Police, prison and abolition

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 24, 2021 2:02 pm

Floyd case verdict unlikely to induce US police reform
By Harvey Dzodin | China Daily | Updated: 2021-04-24 06:53

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LI MIN/CHINA DAILY

The United States, in general, and Minneapolis, in particular, held its collective breath earlier this week-while the jury in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin deliberated-fearing that an acquittal would again set US cities alight because "justice has been denied" many times in the country before.

The jury, however, found Chauvin guilty on all three charges in the murder of George Floyd: second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, but since racism is rampant and police brutality common in the US, and white supremacists are a persistent and lethal threat to the country, there's only a sliver of hope for some genuine, lasting reform.

The George Floyd case is well known. Floyd drew police attention for allegedly passing a fake $20 bill in a shop, and Chauvin, one of the responding police officers, snuffed the life out of Floyd by pressing his knee on the victim's neck and cutting off his oxygen supply in front of a small group of witnesses.

If not for a 17-year-old witness who filmed Floyd's death on her iPhone, the police would likely have presented the facts differently, as they have done in so many cases involving African Americans and other people of color, because the facts had already been distorted in the police report: "He (Floyd) was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers.

Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later."

The sad reality is that in the US only 1 percent of the killings by police from 2013 to 2019 have resulted in criminal charges. Beyond racism and white supremacy, there are several specific reasons for this. It's common knowledge that there is a police blue wall of silence; police won't blow the whistle on fellow officers, no matter how depraved or outrageous their actions are.

Perhaps it's no different from the mafia's vow of silence called omertá.
Also, prosecutors and police officers are too friendly with each other and almost invariably cover for each other rather than serving the people. Equally importantly, police unions are politically very powerful vis-à-vis their public officials and they protect their members, whether they are right or wrong.

How did we, as a country that prides itself on so-called American exceptionalism and claims to be the champion of human rights, reach this sorry state of affairs? The fact is, we have been there for a long time as "we" were and are narrowly defined as white men.

White men as slave-owners. White men as the face of the racial segregation system called "Jim Crow" that began at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. White men as macho-heroes protecting society from "inferior" Africans, "savage" indigenous people and an invading "yellow peril". These white men have been the backbone of American conservative beliefs since before the birth of the nation and have had a political renaissance.

American conservatives believe the government is part of the US' problem, not its solution. As former US president Ronald Reagan said in 1986, the scariest nine words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

American conservatives are responsible for the deaths caused by the estimated 400 million privately owned guns in the US and near daily mass shootings. They've succeeded in giving Americans an almost unrestricted right to bear arms by overturning a two-century-old precedent that confined guns to trained hunters and state militias.

And unlike in China, where survey after survey shows strong continued support for governments at all levels, in the US many "patriots", including those who stormed the Capitol in January, fear that governments at all levels in the US have taken away their rights in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

It's hardly any wonder that, factoring in the endemic racism in the US, police officers reflexively shoot first, and ask questions only after it's too late.

Some hope that the longtime orgy of deaths caused by police will move the needle on police reform. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act could make a difference, but not to the extent required. Rather than de-funding the police force, as activists called for last year after Floyd's death, it's aimed at reforming the police by actually increasing spending and creating national standards.

It's a comprehensive and thoughtful bill that includes a long list of well-funded measures such as money for more and better police training and prohibiting strangleholds such as that killed Floyd.

But despite being passed in the House of Representatives-albeit with no Republican support-it's unlikely to survive in the Senate, except, perhaps in a watered-down form. Due to this hopeless division in the US Congress, President Joe Biden cannot even pass meaningful gun-control legislation even if he wants to. The best he can do through an Executive Order is to put a plaster over a gaping wound.

So despite the Chauvin verdict, there's sadness, as morning in America has been replaced by mourning in America.

The author is a senior fellow at the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization. The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20210 ... ba00b.html

Nice piece but I must take issue with " a two-century-old precedent that confined guns to trained hunters and state militias." No such thing except in the minds of delusional urban liberals. One look at song in the 19th and 20th centuries, so-called 'Americana', blue grass, blues, should make that clear. Plenty shooting going on there, while crimes of passion are categorically different than systemic oppression the gun smoke remains. Conservative servants of the ruling class have taken up the 'Second Amendment' cause, largely because of partisan politics, firearms are as 'American' as apple pie, a heritage of colonial genocide and slavery reinforced by the philosophy of rampant individualism, a cornerstone ruling idea of the ruling class. Massive cash support from gun sellers certainly sweetens the pot.

Gun control will never work, firstly because this country is so awash in guns that they will always be available to those so motivated, even if a total prohibition were enacted. Limiting magazine capacity is a good idea but the last attempt at that was a farce, within six months of enactment sufficient work-arounds were established('grandfathering' was massively abused, for example) and more money was made. In any case totally disarming the working class is a very bad idea, I think Lenin would agree. The enemies of our enemies are not our friends. The structure of our society is the decisive factor.
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:13 pm

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The State’s Conviction of Chauvin Upholds the System’s ‘Innocence’
By Marjaan Sirdar, Contributor April 25, 2021

Minneapolis, MN – In just ten hours, the jury in the Derek Chauvin murder trial delivered guilty verdicts on all three counts for the killing of George Floyd. In the context of the state’s arguments, the verdict serves to show that Chauvin’s actions were an outlier, implying that the larger system of policing is not guilty.

George Floyd Square Reacts to Verdict
After the verdict was announced, hundreds gathered at George Floyd Square (GFS), the site at 38th St. and Chicago Avenue where Floyd was murdered by Chauvin last May. It quickly became a site of jubilee.



Kai Anderson, an activist and graduate student at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, warned fellow activists to stay centered and not to “get too overjoyed.”
“This is a win. And I think what happened should’ve happened. But it was a year of hell. And that’s BS that we had to go through all of this just to get a guilty verdict.”

– Kai Anderson, Minneapolis activist
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Kai Anderson at George Floyd Square / Photo by Marjaan Sirdar

Angela Harrelson, George Floyd’s aunt, spoke to throngs of people at GFS in the early evening and thanked the protesters and community members who participated in the uprising and who maintained the Square. She also shared the sentiments of Anderson:
“Systemic racism is real, it has been penetrated through all these systems: judicial system, employment system, housing system, the education system . . . today was validation.“

– Angela Harrelson, George Floyd’s Aunt
When speaking in front of many press outlets, Harrelson said that if it had not been for Darnella Frazier recording the incident, Minneapolis Police (MPD) would have covered up the murder of her cousin. Harrelson believes there wouldn’t have been a guilty verdict or a trial at all without the viral video.

Final Pitch
The state closed its case on Monday arguing that “our expectation is that the police are gonna help, and with reason, with good reason because policing is a most noble profession.” Steve Schleicher, one of the prosecuting attorneys, also highlighted that Derek Chauvin “knew better, he just didn’t do better” and that what he did “was not policing.”

Schleicher reflected on MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo’s testimony saying he does not condone Chauvin’s killing of Floyd, and that MPD training does not justify it.

“This was not an accident… He did what he did on purpose, and it killed George Floyd,” Schleicher said. The state told the jury and to the world that in their view, Chauvin betrayed his badge. “This prosecution is not anti-police,” Schleicher said, but “pro-police”.

In other words, it was the Chauvin defense that was putting ‘the system’ on trial.

A guilty verdict in the eyes of the state is seen as a loss for the movement for people like Anderson who believe policing itself is responsible for Floyd’s death, and the death of many others. A not guilty verdict would have suggested that the system itself is the problem and that Chauvin was well within his rights to take the action that led to Floyd’s death.

In response to the idea that the public respects the police, Minneapolis City Councilmember Jeremiah Ellison, son of the lead prosecutor in the trial, MN Attorney General Keith Ellison, told Unicorn Riot that it’s about fear more than it is respect for the badge.

Ample Evidence of Systematic Racism
During jury selection the world heard from everyday Black people, with some disclosing their own horrific experiences with Minneapolis police. Prospective juror #76, a Black man, was disqualified from serving for potential bias against police. He was disqualified because of a story he shared about a time after a Black man was killed by cops, MPD drove through the neighborhood playing “Another One Bites the Dust.”

Contradicting the state’s argument that Chauvin was an aberration, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliot told Wolf Blitzer live on CNN that he has constantly been racially profiled by Minnesota law enforcement. He listed several experiences including a time when he was a kid playing at a park. He and another Black friend were the only two amongst a multi-racial group of kids that were put into the back of a squad car to be identified for a crime they didn’t commit.

Elliot said he has been profiled by his own police force while driving. “It’s not safe to drive in Minnesota if you’re Black. That is a terror that no American should face.”

Other than having Black leadership, little has changed in policing practices. Reform efforts have repeatedly failed since the ACLU published a scathing report in 2014 documenting systematic police racism in Minneapolis.

[For more evidence on systemic racism in Minneapolis, see Unicorn Riot’s ongoing investigative series, 21st Century Jim Crow in the North Star City, exposing the public-private partnership between Target Corp. and local government, creating Jim Crow-like conditions for Black youth experiencing homelessness in downtown Minneapolis.]
Corporate Media
Mel Reeves, activist and community editor with the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, said in a recent interview with the People Power Podcast, “the system is on trial.”

However, in the course of the three-week Chauvin murder trial, mainstream media outlets failed to report what activists like Reeves saw clearly: that a guilty verdict proves “the system” works.

Tom Lyden from Fox 9 News, a Minneapolis affiliate of the right-wing Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, was at GFS after the verdict was announced. Lyden has long been criticized by Black community members for being a mouthpiece for the city and characterizing protesters as “violent”. He is notorious for following people into the men’s room for interviews, but was uncomfortable being publicly confronted for his pro-police stances by the People Power Podcast.

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Fox 9’s Tom Lyden at George Floyd Square – Image from People Power Podcast

Not long before the verdict was announced on Tuesday, CNN interviewed activist and former Minneapolis NAACP president, Leslie Redmond, live on the air. When Redmond referred to Derek Chauvin as a serial murderer, citing facts about his record including his involvement in four additional police killings prior to killing Floyd, CNN ended the interview with a disclaimer that they have not fact-checked Chauvin’s background.

CNN, owned by multinational telecom giant AT&T, had most of a year to look into the background of Chauvin and his known involvement in previous killings.

Despite CNN repeating the state’s argument that Chauvin was an outlier, and their sweeping failure to properly contextualize the trial, CNN anchors who are non-white have been sharing their experiences with racism.

In the wake of new unrest following the police killing of Daunte Wright, CNN reporter, Adrienne Broadus, was asked about her personal feelings of covering her hometown during the Chauvin trial, in which she replied: “It seems like Minneapolis is a case study to root out some deep rooted issues of racism.”

CNN host, Don Lemon, has been talking about the systematic racism within policing on his nightly program. Following the verdict, Lemon invited Senator Amy Klobuchar onto his show to “discuss racism.” Klobuchar previously suppressed video evidence that could have exonerated Myon Burrell, who was wrongfully convicted as a teenager, but charged as an adult, for a murder when Klobuchar was the Hennepin County district attorney.

Justice Delivered?
South Minneapolis tenant rights activist, Coriner Boler, although pleased to see a guilty verdict, believes justice for Black people is about gaining access to power:
“The outcome in the trial was not justice. The trial was designed to protect the city so it doesn’t burn again. Justice is about jobs as much as it is about police accountability, and the city has failed time and again at both.”
Alternatively, some politicians reacted in a more festive light. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted on Tuesday: “Today’s verdict is a major step on the path towards justice & accountability.”

Congresswoman Cori Bush from St. Louis also took to Twitter: “Our hope is that this verdict will be a small step towards accountability. But that’s just about accountability, not justice. For us, justice would be George Floyd alive today.”

Some activists in Minneapolis believe this verdict is indeed the beginning of a tide of accountability.


Councilmember, Jeremiah Ellison, said in order to create true public safety, Minneapolis has to change its thinking as a city and how power responds to the community: “I think for most of us, the greatest tragedy that happened last summer was the murder of George Floyd. I think for other folks in leadership, the greatest tragedy that happened was the third precinct burned down.”
“Folks in the governor’s office, folks in the mayor’s office, think the community is the problem. They think it’s just a bunch of rabid activists with no impulse control.”

– Jeremiah Ellison, Minneapolis city councilmember
Time will tell if the people of Minneapolis let the leaders who believe “the community is the problem” and those who attempted to blame George Floyd’s murder on “medical distress” off the hook.

The mayor and the entire Minneapolis city council are up for re-election this year.

Cover image by Niko Georgiades from the night of the Chauvin verdict – ‘Say his name. George Floyd.‘

About the author: Marjaan Sirdar is a freelance writer in South Minneapolis’ Bryant neighborhood, where George Floyd was killed by the MPD. He is the host of the People Power Podcast.

https://unicornriot.ninja/2021/the-stat ... innocence/
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:11 pm

What Police Impunity Looks Like
Eric Umansky 21 Apr 2021

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What Police Impunity Looks Like
They came into his own home and took his life for no reason.

“As officers converged on the scene where Trawick lay lifeless, two of them told a sergeant that ‘nobody’ had been hurt. ‘Just a perp.’

We already know the case of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd is an anomaly. Officers who kill civilians are rarely prosecuted, let alone convicted — many aren’t even disciplined by their departments.

To understand how police impunity works, it’s worth looking at another case, that of Kawaski Trawick.

