More Schools Are Ending Contracts With Cops Following Protests Over The Killing Of George Floyd

Legal Issues

from the more-good-news-all-around dept

Putting cops in schools has proven to be a disaster. Treating discipline problems like criminal acts has turned students into criminals and placed vulnerable kids in the hands of sadists who feel force deployment and power flexing are the best responses to common in-school issues.

The latest public response to the killing of an unarmed black man by a white cop has supercharged the debate over police presence in schools. The flash point for these demonstrations acted first. The Minneapolis school board dumped its contract with the police department and at least one state college followed suit.

It’s now happening elsewhere. C.J. Ciaramella reports for Reason that Portland, Oregon’s schools will no longer play host to local police officers.

School resource officers (SROs) will no longer patrol the halls of K–12 public schools in Portland, Oregon—the latest major city to announce, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, that it’s pulling police out of schools.

Portland Mayor Tom Wheeler announced Thursday that the Portland Police Bureau would be disbanding its Youth Services Division and reassigning all its officers. “Leaders must listen and respond to [the] community,” Wheeler tweeted.

The $1 million budget will be distributed to more of the community, supporting counselors and social workers better equipped to handle school disciplinary issues.

The contracts are dominoes. Minneapolis knocked its over and others are following. Reason reports another college — Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts — has also discontinued its partnership with local law enforcement.

And there’s more on the way. Denver, Colorado may be the next major city to end its participation in the school-to-prison pipeline.

From on top of a trailer mounted with massive speakers, Denver Public School Board Secretary Tay Anderson stopped a Black Lives Matter march a few blocks in on Sunday to make an announcement many were hoping for.

“Director Jennifer Bacon (vice president of the school board) and I are proud to announce we have the votes to officially end the contract with DPD (Denver Police Department) and DPS (Denver Public Schools),” Anderson said to cheers and applause. “We still will have safe and welcoming schools for all. It is our time to end the school to prison pipeline with bold actions.”

Prince George, Maryland has already dumped its contracts with cops, citing the numerous negative effects of this unhealthy relationship.

During a virtual budget committee meeting Monday night, members voted to cancel the board’s school resource officer contract with the Prince George’s County Police Department and all other police departments in the county, citing research showing that their presence in schools is often associated with higher rates of suspensions, expulsions, and arrests.

Edmonds, Washington is considering the same thing, although the board seems less inclined to move swiftly or decisively.

At the Edmonds School Board’s June 9 business meeting, the board of directors had a lengthy discussion on whether the district should renew contracts with local law enforcement to provide police officers — known as school resource officers or SROs — on high school campuses. Instead, the board would take time to review whether having SROs on campuses is in the best interest of students’ safety.

There will be more as the weeks go on. Activists are seizing this moment to push for the end of contracts in multiple cities around the nation. It’s going to be pretty difficult for city and school administrators to push back, now that they can’t conveniently ignore the violence perpetrated by police officers on adults. Continuing to allow an occupation now mostly known for biased tactics and excessive force deployment to handle children would be incredibly irresponsible.

Filed Under: george floyd, police, police in schools, school resource officers, sro

Court Cites George Floyd Killing While Denying Immunity To Officers Who Shot A Black Man 22 Times As He Lay On The Ground

Legal Issues

from the scaling-back-an-extra-right dept

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has triggered a shock wave across the country. The nation has seen the full horror of law enforcement’s indifference to the lives of black people, this time personified by Officer Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck. In full view of several citizens’ cameras, the officer choked Floyd to death, leaving his knee on his neck for nearly three minutes after another officer failed to detect a pulse.

Cities are responding to a fact they can no longer ignore. So are some police departments. And the courts are starting to take notice. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied qualified immunity to police officers involved in another killing of a black man, pointing out that this pattern of violence against black citizens has not only been seen by the courts, but will weigh against officers in future civil rights lawsuits. (h/t Matthew Segal)

The opinion [PDF] starts with a concise recounting of the events leading to this lawsuit, delivered with a dryness that does nothing to eliminate the horrific aspects of the officers’ actions.

In 2013, Wayne Jones, a black man experiencing homelessness, was stopped by law enforcement in Martinsburg, West Virginia for walking alongside, rather than on, the sidewalk. By the end of this encounter, Jones would be dead. Armed only with a knife tucked into his sleeve, he was tased four times, hit in the brachial plexus, kicked, and placed in a choke hold. In his final moments, he lay on the ground between a stone wall and a wall of five police officers, who collectively fired 22 bullets.

There are more details about these officers’ actions in the decision, none of which lend themselves to a favorable ruling on their treatment of Wayne Jones.

