to fight aimlessly and at great cost in lives and riches. According to the Brown University Costs of War project, more than 800,000 people have died, 37 million people have been displaced, and the U.S. has spent $6.4 trillion on the war on terror to date. The continuing violence in the region has spread and mutated beyond what anyone imagined in 2001. The ongoing U.S. war against terror is a case of an overblown threat without a military solution. And yet many national security voices insist that the U.S. military must not abandon the cause.
Today, the new oversold threats come from China and Russia. Recent national security strategy has set “great power competition” as the newest raison d’être for U.S. military hegemony, and signs point to the Biden administration largely continuing on this track, at great peril to crucial diplomatic efforts on climate. However, despite some disturbingly hawkish signs from the new administration, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has acknowledged that the primary U.S. response to China must be domestic “economic renewal” — in other words, not primarily a beefed-up military, but rather, a rejuvenation of U.S. education and jobs. It’s not that there aren’t real problems associated with these countries. It’s just that those problems have little to do with the supposed threats to the U.S., and they certainly have no military solutions.
Fear the Neighbors and Feed the Security State
The national security state reaches inside the United States, too, with its own mythology to justify its continued growth. The national security state justifies its existence by overhyping the threat from crimes ranging from drug selling and possession to the act of crossing the border without the right papers.
Even before the Trump administration, we witnessed the deportation of millions of people, falsely justified by fictions about “crime.” Today, overhyped fears about rising crime rates and scaremongering around demands to defund the police are accompanied by new calls for increased securitization. The supposed “threats” that justify the growth of the security state inside the U.S. are mostly our own neighbors.
If You Can’t Ignore It, Militarize It
The national security state inflates threats that justify its existence, but it also downplays or co-opts threats that in a different world would be the sole province of government agencies for energy, the environment, health care and so on. Instead of solving our problems, the national security state co-opts them for more resources and power.
The most obvious and immediate threat, the COVID-19 pandemic, has now killed more people in the United States than every war except the Civil War — as many as 165 9/11s in a row. It is abundantly clear that the U.S. did not adequately prepare for a pandemic. While a pandemic plan developed by the national security apparatus during the Obama administration was famously thrown out by the last president, it also raised the question of whether the national security apparatus is where pandemic plans should come from in the first place.
Likewise, the National Guard has deployed for everything from the pandemic to an unprecedented storm in Texas (and of course, the siege in Washington, D.C.). The constant reliance on the National Guard reflects the extent to which the national security state is the only arm of government that is resourced well enough to attempt to tackle big problems. In a vicious cycle, this fact continues to draw even more resources into the national security state — resources which are often misused. In a twist that seems all too cruel, the CIA co-opting of a vaccination program in Pakistan may now contribute to vaccine hesitation around COVID-19.
With white supremacist extremism now harder to deny, the national security state is moving from an attitude of avoidance to securitizing the response there, too. The military and law enforcement have chosen to excuse blatant white supremacy in their own ranks: In fact, throughout history, white supremacy has driven and shaped the growth of police departments in the U.S. and around the world. But here too, the national security state adopts the problem by calling for new domestic terrorism laws and more enforcement — another expansion of the national security state. Of course, it’s all too easy to imagine enhanced domestic terrorism laws enacted ostensibly to fight white supremacy being used against Black and Brown people, racial justice activists, environmental justice activists, and others.
Following the same pattern, the national security state alternately ignores, contributes to, and seeks to co-opt climate change. In military circles, climate change has long been recognized primarily as a “threat multiplier” — a factor that could increase conflict (and therefore opportunities for war) — and as a threat to military infrastructure like sea-level naval bases. The Pentagon has begun to recognize the problem with plans to “green” the military by reducing its own emissions, chasing an opportunity to burnish its own image in the process.
The Search for True Security
Living under COVID for the past year has driven home the reality that militarization doesn’t buy security. The new administration and Congress have an opportunity to redefine security, so that it encompasses justice, health, housing, food, education, civil rights and more. That’s a necessary step, but it’s not enough.
The next step has to be demilitarizing security by downsizing the massive security state. Movements like the Poor People’s Campaign, Defund Hate, Black Lives Matter, Dissenters, and People Over Pentagon have made real inroads at building power and accomplishing both, but the road ahead is long. The solution is to keep building power until these movements and others are strong enough to push back.
The crowd was the 
The police drove several more vans into the protest. But the crowd would not be moved from their siege. Eventually, several police vehicles were set alight. One car was emblazoned with the words: ‘Defund the police’.
(@copwatcher) 