Two years ago, Trawick was alone in his apartment in the Bronx when two New York City Police Department officers arrived in response to 911 calls about Trawick walking through the building with a serrated bread knife and a stick. Trawick, who had a history of mental health and drug issues, had locked himself out of his apartment but had gotten back in after firefighters pried open the door. When the police officers arrived minutes later, they pushed the door ajar and found Trawick, a personal trainer and dancer, standing near his stove, holding the knife and stick.

“Why are you in my home?” Trawick asked. Less than two minutes later, he lay dying on the floor. A few months ago, I examined what happened in those 112 seconds . Video from a body-worn camera shows one of the officers — Black and more experienced — repeatedly trying to stop his white, less experienced partner from using force.

“We ain’t gonna tase him,” Officer Herbert Davis told Officer Brendan Thompson, as Trawick stood about seven feet from them. Thompson fired his Taser anyway, which (as can happen ) enraged Trawick, who ran toward the officers. Davis again tried to stop his partner, this time from shooting his gun. He briefly pushed Thompson’s gun down, saying, “No, no — don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t.”

“One of the officers repeatedly tried to stop his less experienced partner from using force.”

Thompson fired three times, paused for a moment, and then fired a final shot. Trawick died almost instantly. You can see and hear it all for yourself, in a video we made using surveillance and body-worn camera footage. (Davis and Thompson both declined requests for comment.)

Last Wednesday marked two years since the shooting, so I checked in with the NYPD about it. The department had said late last year that it had finally finished its internal investigation and that the police commissioner — who has complete discretion over discipline , as many chiefs around the country do — would soon be deciding what to do.

Last week, the NYPD told me that Commissioner Dermot Shea had indeed ruled on the case. The officers were completely cleared. “There was no discipline as no wrongdoing was found,” the department said.

Here is the NYPD’s full statement . It noted that there was also a “tactical review” to determine “what, if anything, could have been done differently.”

Experts I spoke with pointed to a litany of poor decisions and tactics by the officers.

The officers could have tried to make a connection with Trawick, as the NYPD trains its officers to do , and at least answered his repeated questions about why they were there. They could have waited for help and “just closed the door,” as one former NYPD detective told me, since department policy is to “isolate and contain ” people in crisis. They could have decided to not use force, as other officers did when they had encountered Trawick in a similar situation weeks before.

“The officers were completely cleared.”

Thompson could have warned Trawick before firing his Taser, as the NYPD encourages officers to do so. After he used his Taser, Thompson could have kept it in his hand, rather than putting it on the ground and leaving himself with only his gun.

Yet as perplexing as the NYPD’s conclusion may seem, it is also the logical culmination of a series of decisions that have again and again narrowed the avenues for accountability.

The rare occasions in which officers have faced even the possibility of significant punishment have usually come after the public has seen what happened, for example, after a bystander filmed Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck. Trawick’s killing happened out of the public eye. And the NYPD worked to keep it that way.

For a year and a half, it refused to release body-worn camera footage, arguing in response to a public records request and lawsuit that doing so would “interfere ” with the department’s internal investigation and would be an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy .”

But the NYPD did offer its perspective about what happened. “It appears to be justified ,” one of the NYPD’s top officials told reporters the day after the shooting.

The police’s perspective shaped the early coverage. Citing “law enforcement sources,” the New York Post reported that a “musclebound man” who was “nicknamed ‘Chaos’” had been shot “when he charged at cops twice with a stick and a knife.” (Trawick was about 5 feet, 5 inches tall, and his family told me they’ve never heard that nickname. The video shows he ran at the officers once, after he was hit by a Taser.)

The NYPD eventually decided to release footage, after the Bronx District Attorney’s Office published it as part of a report last November that laid out its decision not to pursue criminal charges against the officers. The DA’s decision, too, was no surprise: Local prosecutors, who work closely with the police, are particularly hesitant to indict officers .

The DA’s report had troubling revelations buried inside it. While the report’s highlighted timeline didn’t mention it, the report revealed more than two dozen pages in that Davis had tried to stop his partner from shooting Trawick. It also disclosed that other officers had previously decided there was no need to use force when they answered remarkably similar calls involving Trawick. On page 36, the report cited those interactions as “examples of disparate outcomes that deserve mention.”

The DA’s report did not contain the full, unedited body-worn camera footage, and the NYPD initially continued to fight a lawsuit demanding it.

“Local prosecutors are particularly hesitant to indict officers.”

The day before a December hearing in the case, the NYPD sent the footage to the complainants, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, because, after 20 months, the department’s internal review was complete. That footage, which the law firm shared with me, showed that as officers converged on the scene where Trawick lay lifeless, two of them told a sergeant that “nobody” had been hurt. “Just a perp.”

Shortly after ProPublica published a story about that, a lawyer working on the case for New York Lawyers for the Public Interest got a phone call from the city agency that investigates police misconduct against civilians. An investigator at the Civilian Complaint Review Board had a favor to ask: Could the lawyer please share the newly released footage with him? The investigator explained that the NYPD wouldn’t provide footage to the CCRB.

“I was shocked to get that call,” said the lawyer, Benjamin Reed, of Milbank LLP. “It’s disturbing that they had to come to us, after we had to fight with the NYPD for a year to get it. It’s just backwards. It’s obvious that they can’t properly oversee the NYPD if they can’t get footage.”

That is part of a long pattern of the NYPD obstructing the work of the overmatched agencies that are supposed to oversee it. In shootings and other serious incidents such as the Trawick case, the NYPD routinely refuses to give the CCRB footage and other records until the department’s internal investigation is over, which can take a year or more.

The delays can render the civilian board’s investigations effectively moot. The CCRB told me that its investigation into Trawick’s killing is still open, and that it has now received footage from the NYPD. But the police commissioner, who gets final say on punishment, has already decided there was no wrongdoing.

“The NYPD routinely refuses to give the Civilian Complaint Review Board footage and other records until the department’s internal investigation is over, which can take a year or more.”

When I reported on the Trawick case last fall, one of the people I spoke with was Jonathan Smith, who worked on civil rights litigation at the Justice Department during the Obama administration and led the agency’s most significant investigations into police abuse. “This case is a lesson in how you don’t do one of these encounters,” he said, after reviewing the footage. “They should teach it in the academy.”

I reached back out to Smith to share the NYPD’s conclusion that there was no wrongdoing. “For them to find nothing wrong there,” he said, “it’s just stunning.”

Smith said it reminded him of another young man’s death he recently investigated for the city of Aurora, Colorado. Twenty-three-year-old Elijah McClain died after police officers twice put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine. The officers had stopped him after a 911 caller said McClain, who was walking down the street, “looked sketchy.”

Like Trawick, McClain wasn’t doing anything criminal. As in the Trawick case, local prosecutors decided not to indict the officers. And as in the Trawick case, an internal police investigation cleared the officers. (The independent review that Smith led concluded that the investigation had been “cursory and summary at best .”)

It’s all part of a pattern, Smith said: “Every department I’ve seen where there’s been a pattern of misconduct, you’ve also had a broken accountability system.”

There was one other call I made after learning of the NYPD’s decision. It was to Kawaski Trawick’s mother, Ellen Trawick. She had not heard about the department’s ruling.

“I just don’t understand it,” she said. “He hadn’t committed a crime. He hadn’t harmed anyone. They came into his own home and took his life for no reason. For them not to see that’s wrong, that’s just heartbreaking.”

Trawick and her family have filed a lawsuit against the city, the NYPD and the officers.

But a suit can only do so much. If there’s a settlement or a judgment, it’s likely the city and its taxpayers , not the officers or the NYPD, that will pay.

In response to the family’s action, city lawyers have placed the blame for Kawaski Trawick’s death squarely on Kawaski Trawick. As they put it in a filing last fall: “Plaintiff(s)’ culpable conduct caused or contributed, in whole or in part, to his/her/their injuries and or damages.”

I asked Ellen Trawick what outcome she is hoping for in the suit. “I want the officers held accountable for their actions,” she said. “They took Kawaski’s life. But from what you’re saying there’s nothing going to be done about it.”

Eric Umansky is a deputy managing editor for ProPublica.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/what- ... nity-looks

Sovereign immunity is police impunity.
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 29, 2021 1:10 pm

Freedom Rider: No Justice Without a Movement
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 29 Apr 2021

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Freedom Rider: No Justice Without a Movement
The changes needed are fundamental to a country which puts anti-black racism at the center of politics, law and economics.

“There is little in the way of justice, and focusing solely on police snuff films is a poor substitute for meaningful analysis.”

The depth of public connection with George Floyd was clear on the day the verdict of his police killer was announced. The moment was awaited with trepidation and the guilty verdict was met with enthusiasm and in some cases outright joy. But at the same time that the world learned the perpetrator’s fate, a 16-year old named Ma’Khia Bryant was also killed by the police.

Police in the United States kill more than 1,000 people every year, an average of three every day. Had young Ms. Bryant been killed on any other date, it is probable that no one outside of her immediate circle would know her name either.

But demands for justice must be expanded beyond the latest police lynching that the media may choose to expose. Black people rank high on the list of every negative measure, such as homelessness or incarceration, and low on that which is positive, such as good health and living wage incomes. There is little in the way of justice, and focusing solely on police snuff films is a poor substitute for meaningful analysis.

“Had young Ms. Bryant been killed on any other date, it is probable that no one outside of her immediate circle would know her name.”

The focus on modern day lynch law at the expense of other issues not only hasn’t ended this scourge but it has given scoundrels an entree to practice their con games against Black people. After Floyd was murdered every hustler from Al Sharpton to Nancy Pelosi jumped on the bandwagon to voice fake outrage. Sharpton gives cover to the establishment and protects them like an old school gangster while pretending to fight for the people. As he famously told Joe Biden in a leaked video, “I will never embarrass you.”

Pelosi and Democratic politicians made a mockery of a serious issue with their kente cloth, taking a knee stunt. One would think she couldn’t do any worse but she did. On the day of the verdict she opined that Floyd, “Sacrificed himself for justice.” Pelosi gets away with these insults because Black politics consists of the bottom feeding misleaders who owe their positions to her largesse.

The issues are larger than most of us are willing to admit. The changes needed are fundamental to a country which puts anti-black racism at the center of politics, law and economics. The system demands that Black people be locked up, displaced, red lined, and prevented from having full citizenship rights. Police killings are just one manifestation of a fundamentally unjust nation.

“After Floyd was murdered every hustler from Al Sharpton to Nancy Pelosi jumped on the bandwagon to voice fake outrage.”

No one is complaining about the verdict aside from Floyd’s killer and other hard core racists. But that doesn’t mean that everyone’s interests are the same. The sigh of relief also belongs to people and institutions who are not our friends. It wasn’t just Pelosi and Congress who took a knee of phony concern, so did corporate CEOs and even police in some instances. The movement was a rare moment of consensus but everyone who took part didn’t do so for the same reason. While some genuinely sought redress, others wanted good public relations and cynical opportunities to raise a public profile. If the CEO of Chase bank takes a knee, the revolutionary moment has been lost. Aunt Jemima disappearing from the pancake box and the invention of terms like BIPOC are not victories. They are proof of failure.

If we must talk about former cop Derek Chauvin we must be honest. After the murder was filmed and made public the police in Minneapolis acted as they always do. Chauvin and the other police were fired and they hoped the people would be mollified. But they weren’t arrested until someone set fire to a police precinct. Suddenly nonchalance turned to urgency and the killer and his accomplices were arrested and charged.

“If the CEO of Chase bank takes a knee, the revolutionary moment has been lost.’

That moment was the beginning of a just legal outcome. It wasn’t just protest, but protest outside of the bounds that the politicians and CEOS found acceptable. Chauvin was shoved under the bus, lest the burgeoning movement be allowed to take hold and turn into something that couldn’t be controlled.

It is fine to credit prosecutors with the way they handled their case, but thanks must also go to the person or persons who set the police station alight. They are probably more responsible than anyone else for the legal outcome. What little justice we get always comes when someone decides to push the envelope and threaten the system. If we are going to talk about justice it must be with some understanding and not wishful thinking. The verdict was the people’s verdict and that must not be forgotten.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/freed ... t-movement

Spot on. The pawn was sacrificed for the greater game and must be considered a 'one off' event until substantially supported by further action, which to my mind would include a bunch of cops sent to the slammer. But in the meantime cops will have noticed that they are expendable, something they never worried about, though I question as to whether that will result in more chastened behavior from those thugs. Indeed, some will double down in defiance, as may have been the case in this spate of murders occurring around the time of the verdict.
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:25 pm

Reporting Demonstrates Multiple Links Between White Supremacists and Police
April 14, 2021

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Reporting Demonstrates Multiple Links Between White Supremacists and Police

Sworn police officers take an oath to protect and serve. Recent independent news reports have drawn attention to the growing number of white supremacists and white nationalists infiltrating local law enforcement agencies, calling into question police officers’ commitment and ability to uphold this oath when encountering people and communities of color.

In August 2020, Sam Levitin, writing for the Guardian, reported on findings from an in-depth study titled “Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement,” which was conducted by Michael German, a 16-year veteran of law enforcement and a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program. Writing in The Intercept that same month, Alice Speri reported on a heavily redacted 2006 FBI threat assessment that had just recently been released to the public in unredacted form by Representative Jamie Raskin ahead of his September 29, 2020, House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on the subject. The Intercept’s reporting highlighted the fact that the FBI “had major concerns about the infiltration of police departments for years but failed to warn the public.” And Simon Purdue, reporting for Open Democracy in August of 2020, cited a 2019 Reveal News investigation which uncovered “hundreds of active duty and retired law enforcement officers” that are currently members of online forums dedicated to Islamophobia, Neo-Confederate ideology, and Neo-Nazism.