Staub wrestled Jones to the ground and put him in “a choke hold, just to kind of stop him from resisting.” A loud choking or gurgling sound, which seems to be coming from Jones, is audible on Staub’s audio recorder at this time…

[…]

One officer can be heard loudly calling Jones a “motherf**ker.” At least one officer can be seen kicking Jones as he lay on the ground. Officer Neely tased Jones for a third time, and North then applied “a drive stun without any probes.”

Jones was carrying a knife, but not one he appears to have used against the officers. It was a small knife, rolled up in the sleeve of his shirt. This didn’t stop the cops from insisting Jones was trying to kill or injure them. The recordings seem to indicate Jones was legitimately confused by the officers’ questions and was only attempting to get some straight answers to the officers’ oblique questions. But too many cops seem to view citizens’ questions as a form of resistance and that’s how the officers received Jones’ queries. And they addressed his words with violence.

One homeless black man, carrying a knife in his sleeve — one he seemingly never held in his hands — was extrajudicially killed by a semi-circle of “reasonably scared” officers.

Having learned of the knife, the officers simultaneously drew back approximately five feet. As they moved back, Jones’s left arm dropped lifelessly. Jones was motionless on the ground, laying “with his right side on the ground” and his “right elbow . . . on the ground.” All five officers drew their firearms and formed a semi-circle around the recumbent Jones, who was between the officers and the bookstore wall. The officers ordered Jones to drop the weapon. Jones remained motionless and did not verbally respond. Lehman reported that Jones “did not make any overt acts with the knife towards the officers.” On the night of the incident, Staub similarly reported that as the officers stepped back, Jones “still had the f**king knife in his hand and he wasn’t f**king doing nothing.” Seconds later, the five officers fired a total of 22 rounds at Jones, causing 23 wounds, and killing him where he lay on the sidewalk. Neely fired the first shot, but the next rounds immediately followed. Most of the bullets entered Jones’s back and buttocks. Jones died shortly before midnight.

It appears at least one cop recognized they had overreacted. But there was no effort made to save Jones’ life. Instead, the officers decided to save their careers.

In the immediate aftermath on the scene, one or two of the shooting officers called for emergency medical services, but none of them rendered aid themselves. When searching Jones’s lifeless body, officers found a small fixed blade knife tucked into his right sleeve. After being told that state police were coming to investigate, officers can be heard saying that the incident would be a “cluster” and that they were going to “have to gather some f**king story.”

Although the cops testified one of them was stabbed by Jones, the court says the facts don’t exactly lend themselves to this testimony. And even if Jones had attacked one of them, he was still “secured” by the five officers, which means the force deployed by the officers was excessive.

Given the relatively inaccessible location of the knife, and the physical inability to wield it given his position on the ground, the number of officers on Jones, and Jones’s physical state by this time, it would be particularly reasonable to find that Jones was secured while still armed.

The obvious retort is that a suspect who stabs an officer is not secured. But even given that admission, there remains a genuine question of fact as to whether Jones was secured at any point after Staub felt the knife, and before the officers simultaneously backed away. Staub called out multiple times that Jones had a knife, and another officer yelled to get back, all before the officers retreated. To be sure, the incident moved quickly. But during all of this, Jones was still on the ground, with five officers on him. A jury could reasonably find that Jones was secured before the officers backed away, and that the officers could have disarmed Jones and handcuffed him, rather than simultaneously release him.

Nothing about the killing was justified.

[T]he fact that Jones did not move or respond corroborates that he was incapacitated, and the reasonable officer would have recognized that fact. Indeed, Lehman reported that Jones “did not make any overt acts with the knife towards the officers,” and Staub reported that Jones “wasn’t f**king doing nothing.” And yet five officers wasted no time, giving Jones mere seconds to comply before firing. The officers shouting “drop the knife” seconds before shooting him was, at best, farcical because it was impossible for an incapacitated person to drop a knife tucked into his sleeve.

The court also takes a moment to slam cop-speak — the mangling of English that turns absolutely nothing at all into justifications for searches, seizures, and the taking of citizens’ lives.

According to North, Jones’s hands were “about to go up,” and he “took that as [Jones] may try to assault him.” Unless he was clairvoyant, North could not have known that Jones’s hands were “about” to be raised.

The closing paragraph addresses the current civil unrest and its roots in cop behavior — something that has been deterred not at all by the routine application of qualified immunity to violent cops who escalate non-threatening situations until they feel deadly force can be deployed. The court’s message to the officers in this case extends to all law enforcement officers in its jurisdiction: this level of violence in response to minimal “threats” isn’t acceptable.