Giving historical context to this story, The Intercept’s reporting outlines the FBI’s prior knowledge of local law enforcement agencies infiltrated by white supremacists. Reporting from the Guardian and Open Democracy speaks to the immediacy of the problem in light of recent events, such as the killing of George Floyd and subsequent marches and protests against police brutality. The Intercept’s article, zeroing in on the FBI’s prior knowledge of the problem and their refusal to act, cites September’s House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing and Rep. Raskin’s blunt assertion that “the FBI’s continuing refusal to acknowledge and combat this threat, just like its refusal to appear today, constitutes a serious dereliction of duty.”

The Guardian article looks deeper into more recent events such as those in Kenosha, WI, reporting that activists there say local police have responded “aggressively and violently to Black Lives Matter demonstrators while doing very little to stop armed white vigilantes.” Open Democracy’s reporting and analysis of a Reveal News investigation links local law enforcement officers around the country to the far-right, neo-fascist organizations the Proud Boys, noting that “in May 2020, Chicago Police Department officer Robert Bakker was found to have been an active member of a Proud Boy telegram channel…where he actively coordinated Proud Boy meet-ups and bragged about his connections in the police department and the government.”

Although white supremacists infiltrating law enforcement is a growing concern that the public has a right and need to know about—and one that the FBI had previously recognized as such—corporate news media have largely ignored this story. This is especially alarming in light of widespread protests, demonstrations, and calls for social and racial justice that took place over the summer of 2020. The PBS News Hour ran a story back in 2016, ten years after the FBI’s first redacted report came out, as a follow-up story that looked into whether anything had changed. More recently, a local Fox affiliate—Fox News 23 from Tulsa, OK—reported briefly this past September on the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on white supremacists’ ties to local police departments, while a Vox article from July touched briefly on systemic racism but focused more broadly on police violence and the policing ideology known as “the thin blue line.” Aside from these three stories, two recent and one four-years old, it was hard to find any further corporate news coverage on the topic.

After a turbulent summer when institutional and structural racism in America has been front and center—with white supremacy among law enforcement’s rank and file a frightening manifestation of that racism—corporate news media have grossly under-reported a story that is not only relevant and timely, but also fact-based as demonstrated in the investigative journalism conducted by independent outlets like the Guardian, The Intercept, and Open Democracy.

Sources:

Sam Levin, “White Supremacists and Militias Have Infiltrated Police Across US, Report Says,” The Guardian, August 27, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... ice-report.

Simon Purdue, “The Other Epidemic: White Supremacists in Law Enforcement, Open Democracy, August 6, 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/counte ... forcement/.

Alice Speri, “Unredacted FBI Document Sheds New Light on White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement,” The Intercept, September 29, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/pol ... ation-fbi/.

Student Researcher: Jay Crabb (Diablo Valley College)

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey Huff (Diablo Valley College)

https://www.projectcensored.org/reporti ... nd-police/

Ya think?

This has been going on for a while, I think. Since the US Civil War, anyways. Leave it to a bunch of academics to 'discover' this 'shocking trend'...

Fifteen years ago, five years after I had moved to this most rural part of the county, a Klan rally, cross burning and all, came to my attention not a mile from our home as the crow flies. Flabbergasted, we investigated and found a pudgy dude in sateen robes standing at the entrance to the property. Good grief. There were also a couple of county sheriff's deputies in attendance, keeping an eye on things, they explained. Uh-huh. Security is more likely.

(Happily there was only one other attempt at such a vile gathering and it fizzled out for some reason before I could get there with my camera. And it is notable that this asshole Grand Dragon had to draw from four states to put mebbe 2 dozen cars in his lot.)
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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Sat May 22, 2021 1:36 pm

Supreme Court refuses to free prisoners convicted by Jim Crow-style juries
Chris BanksMay 19, 2021

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Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court finally banned the Jim Crow practice of allowing non-unanimous juries to convict a defendant of a crime — the Ramos v. Louisiana decision. On Monday, however, the same Supreme Court refused to make its recent ban retroactive when ruling in a case known as Edward v. Vannoy. This allows the mountain of jury verdicts produced under these Jim Crow laws to stand.

Thousands of inmates in Louisiana and Oregon – the two states that permitted this practice – who were found guilty by divided juries and who had exhausted their appeals will ridiculously not have their cases reopened.

Monday’s decision came in the case of Thedrick Edwards, a Black man serving life in Louisiana after being convicted by a split jury in 2007. During jury selection the prosecution used 10 of their 11 peremptory strikes to exclude Black jurors, leaving the jury with one Black member. The verdict on some counts was 10-2 and 10-1 on others, with the Black juror voting to acquit on all charges. In 48 states this would have resulted in a non-conviction. But in Louisiana, where non-unanimous convictions were allowed until the state’s constitution was amended in 2018, Edwards was imprisoned for life.

In Louisiana, the incarceration capitol of the United States, even though Black people make up one-third of the state’s population, they constitute two-thirds of state prisoners. A 2018 study by Louisiana’s largest daily, The Advocate, found that of the cases they researched 43 percent of Black defendants were convicted by non-unanimous verdicts.

Louisiana’s non-unanimous (or split jury) law was part of a slew of Jim Crow measures enacted following Reconstruction, when a white supremacist counterrevolution was on the march.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as one of the three Reconstruction amendments, forced states to include Black people in juries. Faced with this Constitutional requirement, Louisiana found a workaround: the non-unanimous verdict. If the state could no longer outright ban Black jurors, it would make sure the number of Black jurors would be few, and that they could be outvoted by white majorities on the jury.

Thus, in 1880, three years after the withdrawal of federal troops, Louisiana’s legislature changed its unanimous verdict standard to a non-unanimous one, making it possible to convict defendants 9-3 (later 10-2). It was a way to prevent Black people from influencing verdicts. The result was more convictions, especially of freed Black people, which fed a growing convict leasing system of forced labor.

All of this was ratified by the state’s 1898 constitutional convention, famous for disenfranchising Black voters.

Louisiana became one of two states in the Jim Crow era to allow non-unanimous decisions in criminal cases. The other was Oregon.

Once home to the largest KKK organization west of the Mississippi River, Oregon passed a constitutional amendment in 1934 allowing non-unanimous verdicts of 10-2. This rule was devised to systematically exclude minority Black, Jewish and Asian residents, as well as southern and eastern European immigrants, from influencing verdicts.

A 1972 Supreme Court decision upheld the laws in both states (Apodaca v. Oregon). That ruling was finally discarded with the Supreme Court’s 2020 Ramos decision.

For years, Thedrick Edwards had been challenging his conviction for the same reasons as Evangelisto Ramos, arguing that non-unanimous jury laws were Jim Crow laws that allowed for racial discrimination and violation of due process.

After the Ramos ruling, Edwards changed his petition to the Supreme Court, asking that in order to address the fairness and accuracy of previous non-unanimous convictions, the Ramos decision be applied retroactively, allowing old convictions to be vacated and settled cases re-tried.

However, in a 6-3 ruling, the ultra-right-wing Supreme Court claimed that the elimination of Jim Crow jury laws did not constitute a “watershed,” the threshold that changes in criminal procedure have to meet to be applied retroactively. In other words, six out of nine justices, all handpicked by millionaires in the Senate, were able to deprive thousands of people convicted under Jim Crow jury laws the right to have their cases retried because they did not consider it a “watershed.”

The Supreme Court decision leaves open the option for state lawmakers and district attorneys to take action on their own. The courts and other elements of the criminal “justice” system are not immune from mass political pressure. The movement against racist mass incarceration will fight on and can still win justice for victims of non-unanimous jury verdicts.

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Mon May 24, 2021 2:06 pm

The Police “Just Launched a War”
J. Lester Feder 19 May 2021

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The Police “Just Launched a War”

Do some, most or all US police departments have a pattern and practice of racial bias that makes them fundamentally unable to regulate themselves?

“It felt like the Columbus Police Department was at war with its citizens in the middle of the day, in the middle of downtown.”

Tammy Fournier-Alsaada was addressing a crowd in front of Ohio’s domed Capitol building one day last spring when someone whispered in her ear: Police were arresting protesters.

Fournier-Alsaada, 59, knew a thing or two about protests. She was an organizer with the People’s Justice Project, which had been fighting police abuse in Columbus since 2015. Fournier-Alsaada also knew the police. She had sat across the table from top officers as a member of a mayor-appointed commission on public safety reform.

This was May 30, 2020, the third day of racial justice protests in Columbus following the killing of George Floyd last spring. Everything looked mostly peaceful from Fournier-Alsaada’s vantage point on the stage — there had been some violence on a previous night — but she noticed a little commotion down the block.

She dropped the mic and rushed to investigate, but found a cordon of bicycle cops blocking her way. "Shut up, bitch!" Fournier-Alsaada said one officer spat at her when she asked to be allowed to pass. She spotted a familiar face among the officers milling in the street — a deputy chief she knew from the mayoral commission. He ordered his officers to allow Fournier-Alsaada and her group to cross the street.

She thought she’d gotten the police’s cooperation, but quickly realized they’d painted a target on her back. She was halfway across the empty street when she heard a sound like a bomb going off. She looked to the sky and saw tear gas canisters arcing right toward her. She was immediately blinded and unable to breathe — all she could hear was people screaming. Mounted officers charged into the chaos, a horse knocking her to the ground as she struggled to stand.

“It felt like the Columbus Police Department was at war with its citizens in the middle of the day, in the middle of downtown,” Fournier-Alsaada said. “That's what it was — they just launched a war.”

“Fournier-Alsaada looked to the sky and saw tear gas canisters arcing right toward her.”

Dozens of protesters were injured by police over several days of unrest. Police fired wooden bullets at protesters, shattering one man’s kneecap. Columbus’ three highest-ranking Black elected officials — a congresswoman, the president of the City Council, and a member of the county board of commissioners — were tear-gassed in the face.

In one incident caught on video, a woman named Aleta Mixon approached police for help finding her daughter. Instead, police sprayed her three times with tear gas at point-blank range. Mixon later testified that an officer also knocked her to the ground and stomped on her knee, shouting, “That’s what the f--- you get for being down here, you Black protesting b----.”

Fournier-Alsaada, Mixon and 24 others injured during the protests got lawyers. This group’s legal team included the city’s foremost civil rights attorneys, some of whom had been filing suits against the city and its police department for racial discrimination for more than 40 years.

Their case — known as Alsaada v. City of Columbus — is primarily about whether the police unconstitutionally used tear gas and other “less-lethal” weapons against protesters peacefully exercising their right to protest. But they also put another question before the court, one that is usually very hard for private litigants to raise: Does the Columbus police department have a pattern and practice of racial bias that makes it fundamentally unable to regulate itself? Whatever the beliefs of individual officers, does the institution behave in a racist way?

For decades, lawyers have tried to ask courts to stop biased policing, but legal technicalities make that difficult. Private plaintiffs sometimes can sue for damages when an officer violates their individual rights, but going after a whole department for institutional racism is usually out of reach. The Department of Justice does have the ability to sue a police department for racist "patterns and practices" under federal law, but it’s willingness to do so has been inconsistent.

But the police response to last year’s racial justice protests — which was often violent, extensively videoed and often in stark contrast with muted responses to right-wing protests — has given attorneys around the country the kind of evidence that they often lack to put systematic police racism before federal judges. There are now more than 70 lawsuits pending over police violence during last summer’s racial justice protests, from Seattle to Detroit to New York.

“The Columbus police put their propensity for violence, especially when dealing with Black people and people who question their racism — Black or white — on display,” said Fred Gittes, one of the attorneys in the Columbus case. “[That] was made public and videoed during May and June of 2020.”

“Going after a whole department for institutional racism is usually out of reach.”

As the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s killing approaches, the impact of the uprising that followed continues to grow. Judges have already issued preliminary rulings in several cities reining in the kinds of force police can use in response to peaceful protests.

The ruling in Alsaada from an Ohio federal court on April 30 was especially eloquent in condemning police abuse as part of a history of biased policing.

“This case is the sad tale of police officers, clothed with the awesome power of the state, run amok,” wrote Judge Algenon Marbley. Tracing the history of modern police departments from antebellum slave patrols to the murder of George Floyd, Marbley wrote, “New dark chapters have been drafted in this institution’s history books.”

arbley’s preliminary injunction was a significant victory for civil rights advocates, but it is not the final word in Alsaada; that will depend on the outcome of a full trial, which could take years. As this and other suits around the country move through federal courts, attorneys want to review hundreds of hours of body camera footage from last year's protests, as well as depose mayors, police chiefs and other high-ranking officials.

As recent history has shown, it’s hard to sue police for wrongdoing in America. You have to overcome the legal doctrine known as “qualified immunity,” which protects officers from litigation if they’re acting in their official capacity. You also have to overcome the built-in bias that judges and juries often have to believe the word of the police over the word of victims, especially if those victims are people of color.

This has made it hard enough to sue individual officers for specific incidents of wrongdoing in the past. But there are even more hurdles for plaintiffs who want courts to order systematic changes to the way police do business in the future — what’s technically known as “injunctive relief.”

“There's a number of legal doctrines that make it difficult for private plaintiffs to sue police departments for injunctive relief,” said Christy Lopez, a Georgetown Law professor who led pattern-and-practice investigations of police departments when she was an official at the Justice Department. “It's one thing to sue an officer and say, ‘I want money damages for you violating my rights.’ It's another thing to say, ‘I want the police to change its use-of-force training, and its use-of-force reporting, and to ban chokeholds and do all these other things’.”

“There are even more hurdles for plaintiffs who want courts to order systematic changes to the way police do business in the future.”

There have been only a handful of successful lawsuits that won major court orders forcing police departments to systematically change policy, Lopez said. Lopez served as a court-appointed monitor in Oakland, California, where a case filed in 2000 led a court to order a broad overhaul of the department’s discipline, training and management practices. Another important victory for private plaintiffs was litigation against New York City’s “stop-and-frisk” policy, which a judge ruled was unconstitutional in 2013.

DOJ has had much more success getting courts to step in than private plaintiffs.

The 1994 crime bill gave the DOJ the ability to sue departments for “a pattern or practice of conduct … that deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Columbus itself was actually one of the first cities to be sued under this provision — and the first jurisdiction to aggressively fight a settlement, thanks in large part because of to the opposition of the local Fraternal Order of Police. Over recent decades, the DOJ has used its power to win consent decrees in cities including Pittsburgh, Detroit and New Orleans.

But the federal government has used this power only in fits and starts. The Biden administration has recently opened investigations under this provision into the police departments of Minneapolis and Louisville, but the Trump administration issued a memo in its earliest days declaring it would not be in the business of overseeing local police departments. The George W. Bush administration also pulled back from using this authority after a few path-breaking investigations under President Bill Clinton.

Civil rights attorneys are under no illusion that the lawsuits arising out of last year's protests are a substitute for federal action — or an overhaul of police departments by elected officials. But they do open the door to a kind of litigation that is often hard to pursue.

“All this is unusual,” said Jesse Merrithew, an attorney representing protesters in Portland, Oregon. “The sustained nature of the protest this summer really allowed a critical examination of tactics and bias that we don't typically get an opportunity to have. ... It's [usually] really hard for those of us who are litigators to say, ‘Oh, this is a pattern and practice of the police department of using force against this group and not that group.’”

“Lawsuits do open the door to a kind of litigation that is often hard to pursue.”



That’s partly why Marbley’s ruling in Columbus is so important, said Sean Walton, another attorney representing the Columbus protesters.

“The comprehensive nature of the judge's opinion, it really brings to life and it showcases to the entire world this underbelly that exists where the Columbus division of police have these unwritten policies that allow them to continuously discriminate against citizens,” Walton said.

Columbus, America’s 14th largest city, is in a county that ranks in the top 20 counties with the highest rates of fatal police shootings, according to a recent study. In the months before the hearings in the Alsaada case, police officers killed two Black men in Columbus — Casey Goodson and Andre Hill. Two more Black residents — Miles Jackson and 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant — were shot by police just before Marbley issued his ruling.

Against this backdrop, plaintiffs’ attorneys presented evidence of admitted bias within the department. One piece of evidence was a $475,000 settlement the city reached with a Black officer who was discriminated against within the department. Even though another officer routinely used racial slurs and allegedly threatened violence against him, the offender was not disciplined for discrimination and continues to work in the department.

Another key piece of evidence was a 2019 report by the Matrix Consulting Group which found that 29 percent of Columbus officers and 70 percent of the force’s Black officers said they’d personally witnessed racial discrimination within the department. A significant portion — 8 percent of all officers and nearly 30 percent of Black officers — said they’d witnessed officers discriminating against members of the public. In fact, only one officer has ever been recommended for termination for alleged discrimination — and she was a Black woman who wrote a book decrying racism within the department.

These facts won a stunning admission from Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther during hearings in the police case.

“Mr. Mayor, you know from your consultants that there is a substantial portion of your police force that you cannot rely on ... to report misconduct by other officers?” asked attorney Gittes.

“Based on the findings of the Matrix report, yes, that is correct,” the mayor replied.

Columbus has struggled with racism in its police department even as the city has elected a number of high-ranking Black officials. Ginther’s predecessor, Michael Coleman, was the city’s first Black mayor when elected in 2000 and served four terms before leaving office in 2015.

“Twenty-nine percent of Columbus officers and 70 percent of the force’s Black officers said they’d personally witnessed racial discrimination within the department.”

Ginther has long acknowledged the Columbus police department has a problem with institutional racism and has taken steps to correct it, including demoting the police chief who was in charge of the department during last summer’s protests. Ginther also won passage of a referendum during last year’s elections that would create a civilian review board to investigate complaints against officers. The city also recently adopted a law that would require officers to activate body cameras during any enforcement action. And Ginther also ordered the police to rein in their use of tear gas during protests, though the court found that order was insufficient.

In an interview, Ginther acknowledged that reforming the police department is an uphill battle.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast every day. And so no matter what kind of strategy and plan we had, the culture had to change,” Ginther said. The local Fraternal Order of Police, Ginther said, has “opposed me on every form of reforms.”

“It's an organization that has fought change and reform historically, and the community is demanding change and reform. And so the FOP is going to have to decide whether or not they're going to stand with the community or be opposed to the community.”

Since the most recent officer shooting of a Black citizen, Ginther has invited the DOJ to open an investigation into his own police department. The inquiry is necessary, Ginther wrote in the letter requesting federal intervention, because “the City has been met with fierce opposition from leadership within the Columbus Division of police.”

“It has become clear we will not be able to affect the rapid, significant and sustainable change we all desire and demand without different levers of power,” he wrote.

“The FOP is going to have to decide whether or not they're going to stand with the community or be opposed to the community.”

The local FOP, Capital City Lodge #9, did not respond to requests for comment. But the union has petitioned to intervene in Alsaada, opposing changes to the use of less-lethal weapons against non-violent protesters, because this “would dramatically affect and alter the terms and conditions of employment” under the contract with the city. The FOP’s motion to intervene says the union is particularly concerned about protecting “several important provisions that ensure the health and safety of law enforcement officers while they are on duty.”

The city of Columbus has not decided whether it will challenge Marbley’s order, according to a statement from Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein, but Klein said, “We respect Judge Marbley’s decision and agree with the need for changing the way police handle First Amendment-protected protests.”

But even if the city doesn’t fight the order, the FOP could. At the same time Marbley issued his judgment against the Columbus police, he also granted the FOP’s request to intervene in the case.

Whatever the final outcome in Columbus, it seems clear that this type of litigation will become more common. Even now, nearly a year since George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, new cases are still being filed connected to police use of force during the protests that followed.

“These claims are becoming much more widespread across the country because police violence is becoming much more widespread across the country,” said Amanda Ghannam, an attorney representing protesters in Detroit. All across the country, “we see the police sort of using the same tactics, the same techniques, the same equipment, the same weaponry.”

And this litigation will continue, said Ghannam’s co-counsel, Jack Schulz, until police themselves recognize the need for reform.

“I think there's really no resolution without the police identifying that there is an institutional problem going on and exhibiting any willingness to change their ways,” Schulz said. “I don't know that they're ready to do that.”

J. Lester Feder is a freelance journalist and 2020-2021 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow at the University of Michigan.

This article previously appeared in Politico .

https://www.blackagendareport.com/polic ... unched-war

But how ya gonna 'reform the police' when they are the dogs of the rich and respond to the merest whisper with Pavlovian alacrity? Violence has been at the heart of Amerika since Day 1. 'His master's voice" will be obeyed until silenced.

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Tue May 25, 2021 6:24 pm

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Shame Games: Minneapolis Police Mock Community Engagement Officer
By Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot May 22, 2021

Minneapolis, MN – Newly released body camera footage from officers in the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) reveals a gang-like culture denigrating a central command community engagement officer. The videos also show a litany of micro-aggressions towards protesters, the general public and show the main aggressor, Sergeant Andrew Bittell, publicly urinating during an arrest.

The anonymously sourced footage obtained by Unicorn Riot, which includes policemen teaming up to shame another officer, comes from body cameras worn by MPD cops assigned to the 1282 CART (Chemical Agent Response Team) team. The 1282 CART team was seen responding to a suspicious vehicle call on the night of November 4, 2020.

Tasked with providing ‘crowd control’ during a post-2020 election night protest, the CART team was led by Sergeant Andrew Bittell, whose body camera footage is the most revealing in regards to highly questionable ‘shame games’ carried out by MPD officers.

These revealing videos are being published at a time when the MPD is under investigation from several agencies, including the Department of Justice. In total, over 230 minutes of footage from eight officers provide a seldom-seen glimpse into interactions within a unit of the Minneapolis Police.


The video above encapsulates the ‘shame games’ played inside MPD; view Sgt. Bittell’s full body cam footage at the end of the article.(see link)

Suspicious Vehicle Stop Turns up ‘Shame Games’ Footage During Mass Arrest of 646 People at Protest
Responding to a suspicious vehicle call around 10 p.m. on November 4, 2020, the CART team pulled up to a parked truck on 20th Avenue overlooking I-94 near Minneapolis’ West Bank. Eight officers activated their body cameras (Unicorn Riot has obtained all 8 videos.)

The traffic stop came during a mass arrest of 646 leftist protesters who were ‘kettled’ on I-94 by a large force of Minnesota State Troopers, Minneapolis Police, University of Minnesota Police, and other officers under the aegis of the Department of Public Safety (images below).

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Upon reaching the vehicle, the CART team held the driver and passenger at gunpoint after they parked their truck facing the direction of the mass-arrested protest and played music. Both occupants of the vehicle were then detained for about 45 minutes.

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Police aiming their guns at occupants of the vehicle

The vehicle, a large truck with a sound system in the back, was searched and towed to the impound lot. The driver and passenger were released after being given a citation.

MPD ‘Shame Games’

Later during the traffic stop, while waiting for a tow truck to arrive and impound the vehicle, MPD Sergeant Deitan Dubuc briefly pulled up to the scene. Sgt. Dubuc is the head of the Community Engagement Team (more on him later). It was after Sgt. Dubuc left that Sgt. Bittell led a hazing-like ‘shame game’ with adolescent fervor reminiscent of a college frat initiation.

During Sgt. Bittell’s body camera video, while he sought a place to publicly urinate, Bittell walked past Dubuc as he pulled up to the scene. Dubuc spoke with Lt. Jose Gomez and Sgt. Frank from his vehicle as Bittell walked behind the CART team vehicle and urinated on the 20th Ave. bridge.

After Bittell was finished urinating, Dubuc can be seen driving away. Sgt. Bittell then walked up to Sgt. Frank and asked, “I suppose you have to spit when he goes by you, too?” (Spitting at, or after someone passes, is widely seen as a sign of disrespect.)

Bittell then spat and said to the officers, “I gotta spit when he goes by.”

The interaction continued as Lt. Jose Gomez, standing at the passenger side of Sgt. Frank’s police cruiser, told Bittell as he walked away that Dubuc “was mad [Bittell] didn’t go talk to him.”

As Bittell walked away, Gomez said, “Hey, that was Dubuc,” before getting into the cruiser and shutting the door.

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Sgt. Andrew Bittell and Lt. Jose Gomez converse about Sgt. Deitan Dubuc stopping by the scene

“What’d ya say?! Get over here! Get him outta here! You just said it!,” Bittell quickly responded to Gomez as he approached the closed door of the cruiser.

After Gomez didn’t come out of the car, Bittell then walked to the CART vehicle and said to the other officers, “Gomez just said it, the name that shall not be said.” CART members immediately responded with chants of “shame, shame, shame.“

Bittell and another officer then went back to the police cruiser and urged Lt. Gomez to get out of the vehicle to be ‘shamed’ and “kicked in the butt three times” for the apparent offense of uttering Sgt. Dubuc’s name.

Gomez asked “what’s the deal though?” and said he “didn’t know this was citywide,” referring to the practice of shaming officers for saying Dubuc’s name.

Gomez then reluctantly followed Bittell and other officers behind the CART team vehicle (where Bittell had emptied his bladder just two minutes earlier) to be ‘shamed’ by the officers.

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Sgt. Bittell ‘shames’ Lt. Gomez behind the CART team vehicle after Gomez said the name of Community Engagement Sgt. Deitan Dubuc

Since Gomez had said “Dubuc” twice, he was subjected to six total ‘shames’ – three for each time he spoke “the name that shall not be said.” After Gomez faced the vehicle with his back to Sgt. Bittell, Bittell led the other officers in saying “shame” six times before Bittell said, “alright, you’re done.”

The officers then walked back to their positions laughing and joking about Dubuc. It’s unclear in the footage if Gomez was actually kicked in the rear by officers, as that portion of Gomez’s body was not in the view of Bittell’s body camera’s lens.


Who is Sergeant Deitan Dubuc?

Sgt. Deitan Dubuc is an outspoken officer in MPD and a visible leader on the Community Engagement Team. Originally from Montreal, Canada, Dubuc learned English when he moved to the United States at age 21 and studied at the University of Michigan. Dubuc starred in football while in college and played with famous quarterback Tom Brady. Dubuc then played football professionally in the NFL (National Football League) and CFL (Canadian Football League).

Dubuc joined the MPD in 2008 and said he has spent his time as an officer attempting to create more trust between the community and the police. Dubuc has since made the rank of sergeant as head of the Community Engagement Team and has taken part in training new officers on policy and procedure.

After former MPD officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, Dubuc spoke to Canadian press, breaking the unwritten rule of speaking publicly against the department.