Wayne Jones was killed just over one year before the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of Michael Brown would once again draw national scrutiny to police shootings of black people in the United States. Seven years later, we are asked to decide whether it was clearly established that five officers could not shoot a man 22 times as he lay motionless on the ground. Although we recognize that our police officers are often asked to make split-second decisions, we expect them to do so with respect for the dignity and worth of black lives. Before the ink dried on this opinion, the FBI opened an investigation into yet another death of a black man at the hands of police, this time George Floyd in Minneapolis. This has to stop. To award qualified immunity at the summary judgment stage in this case would signal absolute immunity for fear-based use of deadly force, which we cannot accept.

Hopefully this points to a shift in the court’s thinking. Maybe the Fourth (and hopefully other circuits) will consider more than simply whether or not precedent has declared this particular violation of rights unconstitutional. This decision says the court is considering both prongs of the qualified immunity argument. If so, this will stop the steady creep of qualified immunity to cover nearly any action taken by cops. The other prong — whether or not the actions were reasonable — has been ignored too often for far too long. This decision places the officers’ actions in the context of today’s civil unrest and recognizes it is part of the problem.

Filed Under: 4th circuit, george floyd, qualified immunity

New York Legislators Dump Law That Allowed PDs To Withhold Officers' Disciplinary Records

Legal Issues

from the it's-a-shame-it-took-another-killing-by-cops-to-make-this-happen dept

More than 40 years after a law went on the books in New York allowing cops, firefighters, and corrections officers to have their disciplinary records hidden from the public, the NYPD suddenly decided to start following the law.

For years, the NYPD gave journalists access to “Personnel Orders,” which detailed the outcomes of closed internal investigations. They were posted on a clipboard in the NYPD’s public information office, making them as public as any record can be. In 2016, the NYPD suddenly decided it was no longer going to share these with the public, citing (I’m not even kidding) a need to “save paper.”

Another, less laughable explanation was later given by Deputy Chief Ed Mullen. The NYPD spokesman said someone in the PD’s legal bureau had re-read the 1976 law and realized the NYPD had no obligation to turn over this info to the public. So it stopped. (On the other hand, the NYPD is indebted to the public to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements every year, so maybe it would have made sense to let this four-decade oversight continue.)

The NYPD seized the moment four decades too late, further shielding its officers from accountability. This decision to stop being even slightly open about officer discipline followed a few high profile killings of citizens by officers — most notably Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a police officer during an arrest.

For almost a half-decade, city legislators have been trying to get the law — known simply as “50-a” — repealed. Some state officials, including Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, have suggested they’re up for some limited reform, but neither of these two have expressed support for a repeal of the law.

It looks as though both officials will get the repeal they never really wanted. And if they want to thank anyone for this outcome, they can thank all the bad cops in America, starting with Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

The Democrat-led Legislature approved the long-stalled reform of the statute — which is routinely used to keep the public from learning about police misconduct and disciplinary actions taken against officers — in response to protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a black Minnesota man who was killed when a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

[…]

The bill passed along party lines in the Senate, 40-22, with all Republicans voting against the measure. The Assembly approved the measure 101-43 Tuesday evening, also along party lines.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has already promised to sign the bill, which will erase 50-a from the books. That hasn’t made the state’s police unions very happy. Pat Lynch — president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — claims the release of records will endanger the lives of cops, even with personal information (address, phone numbers, etc.) redacted.

Then there’s this bizarre statement, which suggests a bunch of cops feel informing the public about misconduct is unfair to the brave men and women committing the misconduct.

A coalition of law enforcement groups said in a statement Monday that releasing records, including complaints, could leave officers facing “unavoidable and irreparable harm to reputation and livelihood.”

Yeah. Like a public permanent record. Imagine being this obtuse about your job and your obligations to the public. Then imagine doing it while your fellow officers release tons of personal info about anyone ever booked into a jail… or extrajudicially killed by an officer. These are your nation’s law enforcement reps, ladies and gentleman. And in the face of incremental accountability improvements, they’re issuing statements so self-serving that those issuing them are blind to the inherent stupidity of their claims.

Filed Under: disciplinary records, new york, police

Another 91 Cases Linked To Lying Houston Cop Involved In A Botched Drug Raid Have Been Dismissed

Legal Issues

from the lies-are-useful-right-up-until-they-aren't dept

The fallout continues from a no-knock raid in Houston that left the two homeowners dead. The warrant was predicated on statements/controlled buys “performed” by a nonexistent informant using drugs apparently “found” in Officer Gerald Goines’ squad car. What was supposed to be the takedown of a dangerous heroin dealer was actually the killing of two people who possessed no heroin. Instead, investigators found personal use amounts of cocaine and marijuana, and none of the drugs or weapons Officer Goines claimed would be found at the residence in his warrant application.