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“The problem is that you cannot speak for the police station, it’s not well seen … people need to hear the police say they too have been disappointed and upset. Often the police are afraid to say they do not agree with what has happened.”

– Sgt. Deitan Dubuc, Archyde, June 2020
In a July 2020 neighborhood gathering in a backyard in Northside Minneapolis, Dubuc spoke alongside Lt. Mark Montgomery, Lt. Derrick Barnes, 4th Precinct Inspector Kelvin Pulphus, and other officers. Dubuc spoke about community-led violence prevention initiatives, training officers who grew up “with no minority friends,” and the murder of George Floyd. Dubuc said the police “have to be accountable and need to communicate.”

Dubuc’s calls for reform have created a wedge between himself and officers resistant to changing MPD’s generally unaccountable police culture.

Sergeant Andrew Bittell and the CART Team
Employed by the City of Minneapolis with a salary north of $100,000 a year, Sgt. Andrew Bittell has been on the force for 23 years. He has been a K-9 officer for a large portion of his time with MPD.

Bittell now leads a crackdown unit of officers officially named the CART, or Chemical Agents Response Team. This specialized unit is typically deployed in white warrant/raid/tactical vans with officers wearing tactical helmets and vests along with 40 millimeter marker round launchers, high powered rifles, and various chemical weapons.

A federal review of the police response to the 18-day 4th Precinct occupation protest for the police killing of Jamar Clark in 2015 found several instances when CART team officers had no “clear written rules of engagement.” Many MPD officers in CART teams are also on the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team.

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MPD’s 1282 CART Team tactical van and officers deployed for suspicious vehicle call – Nov. 4, 2020

Public information on Bittell is scarce, but the non-profit organization Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB) tracks police complaints. CUABP’s data shows six known complaints listed against Sergeant Andrew Bittell.

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Sgt. Bittell has six known complaints in Communities United Against Police Brutality’s Police Complaint Look-Up

Two of the complaints—one dismissed and the other closed with no discipline—were fielded by the since-disbanded Civilian Review Authority. The four other complaints were reviewed by the Office of Police Conduct Review, and three were closed with no discipline.

One of the complaints against Bittell is still open. That complaint names three other officers, one of them named Mark Ringgenberg. Ringgenberg was involved in the execution-style murder of unarmed Jamar Clark in 2015 and faced no consequences over Clark’s killing.

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Sgt. Bittell has an open case for conduct review with Mark Ringgenberg, who was involved in the police killing of Jamar Clark in 2015 – via CUAPB

On November 3, 2020, the night before Bittell’s body camera showed him leading the ‘shame games’, he was providing strongarm support for a large police operation that arrested over a dozen people who had participated in an election night dance party on the streets of Uptown Minneapolis. Many protesters reported that they were tackled, punched, and brutalized by police during their arrests.

Sgt. Bittell was filmed holding a live-round assault rifle and facing the neighborhood crowd who were watching as officers processed arrestees behind him.


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Sergeant Andrew Bittell holding an assault rifle as MPD officers make arrests during an election night dance party on November 3, 2020

Around midnight on November 4, a couple hours after the suspicious vehicle stop, Sgt. Bittell joined a group of cops who were mocking press filming the arrests. The officers stood standing on the grass off 9th Street, looking down on the interstate. Earlier in the night from that location, MPD pepper-sprayed people and used horses from the Mounted Police to trample the community that was gathering to watch the mass arrest.

While being rude to journalists, the group of officers which included Sgt. Bittell, smoked cigars, laughed derisively and made farting noises with their mouths.

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After playing the ‘shame games’, Sergeant Andrew Bittell (right) stands next to another MPD officer smoking a cigar and making fart noises while watching the aftermath of 646 people mass arrested at a protest march

In total, 646 people were arrested on I-94, most of them cited and released after being moved from the interstate in buses and dropped at random locations. Amina McCaskill, a 21-year-old college student, was charged with a felony for allegedly shining a laser pointer during the protest.

MPD Investigation & Chief Arradondo

The police killing of George Floyd and response to the protests placed the MPD into the international spotlight and highlighted longstanding hostilities and mistrust between cops and the community. It also led to more investigations inside the department.

Several government agencies currently have the MPD under investigation. The U.S. Department of Justice, who have investigated MPD twice in the last two decades, has started a new federal investigation and has already filed federal charges against the four ex-officers involved in killing George Floyd. The Minnesota Department of Human Rights launched the Civil Rights Investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department on June 1, 2020, which thus far has produced several reports.

Since 2017, when Medaria Arradondo assumed the role of Chief of the MPD, he’s promised the community that he would change the police department’s culture. Arradondo, an Afro-Colombian man born and raised on the Southside of Minneapolis, has been with the department since 1989 and successfully sued the MPD in 2007 over racist practices within the department.

In a departure from typical practices, Chief Arradondo fired the four officers involved in George Floyd’s killing in record time and has continued voicing his desire for a culture change in policing.
“I never expected it to change overnight just because you have a Black chief, but I knew when I came into my role I had to be intentional each and every day to make sure that I was doing all I can to try to transform this culture.“

– Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo to Unicorn Riot on May 31, 2020
Chief Arradondo and then-Deputy Chief Art Knight made a public visit to George Floyd Square to pay their respects less than a week after Floyd was killed by MPD officers.(video at link)

Yet Arradondo’s more recent actions towards officers vying for change have left many questioning whether Arradondo can exact a transformation. In late May 2021, Chief Arradondo was exposed as coordinating with elected officials and a pro-police group called Operation Safety Now to sway the City Council’s November 2020 votes on the police budget.

A few months ago, a young officer named Colleen Ryan was demoted after a lengthy investigation into an anonymous interview she gave to GQ magazine describing Minneapolis’ police culture as ‘toxic.’

Furthermore, MPD Deputy Chief Art Knight was also demoted by Arradondo and is unlikely to return to the force. Arradondo called Knight his ‘right hand man’ but then demoted Knight after he questioned MPD hiring practices and told the Star Tribune that the culture was unlikely to change because it would hire the “same old white boys.“

After seeing officers’ conduct in the ‘shame games’ video, Michelle Gross, the President of Communities Unites Against Police Brutality, said she’s not surprised. Gross said, “MPD leadership talks about a new culture of respect for the community but does little to enforce it” and that until there are consequences, nothing will change.
“The conduct in this video is no surprise. MPD leadership talks about a new culture of respect for the community but does little to enforce it. Until there are consequences for this arrogant, disrespectful and abusive conduct, it will continue.“

– Michelle Gross, President of Communities United Against Police Brutality
We reached out to the MPD, sending them the video and asking for explanations of the officers behavior. They did not respond.

Watch all of Sgt. Bittell’s body camera footage below. [The release of all officer’s body camera footage from this incident will be released in early June 2021.]

https://unicornriot.ninja/2021/shame-games/

Much video at link.

Yep, this is how they are. Ain't no reforming these thugs, abolition is absolutely necessary. And this is just joshing around, ya don't wanna see them when they're pissed off, might be the last thing you see...

I dunno about this Dubuc guy, naive, masochist? Having been on that force for over a decade you would think he knew the futility of his position.

The calls for 'diversity' in the cop shops and the boardrooms is ruling class smoke, as though class traitors are hard to find in this demented country...

(The whole 'diversity' thing emanating from the ruling class represents an attempted repositioning by the bosses in the face of demographic reality. As their black/white scam is losing it's capability for domination and class traitors are easily found they adapt, but the tools which serve them so well will tolerate no diminution to their historic impunity and will not adapt to the bosses new needs.

"Can't live with them, can't live without them." Ha!)

These ain't no 'bad apples', this is a fair sample of the whole crop.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Thu May 27, 2021 2:03 pm

Reclaiming the Power of Rebellion
Elizabeth Hinton, Derecka Purnell 26 May 2021

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Reclaiming the Power of Rebellion
The police as they exist today need to be abolished, there’s no question.

“Diversity doesn’t change the fundamental dynamics of policing.”

Protests are filled with symbolic figures. Four-minute die-ins on warm pavements to represent each hour that Michael Brown’s lifeless body lay in the August sun. “Sixteen shots and a cover up!” as a chant to expose the Chicago mayor, prosecutor, and police department for hiding the police murder of LaQuan McDonald. Eight minutes and forty-six seconds during moments of silence and reflection for each minute that George Floyd fought to live underneath the pressure of a cop’s knee to his neck. The cumulative killings by police etch these measurements onto our memories, tongues, and notepads.

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
By Elizabeth Hinton
Liveright / W.W. Norton & Company; 408 pages
May 18, 2021
Hardcover: $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-63149-890-9
W.W. Norton & Company

Elizabeth Hinton’s America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s recounts resistance. Not solely to police killings that go viral, but everyday Black resistance and rebellion to the fact of police. Hinton’s book details the rock throwers; the families who surround cop cars until they free someone in cuffs from the backseat; and the spectacular acts of Black community defense and retaliation in the wake of racial violence against them. In response, local and federal governments circulate the same tired reforms that seek to build public trust in police without removing any power from police. This ineffective cycle equates to more rebellions and subsequently more police repression. America on Fire offers a fresh account of why Black people have historically continued to fight back against all odds. I spoke with Hinton about this history, and how it might inform the future of resistance.

—Derecka Purnell

“The term ‘riot’ ensures that the cycle of police violence will continue. If the political violence of ‘rioters’ is criminal, then the only solution to that violence is more police.”

Derecka Purnell: America on Fire is going to be such a gift to organizers and activists. It is more than just a historical book. It is political education.

Elizabeth Hinton: I’m bursting right now. That’s what I hoped for. I wanted the book to be a tool for activists and organizers. Ultimately, I wanted it to be in the hands of everybody who was out in the streets this summer, from the babies to the elders. That’s who I wrote it for. So to hear you, of all people, a thinker and a force whom I respect so much, say that is a little overwhelming.

DP: The book offers a deeper history to the activism going on in recent years, and in particular pushes back on how such moments of Black uprising historically have been called riots, but they were actually rebellions. Could you talk about why you felt it was important to push back on the mainstream conception of those events?

EH: Most people who participated in so-called riots during the 1960s and ’70s did not see themselves as “rioters” or “rioting.” In Detroit the 1967 rebellion is called the Great Rebellion. That’s how Detroiters refer to it, that’s how they remember it. So part of it is just trying to honor how the people who are involved in these events understood their own actions, rather than the labels other people placed onto them.

I use the word “rebellion” to emphasize the deep socioeconomic demands that were behind all of the incidents I describe, especially in what I call the Crucible Period of the late 1960s and early ’70s. They’re in response to incidents of police violence and the way that police themselves represent a system of oppression. But they’re also about decent housing. They’re about jobs. They’re about educational opportunities. They’re about resources. They’re about community control. They’re about not being treated like second-class citizens and they’re a call to fulfill the promises of the freedom struggle and the civil rights movement.

The term “riot” itself and the ways in which it has been used to describe these events, from Harlem in 1964 onward, ensures that the cycle of police violence will continue. Because in making the distinctions that Lyndon Johnson and others did—between civil rights activists as protesters and people who burned and threw rocks at police officers and looted as rioters—they labeled the latter and their actions as criminal and senseless. And if this political violence is criminal, then the only solution to that violence is more police.

So if we continue to use the terminology of riots to describe this political violence, we’re stuck in embracing policing as the only response to inequality.

“My entire life I’ve been told: ‘Look at these students dressed up, sitting at these lunch counters, getting beat up beside the head. That’s what you need to do. That’s what Black Lives Matters protests need to look like.’”

DP: Yes, that’s such a good point for two reasons. One, by talking about using the word “riot” as a way to call for more police and more criminalization of Black people, you also draw attention to how unevenly the term is applied, and all the times that white people have rioted but have not been identified that way. The Red Summer of 1919 and the Tulsa Massacre weren’t called riots, and in those instances we see police collusion with white supremacy and white riots.

And then the second point is the comparison to the perception of civil rights protests and marches. I didn’t know the full history of the students’ sit-ins. My entire life I’ve been told: “Look at these students dressed up, sitting at these lunch counters, getting beat up beside the head. That’s what you need to do. That’s what Black Lives Matters protests need to look like.” In the beginning of the book, you’re saying, wait, wait, wait, these same student organizations were also involved with armed self-defense.

Can you talk more about how much we miss when we only look at the “peaceful” aspect of activism of these individuals and ignore their other forms of resistance?

EH: I’m really glad that you brought up that point. You’re referring to the part of the book where I talk about how students at North Carolina A&T University were involved with organizing a nonviolent peaceful sit-in movement at the beginning of the 1960s—which begins with the sit-in at Woolworths in Greensboro—but then in 1969 A&T’s campus is the site of a rebellion against police. So we have to ask what changed between these events.

The chain of events that ends with the 1969 rebellion starts when high school students at the majority Black high school in Greensboro demanded an end to some of the arbitrary disciplinary measures that they were subjected to what white students weren’t, like a dress code. And they called for a Black studies curriculum. These were very common demands for the time.

DP: Same demands we have right now.

“I think part of what we’re seeing is young people responding to the lack of concrete change in their daily lives. Despite the commitment among the mainstream movement to nonviolent protests, these tactics hadn’t worked to bring about the changes that Black people wanted.”

EH: Exactly. And the response on the part of school authorities was to bring in police. Eventually the high school students went to North Carolina A&T University students to get their help in this struggle against city and school authorities. As the A&T students became more involved, and as the police continued to tear gas, beat, and arrest these students—both the high school and the college students—eventually this culminated in the National Guard coming to the campus of A&T and ending in some kind of frenzy again, like many of these things. It’s unclear exactly what happened, but a sophomore at A&T died.

So how do we understand this progression from nonviolent direct action at the beginning of the ’60s to this horrible killing of an A&T student by the National Guard later in the decade? I think part of what we’re seeing is young people responding to the lack of concrete change in their daily lives—despite all of the promise of the civil rights movement. Despite the commitment among the mainstream movement to nonviolent protests, these tactics hadn’t worked to bring about the changes that Black people wanted.

“What we’re seeing is young people responding to the lack of concrete change in their daily lives—despite all of the promise of the civil rights movement.”

It’s so important to understanding the timeline of rebellion that, contrary to what we often think, rebellion peaked after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and after the War of Crime began to spread into midsize cities in rural communities, outside of Detroit and Los Angeles and Chicago. King’s murder really signaled to a generation of young people that these nonviolent strategies in the end hadn’t worked. And of course this is happening amid the flourishing of Black Power and the power and influence of the Black Panthers and other militant groups that had a different script about police and that embraced a different form of protest.

So with the A&T students, we witness this shift from the politics of nonviolence as the guiding principle of the Black student struggle in the first half of the ’60s to self-defense in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Defending yourself against the police who are beating you, the police who are surveilling you and occupying your community and imposing violent conditions. And in some cities the white vigilante groups that are working in conjunction with police, and that the police aren’t giving you protection from. So, the option is to exercise your Second Amendment right to bear arms. And when the police are beating you, to fight back.

DP: I want to discuss how it was the National Guard that killed the A&T student. In recent years, when there’s outcry about police violence, one mainstream response to the protests is that policing is a local issue. If you want to stop police violence, you’re told you need to get engaged in your local communities because that’s where decisions are made. But in your book you argue that the federal government set the tone and the stage for policing locally, including the expansion of police positions and budgets. Can you talk about this relationship between the federal and the local, in terms of budget and in terms of policing?

EH: That question ties also to my first book, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime (2017), which is a history of the development of the national crime control program from the Kennedy administration to the Reagan administration. I get pushback on this a lot. The official mantra is that crime control is a local matter, the federal government doesn’t have anything to do with it. But when Johnson calls for the War on Crime in 1965, it’s largely in response to the threat of Black rebellion and it’s a way to get police departments—big city police departments and smaller police departments—military grade weapons and to professionalize them. This is the beginning of the widespread professionalization of police. The national government forces state and local governments to make crime control a priority.

“By the late 1960s, the federal government is already disinvesting from War on Poverty programs. So instead of job creation programs for low-income people and for people of color, we get a job creation program for police officers in the form of the War on Crime.”

Alongside the enactment of monumental civil rights legislation and the War on Poverty—at the height of what we think of as progressive social change in the United States—our government begins allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to law enforcement. All of a sudden there’s all this money for law enforcement and, in order to qualify, state and local governments have to establish criminal justice planning agencies to engage in long-term plans about how they’re going to modernize and expand their police and prison and court systems to meet the challenges of the late twentieth century—which, of course, is a euphemism for the demographic changes that many cities are facing. This is after the Great Migration and cities are getting blacker and browner. And the War on Crime is part of the response.

By the late 1960s, the federal government is already beginning to disinvest from War on Poverty programs. So instead of job creation programs for low-income people and for people of color, we get a job creation program for police officers in the form of the War on Crime.

DP: To that point, last summer, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot condemned protesters who demanded to defund the police because she explained that it would limit police jobs, one of the only ways, she claimed, that Black and brown people in Chicago can enter the middle class.

EH: Exactly. And this comes directly out of a long history of arguing that the solution to the problem of discriminatory policing is to hire more Black and brown officers. But you’re still a police officer in a uniform with a gun. Diversity doesn’t change the fundamental dynamics of policing.

So when it came to fighting rebellion, the feds basically gave state and local governments a 75–90 percent-off coupon on M4 carbines, on armored tanks, on helicopters, all these things. These are surplus weapons coming in from Vietnam and interventions in Latin American and the Caribbean. So essentially the federal government is buying all of this high-grade military equipment for law enforcement. When the armored tanks appeared in Ferguson in 2014 to suppress the uprising, people were like, “Where did this come from? This must be a War on Terror thing, a George W. Bush thing.” No, it begins with Johnson.

The federal agenda also becomes really important for the construction of prisons in the ’70s. Basically the Nixon administration incentivizes prison construction based on the projected growth of the Black youth population. This is terrifying stuff. By the time Ronald Reagan takes office, the federal government had already allocated something like $25 billion in today’s dollars to build up this crime control apparatus, which sets the nation on the road to mass incarceration. Social welfare programs had already become deeply tied to crime control and law enforcement, especially in cities with a majority or near majority of people of color. And so a lot of the federal grant programs disband by the early 1980s, but then take on new life through the DEA and FBI and asset forfeiture and all kinds of other programs.

“So essentially the federal government is buying all of this high-grade military equipment for law enforcement.”

“The federal government led us into embracing policing and surveillance and incarceration as a way to manage racial inequality rather than investing the resources toward solving it.”

Another more recent example of the way this federal influence works is in the 1994 Crime Bill where the community policing programs in New York and Chicago were essentially then taken up by the federal government and made part of the $10 billion COPS program which put 100,000 new police officers on the streets in targeted communities and shaped the widespread zero-tolerance practices that so many of us are trying to undo today. The federal government led us into embracing policing and surveillance and incarceration as the response to demographic changes, civil rights demands, and rebellion. As a way to manage racial inequality rather than investing the resources toward solving it.

This precedent shows that it’s also possible for the federal government to lead us in a different direction. Public safety should be a community issue, but I think communities can be supported by the vast resources and influence that the federal government has. And they’ve done it before and it’s possible that they can do it again.

DP: It gave me hope that the federal government just started giving money for police in the ’60s. That’s so recent. They could just as easily start taking that money away.

EH: Absolutely. But instead this idea that policing is the best, only way to get federal money into communities becomes so orthodox that by the time you get to the Carter administration, the federally funded employment programs for Black youth are essentially training them in how to install locks and closed circuit monitors and team up with police in housing projects. Even job training is about making young people complicit in their own surveillance and institutions that could lead to their incarceration and their criminalization.

DP: Yes, exactly that. And you could just pay people to do other work. The money is there, just uncouple it from policing and criminalization. Labor, criminalization, and policing are inextricably connected, so you can’t talk about policing without talking about inequality, capitalism, and exploitation.

Can you talk more about the relationship between the real needs of communities and how federal and local governments respond with policing instead? Where do you see that leading us?

“Reforms may improve some interactions between police and residents on a day-to-day basis, but they’re not going to save lives.”

EH: One of the things that the archives that I was working with really helped make come alive for me was the texture of the urban landscape from the late 1960s through the early 2000s. Many Black Americans ended up worse off going into the 1980s than they were in the 1970s. Much of this has to do with the continued embrace of police as the only solution.

There’s a chapter in the book on federal and local commissions tasked with understanding the cause of rebellions, and the Kerner Commission of course is the most famous one. Most of the members of these commissions were always white liberals, who would try to go and talk to people and hold hearings. And community members would tell these commissions about all of the systemic sources that were fueling inequality and the fundamental problems with police and propose all these solutions. But in most cases, the published conclusions of these commissions simply pathologized Black residents and especially the young people who rebelled, basically saying that Black people “overreact” to racism and that rebellion is just a spontaneous reaction, or an overreaction to a racist incident. But in the midst of that kind of pathologizing analysis, these commissions would also sometimes recognize some of the structural forces that led people to rebel in the first place. We see this in the Kerner Commission. But these structural recommendations are never followed. What gets implemented instead, time and time again, are the heavy-handed police reforms. And sometimes there’s a ceremonial expansion of a police community relations unit, or the hiring of more officers of color. But that doesn’t lead to fundamental changes in policing.

Part of what I’m trying to do in the book is make the case—or join the growing call in making the case—for why we have to move out of this reform paradigm that we’ve been in for the past half century or so. And we have to move away from the use of symbolic investigations, these symbolic declarations which might be good for policymakers’ PR but aren’t going to lead to any kind of long-term change. Reforms may improve some interactions between police and residents on a day-to-day basis, but they’re not going to save lives. They’re not going to prevent more police killings from happening. And as a result, political violence, even when it seems to have subsided, will continue to be a feature in U.S. life.

DP: Absolutely. The solutions don’t match the problems. And what’s also so insidious with all of these task forces is this notion that change takes time and the people in power are doing the best that they can. But you know what? Let a protest happen. We’ll find quick mobilization from the state. We’ll witness quick delegation of political leaders. We’ll see quick deployment of police from different jurisdictions. All of the work that it takes to oppress and to suppress rebellion happens very quickly, but they claim that work to end oppression takes time.

“What’s also so insidious is this notion that change takes time and the people in power are doing the best that they can. But you know what? Let a protest happen. We’ll find quick mobilization from the state.”

EH: One thing that I want to stress here too is that in all the communities that I write about in the book, and nearly 2,000 others that are in the timeline, and in the cities where uprisings have occurred in recent years, people have tried and have made sets of demands. People have filed lawsuits, people have protested. And authorities don’t listen. And then when no changes materialize, something usually breaks the nonviolent responses in the form of police violence. And you get a reaction. You get a crackdown. You get an ever more violent crackdown by state authorities and then officials actually want to listen to people and take people seriously in ways that they didn’t when they were protesting peacefully or filing lawsuits or signing petitions. There are all kinds of other things that people are always doing in the struggle that eventually explode in these moments of police violence.

DP: Yes. When Black Lives Matter entered the national consciousness in 2014, there were lots of people, from Barack Obama to Oprah, who said Black Lives Matters sort of doesn’t mean anything. You need to come up with policy proposals and demands. And so organizations did that. The Movement for Black Lives created a robust policy platform with demands for Black lives. They have recently drafted the BREATHE Act, the most comprehensive bill in recent memory to address the root causes of violence in our communities, including police violence. Yet Congress and the president are refusing these progressive demands.

EH: Right, so instead we get the proposed George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which demonstrates how lawmakers and officials are always ten steps behind. Like now you want to talk about banning the use of chokeholds? That’s not going to do anything. The LAPD claimed that they beat Rodney King with their batons because they couldn’t use chokeholds. And even the George Floyd Act is spoken of as controversial and may not even pass, even though it’s just asking for more training for police and all the usual things.

“Now you want to talk about banning the use of chokeholds? That’s not going to do anything. The LAPD claimed that they beat Rodney King with their batons because they couldn’t use chokeholds.”

DP: Some critics of police defunding and abolition point to surveys with Black respondents that reveal that they want these kinds of measures; they don’t want to defund the police, but just want better police or a better relationship with the police. Yet you argue that we should also consider rebellious protesters as serious political actors who are either left out of the mainstream conversation, are never surveyed, or are too young to vote. My favorite parts of the book are all of the informal cop watching, when kids are throwing rocks back at police, and even rescuing their friends and loved ones from being arrested. For the people who are forced out of the representative class of the Black community because they are young, or because they have criminal records, simply telling them “go vote” if they want change is usually not an option.

The book recognizes that people who perform acts of political violence are also political activists whose demands are worth considering.

EH: That was a really important driver for me in writing this book. In 2016 when I started researching it, people like Hilary Clinton were saying, in response to the critique about the 1994 Crime Bill during the presidential campaign: “Well, this is what Black Americans were asking for. They were asking for harsh sentences and they were asking for more police and we gave it to them.” That view is really infuriating to me.

But stories of kids who are out there throwing rocks—these stories, these voices, they’re not in the archive. They’re difficult to recover and so part of the aim of the book was to try to uncover these stories. Uncover the stories of the kids who didn’t vote. The kids who were too young to vote. The community members who responded to the War on Crime’s increased patrol and surveillance with rocks and bottles. And when the police came back with even more force, then with fires. And when the police started beating people, then with looting and the kind of continued escalation of violence that results from the way that policing is done.

The young people who threw rocks experienced the policing of their communities as a violent act and so their rock-throwing was a kind of self-defense, and I don’t think that’s something scholars have taken seriously. We need to begin to take that form of protest seriously. And privileging a different set of actors, especially when we’re thinking about Black protest outside of mainstream civil rights organizations, but also outside of Black Power organizations too. In the post–civil rights years, aggression against police was the most widely adopted form of protest in Black communities and we don’t acknowledge it. People don’t necessarily want to confront this history. It’s difficult to write about rebellion. It’s difficult to write about and understand acts that we categorize as crime. And so I hope that in uncovering these stories and these perspectives, the book can begin to open up new sets of questions, and offer a new set of actors we can take seriously as political agents.

“Slavery didn’t end just because Frederick Douglass gave really good speeches. Slavery also ended because Douglass beat Mr. Covey back on the plantation and he said, I’m never going to get hit again.”

DP: It’s so true. It’s why we learn more about Frederick Douglass in elementary school than we do about Nat Turner. But slavery didn’t end just because Douglass gave really good speeches. Slavery also ended because Douglass beat Mr. Covey back on the plantation and he said, I’m never going to get hit again. You’ll have to kill me first. Recognizing the diversity of tactics for our freedom is so important and it’s not typically what we’re taught as children. So how do we show a more robust, interesting, exciting, accurate history of what people did to get free?

EH: I love that example. The mainstream now celebrates Douglass’s resistance and him attacking a slave owner who inflicted violence on him. And you wonder if a hundred years from now, when we’re out of this police paradigm, when the police are no longer existing, they’re abolished, if people will go back and see that sister jumping on the officer’s back as a heroic act.

DP: Oh, we already do. The image of Edward Crawford, Jr., throwing that tear gas canister back toward the Ferguson police is one of those acts of resistance—you know, rest in peace because he’s no longer with us, but it was one of those moments. And I think your book gives us so many of those moments where we can say, Look at this resistance!

To that point, the condemnation of our resistance today is so ahistorical. All the recent protests that presidents and other officials have condemned as “so violent” are really remarkably tame compared to the history you write about. Reading about some of these acts of armed resistance, fighting, shootouts in the projects—I was just like wow. Yet today, the protests are calmer, and we have the same amount of police violence in the streets, with just as many people being killed by police. And the only side being sieged with violence is the protesters. We’re becoming more safe, and the police are becoming more violent. Your book helped me see how the line of acceptable resistance is being eroded further and further because we don’t know this longer history of rebellion.

“All the recent protests that presidents and other officials have condemned as ‘so violent’ are really remarkably tame compared to the history you write about.”

“Today, the protests are calmer, and we have just as many people being killed by police. And the only side being sieged with violence is the protesters. We’re becoming more safe, and the police are becoming more violent.”

EH: That is such a brilliant insight and it’s so true. That’s one of the things that I try to chart through the book. In the ’60s, rebellions occurred in response to the policing of the ordinary and the everyday. And then, in the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, it’s in response to grave miscarriages of justice. So, 1980 in Miami and 1992 in Los Angeles, it’s in response not to the incident of police violence itself—in Miami the killing of a Black motorist named Arthur McDuffie, and in L.A. the beating of Rodney King—but in response to the acquittal of the officers involved in that violence. Same in Cincinnati in 2001. Timothy Thomas was the fifteenth Black man killed by Cincinnati police in a six-year period and the police department was not transparent at all about the circumstances of his death, and the community didn’t believe that they would get justice.

I think that the Cincinnati rebellion is a real transition point to what we saw in Ferguson and Baltimore and then 2020. One of the things that I think is really important about the Obama-era uprisings onward is that they are unlike the kind of violence we see in places like Miami in 1980. Miami was hard for me to write about because people started attacking and killing white people randomly from jump. Miami was a particularly devastating incident of violence in response to the buildup of all these unanswered grievances and all of these incidents of police violence of which McDuffie was only one part. But from Ferguson onward, all of the protests start completely peacefully. And then the police respond with violence. And it just escalates into this cycle. So it’s exactly as you said, Derecka. As protests have kind of gone back to some of the earlier forms of nonviolent direct action, the police violence and the police response has stayed the same or escalated, and that’s where you get the violence. That’s where you get the violent clashes between protesters and police, in self-defense. Because when somebody shoots a rubber bullet at you, or tear gas, what are you supposed to do? That’s what people said to me again and again. It was about dignity.

DP: At the start of the book, you write: “Here is the foundational logic of American policemen. Maintain a social order through the surveillance and social control of people of color.” If that’s the foundation of just regular policing in our present social order, then what constitutes over-policing? Hyper-policing? What are the purposes and functions of these gradations? This is a way of asking how we move toward a solution, and if there is anything short of abolition that would work. How do we organize toward something more beautiful than what we have now?

“Here is the foundational logic of American policemen. Maintain a social order through the surveillance and social control of people of color.”

EH: In talking about the foundational logic of American policing as being about the surveillance and social control of people of color, I was situating present-day policing within the history of slave patrols. In the post-emancipation period, we see a continued and sustained escalation of surveillance by both law enforcement and social welfare institutions in the lives of poor people and people of color, and that continues to escalate alongside the demographic changes wrought by the Great Migration and immigration. And so, in the post-war period, or even as more Black people throughout the early mid-twentieth century are moving into cities, you begin to get the professionalization of police forces and you get disproportionate patrol and targeting and surveillance in segregated communities.

But I do think that after the nationalization of the War on Crime and after the federal government begins to invest in police and militarizes local police, there’s a real turn. The embrace of policing and surveillance and incarceration as a solution to racial inequality in the late twentieth century and beyond is really occurring at a time when the federal government is divesting from social welfare programs as we talked about. As resources are being pulled out of schools, as benefits are being reduced, as deindustrialization is happening, as unemployment is rising. And unemployment we know is always double for people of color and Black Americans in particular.

This cocktail results in a situation that a lot of people describe as over-policing and under-protection. Really by the late ’70s and ’80s, the police become the only state institutions standing in low-income, under-resourced communities of color. That’s part of the dynamic that I’m trying to describe in the book and the ways in which the people responded to these transformations.

So where do we go from here? The police as they exist today need to be abolished. There’s no question. That’s the lesson I hope everybody takes from this book. Reforming the police is not going to solve any of these problems. The only thing we can do moving forward is to invest in communities and is to invest resources into job creation, into robust and vibrant school systems, into decent housing for people. And for communities to be controlling resources on their own terms.

It’s going to take a major redistribution of resources and wealth. This is something that was floated during the 1960s and we saw it for a brief moment during the War on Poverty, but this is again where I think the federal government has a really important role. The community organizations that are doing the most exciting work—caring for people in their communities, addressing the harms of the legal system, responding to the impact of mass criminalization—need to be funded.

The solution moving forward is giving power and resources to the people. And I hope that the book helps us move toward a society based on that premise of care and equality, and love for one another. And I have to hope that we get there.

Derecka Purnell is a lawyer, writer, organizer, and author of forthcoming Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom. She is also a Guardian columnist.

This article previously appeared in Boston Review .

https://www.blackagendareport.com/recla ... -rebellion

Abolishing the current policing in the USA is necessary but I do not see it happening in any meaningful way as long as the extant ruling class remains entrenched. Cops(and army) are the mailed fist of the State and the State is the means of class domination. The bosses may wish for better PR, may even desire to modify the structure of oppression to reflect changing demographic realities via 'diversity' and a gradual de-emphasis of white privilege(just look at the corps, a bellwether) but the historical reality is that "ya dance with them what brung ya." Only a change at the top of society can achieve justice. It is not an issue of 'authority' but a question of "Whose authority?"
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Police, prison and abolition

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:18 pm

How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made With Prison Labor
H. Claire Brown 02 Jun 2021

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How Corporations Buy—and Sell—Food Made With Prison Labor

The small world of prison food production is a microcosm of the American food system, which all too o#en functions as a race to the bottom.

“Prison labor is punishment first and foremost.”

In 2011, Leprino Foods, the $3 billion company that supplies all the mozzarella to Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s pizza chains, lost its buffalo milk supplier in India.

Water buffalo milk isn’t easy to find in the United States, especially not as much as a company as big as Denver- based Leprino could use. The animals are finicky, sometimes refusing to give milk at the sight of a stranger, and they produce only a fraction of the milk that cows make.

But Leprino was in luck: One of its existing suppliers, which soon became one of the largest buffalo dairies in the United States, agreed to step in, and the milk began to flow. Leprino trademarked the slogan “with a kiss of buffalo milk” for Bacio, its premium mozzarella line marketed to independent pizzerias. Yet something seemed amiss, according to pizza cheese enthusiasts who frequented online forums: Where was Bacio getting the buffalo milk, and how much was it actually using?

The answer to the first question, it turned out, may have been the Colorado prison system, where incarcerated people working for the state’s correctional industries earn an average of $4.50 per day. Leprino was the only buyer of Colorado Correctional Industries’ buffalo milk between 2017 and 2020, purchasing more than 600 tons at an average price of $1.19 per pound, according to public records obtained by The Counter. (The records did not include sales from previous years, and the company did not respond to interview requests.) An independent buffalo dairy told The Counter it had sold small quantities of the same product for more than double the price Leprino paid.

“Incarcerated people working for the state’s correctional industries earn an average of $4.50 per day.”

Leprino was able to gain a competitive edge—access to an ingredient that’s difficult to source—by partnering with Colorado Correctional Industries (CCi). Had they known about the partnership, its customers (and their customers, the pizza-eating denizens of the United States) may have chosen to avoid the company’s cheese, whether out of a desire not to support the prison system or a belief that their food dollars should go toward companies whose workers earn living wages. But they probably never found out about the relationship: Prisons don’t generally publish the names of the companies that purchase the food they produce.

The Counter identified over $40 million in transactions between private food companies, prisons, and prison industries since 2017, including sales to major food industry players like Cargill and the Dairy Farmers of America. Across the country, at least 650 correctional institutions have some sort of food processing, landscaping, or farming operation, according to research by sociologist Joshua Sbicca and feminist geographer- political ecologist Carrie Chennault at Colorado State University.

In some states, food produced in prisons makes its way into restaurants and grocery stores through companies like Leprino, though in most places, food produced on prison grounds feeds the prison system and the public sector. Elsewhere, private food companies contract with state correctional industries to hire incarcerated workers, often for meager pay. In some ways, the small world of prison food production is a microcosm of the American food system, which has roots in slave labor and all too o#en functions as a race to the bottom: Fueled in part by cheap labor and low overhead, the drive toward production and profit leaves behind the people who plant the seeds and butcher the beef.

Top Ten Private Customers of Prison Food + Food Services

Note: These top 10 totals are based on the states from which we could gather data; other companies may purchase food produced in prison in larger quantities. Totals are from 2017-2020 unless otherwise noted. Locations listed are company headquarters.

Hickman's Family Farms Buckeye, AZ

$18.9 million

(FY 2018-2020)

•Largest egg company in the Southwest •Contracts with Arizona Correctional

Industries for incarcerated workers

Dairy Farmers of America Kansas City, KS

$10.8 million

•Markets more than 30% of the milk sold in the U.S.

•Purchases milk from correctional industries

Taylor Farms Salinas, CA

$5.3 million

(FY 2019-2020)

•Fresh salads and salad kits •Contracts with Arizona Correctional

Industries for incarcerated workers

Superior Livestock Auction Hudson Oaks, TX

$3.8 million

•Sells livestock raised in Louisiana prisons on the open market

Papa John's Produce* Tolleson, AZ

$2.5 million

(FY 2018)

•Produce and fresh salad distributor

•Contracts with Arizona Correctional Industries for

incarcerated workers

•Branch of Taylor Farms, per 2014 corporate filing

Louis Dreyfus Commodities Rotterdam, Netherlands

$2.4 million

(FY 2018-2020)

•Commodity trader

•Purchased corn and soy from Louisiana's

Correctional Industries

Leprino Foods Denver, CO

$1.5 million

•$3 billion mozzarella company •Purchases buffalo milk from Colorado

Correctional Industries

Haystack Mountain Goat Cheese Longmont, CO

$800,000

(2017-2019)

•Award-winning goat cheese maker •Purchased goat milk from Colorado

Correctional Industries

Dominique's Stockyard Baton Rouge, LA

$720,000

•Sells livestock raised in Louisiana prisons on the open market

Tropaquatics, Inc. Denver, CO

$650,000

•Fish distributor

•Purchases tilapia from Wyoming Brand Industries

and, until recently, Colorado Correctional Industries

Source: Public records obtained by The Counter *Not affiliated with Papa John's Pizza.

This article is the first of a three-part series on food production in the nation’s prisons and will focus on prison sales to private businesses. The next stories will focus on sales within the public sector and, then, working conditions and wages in prison jobs.

The Counter obtained records of food-related business relationships between prisons and private companies in Colorado, Louisiana, Ohio, South Carolina, and Wyoming, via public records requests. Our investigation reveals previously underreported ties between food companies and prison industries. For this story, we’ve relied on additional information from Florida, which supplies ground meat using prison labor; Arizona, which contracts with local farms and manufacturing plants to send incarcerated people to work offsite; and Tennessee, which sells grain to Cargill.

The notion of work as punishment has enabled prison administrators to compel incarcerated people to work on farms and in dairies for low or no pay and without basic labor protections, sometimes in service of secretive billionaires they’ll never meet. Not unlike undocumented immigrant farm workers who fear advocating for better pay and working conditions might lead to deportation, people who work in U.S. prisons have little power to make things better.

The buyers: A dairy conglomerate, gourmet steak producers, and a tropical- fish supplier. Plus, an extraordinary Covid workaround.

Leprino is far from the only food business that purchases ingredients from prisons. Dairy Farmers of America, the conglomerate that markets about 30 percent of the raw milk produced in the United States and manufactures brands including Borden, T.G. Lee, Plugrá, and Breakstone’s butter, purchased more than $10.5 million worth of milk from prisons in Colorado and South Carolina from 2017 to 2020. Until months ago, incarcerated people in Ohio carved beef for a company that sells its Wagyu steak at gourmet retailer Balducci’s, as well as for several local farms and ranches. People in Colorado prisons have grown grapes for an award-winning winery, while those imprisoned in Arizona have worked in food manufacturing facilities that supply pre-made salads for companies that serve major retailers such as Walmart, Kroger, and Ralph’s. And in Louisiana, prison-raised cattle are sold on the open market at auction.

It’s generally illegal to sell prison-manufactured goods across state lines except through one small federal program. But that rule has long included an exception for agricultural goods. Today, the loophole has mushroomed into a multimillion-dollar industry, a quiet set of business relationships that slip prison-grown food products into restaurant menus and onto supermarket shelves undetected. Someone imprisoned in Arizona might work at a canning plant that produces taco sauce sold at Safeway and on Amazon, but the jar doesn’t come with a “packaged in prison” label or other disclosure.

In some cases, the trail goes cold long before it’s possible to link prison food buyers with the retailers and restaurants they later supply. A single distributor, Tropaquatics, Inc., buys virtually all the prison-farmed tilapia from both Colorado and Wyoming, totaling more than $650,000 in purchases over the last three years. Yet the company advertises itself primarily as a pet fish supplier, and owner Larry Heimlicher declined to disclose his retail customers, saying only that they included “ethnic supermarkets,” and that he is ending his relationship with CCi. The corporations that purchase food produced in prison may not even know where it winds up: “In terms of tracing that grain, crops from Tennessee are commingled with grain from other locations and loaded onto vessels at various export terminals to ship to locations all over the world,” a spokesperson for Cargill wrote in an email, adding that grains produced from Tennessee prisons make up a “very small amount” of the company’s total U.S. volume.

“The corporations that purchase food produced in prison may not even know where it winds up.”

Lucrative business relationships can set up incentive structures that encourage prison management to put clients’ needs above incarcerated people’s health. In March 2020, as the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry swiftly shut down its o!-site labor partnerships to prevent the spread of Covid-19, its biggest customer, egg producer Hickman’s Family Farms (a relationship that brought in $7 million in fiscal year 2020), balked at the prospect of losing many of its workers. The company argued in a letter that it should be allowed to continue using such labor throughout the pandemic, claiming its egg processing operations counted as “critical operations.”

The Arizona Department of Corrections granted Hickman’s an extraordinary exception: It agreed to allow the egg company to continue to employ 140 incarcerated women throughout the public health emergency, going so far as to let Hickman’s house them onsite in a 6,000-foot warehouse. Arizona Correctional Industries even built and delivered bunk beds for the makeshi# housing. By the summer, at least five residents had contracted Covid-19.

How is this legal? The logic and law of prison labor

Prison labor is far from the only category of coerced labor in the United States, sociologist Erin Hatton demonstrates in the book Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment. People who participate in welfare programs have to prove they’re working or looking for work in order to continue receiving aid. College athletes and graduate students fit into this category too, Hatton argues, because their employers wield so much power in determining their future success or failure.

Prison industries often argue that the jobs they offer are rehabilitative—that they provide meaningful job training, give incarcerated people a sense of purpose, and prepare people for life after prison. But, Hatton argues in the paper Punishment and Society, prison labor is punishment first and foremost. The same is true for so-called “workfare,” or policies that require people who rely on the safety net to prove they spend many hours a week working or looking for work, she writes. While Hatton acknowledges that the work may offer some ancillary benefits, “their labor is legally, socially, and institutionally constructed as punitive.” She goes on to identify the most punitive aspect of these jobs: poor pay, lack of autonomy, and mistreatment at work.

“Like all Americans, prisoners are culturally expected to fulfill a moral obligation to work, the shirking of which— perceived or real—has long been used to justify exclusion from the rights of productive citizenship,” Hatton writes in Coerced.

When the 13th Amendment to the Constitution banned slavery in 1865, the text included a clause allowing “involuntary servitude” as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” “As the 13th Amendment passed, was anybody thinking of a burgeoning prison industry? No,” said Caroline M. Kisiel, historian and associate professor at DePaul University.

The punishment carveout facilitated a pernicious postwar labor dynamic. Southern states implemented Black Codes, discriminatory laws that often required Black citizens to work or show proof of work or be jailed. Those laws fueled the growth of the convict leasing system, which hired out people in prisons and jails to work on railroads, mines, plantations, and domestic service, often in dangerous conditions.

Unions allied against the practice of convict leasing. They argued that their members could not compete with low- cost prison labor. These dynamics became even more pronounced as the Great Depression put many out of work, said Stian Rice, visiting assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

“Southern Black Codes required Black citizens to work or show proof of work or be jailed.”

“The real conversation is between—to put it bluntly— prominent segments of white society arguing over what’s the best economic measure to take. The fact that [prison labor] was a brutal, extremely violent kind of arrangement ... does not play into the conversation,” said Rice.

Congress passed the Ashurst-Sumners Act in 1935, which prohibited the interstate sale of goods made using prison labor, but included an exception for agricultural products. Prisoners could still work on farms and manufacture goods; those goods just couldn’t be sold across state lines. (For a brief period of time in the 1930s, some prison-made goods were labeled as such.)

Legislators approved an additional workaround for the ban on the trade of manufactured goods when Congress authorized the development of the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) in 1979. PIECP is a relatively small program—it employed just under 5,400 incarcerated workers in the first quarter of 2020—that allows correctional industries to partner with private companies to employ incarcerated workers. It also requires that companies pay a prevailing wage, a rate based at or above minimum wage on expected compensation for similar nearby jobs. Yet workers who participate in PIECP do not take home their full wages: States are allowed to garnish up to 80 percent for room and board, taxes, and other expenses. Again, Rice said, the concern about wages was not so much about the rights of incarcerated workers—rather, lawmakers wanted to ensure prison labor did not undercut the free market.

The landscape changed again in the 2010s, as states began passing strict immigration laws that threatened to deter undocumented workers from seeking farm jobs. “There is this real rush to get prison labor out there in a way that isn’t illegal, even if it is, you know, vaguely similar to what was going on in the 1880s,” Rice said. Idaho soon passed its own version of PIECP, legislation that allowed farms to contract with state correctional industries to hire prison labor.

From prison to plate

If these forms of carceral agriculture in the United States are at least 150 years old, the secrecy with which products reach our plates is a bit newer. A few years ago, Colorado Correctional Industries did not hide the fact that its tilapia was sold at Whole Foods Market. Then, in 2015, organizer Michael Allen, founder of End Mass Incarceration Houston, led a protest accusing the company of exploitative practices, citing the low wages of people in prison in Colorado.

At the time, Whole Foods said it liked the idea of supporting suppliers who “found a way to be a part of paid, rehabilitative work being done by inmates,” and that it believed the work would help people get back on their feet after prison. But it wanted to acknowledge its customers’ discomfort with Whole Foods sourcing products that were grown using incarcerated labor. The company announced its intention to stop selling foods made with prison labor. The change also impacted goat cheese maker Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy, which also sourced goat’s milk from Colorado Correctional Industries.

Chuck Hellmer, president and general manager of Haystack Mountain, said Whole Foods’ decision reduced the company’s sales numbers “tremendously.” He said CCi’s goat dairy has since shuttered, but he still stands by its programs. “I asked a lot of questions of CCi, and after the additional analysis and research that I did, I was even more strongly in favor of using CCi. ... The program, I would say, is probably a model program for the rest of the country.” CCi did not respond to a list of questions by press time.

“Whole Foods announced its intention to stop selling foods made with prison labor.”

The Whole Foods dustup may have changed one company’s purchasing policies, but it did not

fundamentally lift wages for people who work in prison jobs, as Allen had intended. Instead, the distributors who buy CCi tilapia and trout simply stopped disclosing the names of their restaurant and retail clients. Tropaquatics, Inc., declined to provide details about its customers. A spokesperson for Frontier Trout Ranch, which has purchased at least $127,000 worth of tilapia and trout produced by CCi, also declined to be interviewed for this story, citing negative impact from past press coverage of the program. A spokesperson for Colorado Correctional Industries said in an email that it plans to wind down its tilapia operation by September.

It’s unclear how strictly Whole Foods continued to enforce the policy. Dawn Jump, founder of Jumping Good Goat Dairy, also sourced goat milk from CCi for a time, though she said she permanently switched suppliers in spring 2017. Whole Foods carried one of her cheeses o! and on around that time, but she could not immediately say whether the company’s purchases overlapped with her sourcing from the prison dairy. “They didn’t tell us anything about that being against their rules. It was never brought up as a topic of conversation, and they did not encourage me to do anything different,” she said.

A spokesperson for Whole Foods said that the grocery chain does not sell products made with the use of prison labor, adding that its Supplier Code of Conduct was updated to prohibit the practice in April 2016.

Yet Whole Foods also sells products like Plugrá butter made by Dairy Farmers of America, which has recently purchased over $10 million in milk from prisons in two states. Dairy Farmers of America did not respond to queries about how it used milk purchased from South Carolina and Colorado corrections.

Even though Allen’s protest led to Whole Foods dropping CCi products, press coverage at the time was not all negative. An NPR reporter who visited CCi’s goat farm in 2017 called it “beautiful.” Currently and formerly incarcerated workers interviewed for the story said they liked working on the farm. With its small operations and focus on specialty products—wine grapes, bu!alo milk, tilapia, goat milk—visitors to the farm may have had difficulty finding fault with CCi programs.

“Personally, I think there was kind of an intersection between this modern ... romanticization of agriculture, where we’re watching documentaries about people leaving their lawyer jobs and opening up a farm someplace,” Rice said. “At the same time, you have this imagination of prisoners getting out of their cold, dark cells and into nature and doing work with their hands. And isn’t that lovely?” he added.

“It sort of puts a wet blanket on this idea that there is a whole lot of violence that’s going on.”

“Currently and formerly incarcerated workers interviewed for the story said they liked working on the farm.”

In a series of interviews and surveys by the nonprofit Impact Justice for a six-part report on food in prisons, formerly incarcerated people reported widely varied experiences working in food production. In some cases, people said they received helpful training, enjoyed the fresh air, and snacked on food they grew. In other places, they found the jobs extremely difficult and were not allowed to eat the food they produced. “I would also say that, if people aren’t being paid fair wages for their labor, that’s problematic in and of itself. But in terms of the actual experience, I think it probably varies from person to person,” said Leslie Soble, lead researcher on the study.

If Colorado’s “beautiful” prison farming operation lends itself to “back to the land” rehabilitative farming narratives, conditions at Louisiana State Penitentiary disrupt such daydreams. The facility is sited on a former plantation, where enslaved people harvested food. Today, nearly three-fourths of those housed at “Angola” are Black, and most are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, ProPublica reported last year. Notorious for its history of violence and, more recently, inadequate medical care, Angola came under fire last year for “deadly neglect” and dysfunctional care during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Prisoners at Angola can be legally forced to work once cleared by a medical doctor, and most are required to perform field work, like harvesting soybeans and corn for at least 90 days upon arrival. For long hours in the hot sun, they earn as little as 4 cents per hour. People assigned to field work have complained of inadequate drinking water, which the state has disputed, and of armed guards patrolling the fields. In 2018, prisoners organized a work stoppage and published a list of demands, including “class rooms for our education and rehabilitation, not slavery.” Also, “[w]e are demanding that a national conversation inquiring how state prison farms across the country came to hold hundreds of thousands of people of African descent against their will,” organizers wrote.

Some of the crops produced at Angola are sold on the open market: Between 2017 and 2020, The Counter found that Louis Dreyfus Commodities, an affiliate of the massive Louis Dreyfus Company (which manufactures everything from pet food and biodiesel to orange juice concentrate), purchased $2.4 million worth of shelled corn and soybeans from Louisiana’s Prison Enterprises. According to the Prison Enterprises website, that product was “primarily” grown and harvested at Angola. Louis Dreyfus Company did not respond to questions about how it used corn and soy sourced from Louisiana State Penitentiary.

Prison Enterprises also sells livestock on the open market. The range herd is housed at five separate state correctional facilities, though Angola is the largest by far. Between 2017 and 2020, the state prison enterprises recorded at least $5 million in sales of calves, steers, and heifers through open auctions. It’s difficult to trace them any further: Auction companies handling business on behalf of Prison Enterprises did not respond to interview requests.

“Prisoners in Angola they earn as little as 4 cents per hour.”

In recent years, student groups have organized campaigns to sever ties between state correctional industries, which build dorm furniture, and public universities. Allen’s protest against Whole Foods followed a similar trajectory: The loss of lucrative contracts, his logic went, might encourage prison operators to raise wages.

But the protest didn’t result in minimum wage policies for people in prison in Colorado, a broad shrinkage of the prison system, or even a shuttering of the tilapia operation he targeted. In general, boycotting food companies that purchase food from prisons may ultimately have little impact on the labor conditions on prison farms—much less any broader impact on the criminal justice system.

“We can get rid of the milk from the prisons. But so what’s the outcome there?” said James Kilgore, a formerly incarcerated activist and scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “What’s the structural change that comes from not buying milk from the prisons? ... What’s happening to that milk, what’s happening to the people that are there? Is it really disrupting the system?”

“I don’t think you’re going to dismantle mass incarceration one prison product at a time.”

Correction 05/21/2021: A graphic in a previous version of this story inaccurately stated that Cargill owns the brands Egg Beaters and Purina. Cargill sells products under these brand names, but it does not own the brands. We regret the error.

H. Claire Brown is a senior staff writer for The Counter. Her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Intercept and has won awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, the New York Press Club, the Newswomen's Club of New York, and others. A North Carolina native, she now lives in Brooklyn.

This article previously appeared in The Counter and Portside .

https://www.blackagendareport.com/how-c ... ison-labor

Slavery, in whatever manifestation, has always been the means of generating surplus value for the ruling class of any society. It is seldom, if ever, of any benefit to the bulk of society and often a detriment. The ancients could not imagine civilization without slavery because they could not imagine 'high culture' without a leisure class. The means of production as known in those times guaranteed this conclusion. Massively improved productivity puts the lie to this and it remains for social organization to catch up.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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