Since then, it has been proven that sworn officer Gerald Goines is less trustworthy than the public he was supposed to protect. Goines is now facing a handful of state and federal charges related to the unjustified no-knock raid that ended with two Houston citizens dead.

It often appears that few police officers — especially those in drug units — want to earn the public’s trust. All they want is a bunch of easy wins. Forced to confront the dirty dealings of a few dirty cops, the local prosecutor’s office is voluntarily giving up a bunch of their easy wins. Here’s Jacob Sullum of Reason with more details:

Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Kim Ogg plans to support the reversal of “at least 91” more convictions in cases involving Gerald Goines, the former Houston narcotics officer whose fraudulent search warrant affidavit led to the January 2019 drug raid that killed Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. Ogg’s office had already backed the dismissal of 73 cases initiated by Goines, who faces state murder charges and federal civil rights charges in connection with the deadly invasion of the middle-aged couple’s house on Harding Street.

When there’s a War (on Drugs) going on, there’s apparently no time to apprise yourself of the details. You just assume the men on the street know what they’re doing. When it becomes apparent they don’t, you respond appropriately. But don’t read this as another 91 complete dismissals. It isn’t. The DA’s office on supports “reversals” of convictions and has recommended courts to appoint legal reps for those targeted by Officer Goines’ investigations. Some convictions may still end up being upheld.

The better news is this: the DA’s office recognizes the dirtiness of Officer Goine’s police work.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that every conviction in which Goines was the major player, for the past 11 years, needs to be flipped,” said Josh Reiss, chief of the Post-Conviction Writs Division at Ogg’s office. “The number of cases may grow.”

“May” = “will.” Cops on the drug front have been given free rein for years. That only a few have ended up as disgraced (and criminally-charged) as Goines is nothing more than the dice rolling the right way. The Drug War has given us the Third Party Doctrine abuses and pets telling cops it’s ok to engage in warrantless searches. It has given us the legally-blessed road piracy that is “civil asset forfeiture” and a large number of “acceptable” civil rights violations. And it has given us rogue officers like Goines, who are never given any direct oversight until officers kill someone without justification. The ends justify the means.

Filed Under: drug raid, gerald goines, houston, lies, lying police, police

Amazon Senses US Isn't Currently Receptive To Its Cop Tech, Puts Rekognition On Mothballs For A Year

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the choosing-your-battles dept

Amazon has spent a few years courting cops with its proprietary facial recognition tech. Documents obtained by the ACLU in 2018 showed the supermassive company was seeking to get a cut of law enforcement’s billions by giving them steep discounts on Rekognition, Amazon’s branded surveillance tech.

Unfortunately for Americans who may be subjected to this tech, Amazon’s brand of facial recognition remains unproven. Tests run by the ACLU managed to get several Congressional reps mistaken for criminals. Amazon responded to the false positives by claiming the ACLU didn’t run it at the right accuracy setting. ACLU went with “80% confidence,” which is something the tech allows. Amazon claimed only results obtained at the “95% confidence” setting mattered, even though the company does not tell law enforcement to only run Rekognition at that setting.

Amazon has taken a lot of criticism for its tech and its law enforcement hard-sell. It has also taken heat for Rekognition’s apparent faults. But it has basically responded with silence. And it had a chance to prove its tech could actually recognize faces, but it chose to sit out NIST’s study of more than 80 facial recognition algorithms. Rekognition’s accuracy remains unproven.

At long last, Amazon has put its finger to the wind. And it has discovered the air is on fire. Giving cops more surveillance tech is about as popular as most cops at the moment. Rekognition may not be able to accurately recognize faces, but Amazon seems to have a handle on recognizing the obvious: now is not the time for more surveillance tech. From Amazon’s blog:

We’re implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. We will continue to allow organizations like Thorn, the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and Marinus Analytics to use Amazon Rekognition to help rescue human trafficking victims and reunite missing children with their families.

There are a couple of caveats here: the moratorium does not say it applies to other government users that may not be strictly law enforcement agencies. And the moratorium is being put in place to give Congress time to act. Congress may not get anything done in the next year, which means Rekognition could be opened up for business with no meaningful changes.

Then there’s this:

We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.

First off, Amazon has hardly been the most vocal advocate of stronger facial recognition tech regulations. Second, this sort of largesse should always be viewed skeptically. When a dominant player in the field calls for more regulation, it’s usually with an eye on ensuring it remains dominant. Demanding Congress do something mainly means “do something that our competitors won’t be able to comply with.” Facial recognition is a crowded field. NIST’s study examined 89 different algorithms. Getting Congress to clear out the field a bit is always helpful.

But there’s hardly any downside there. We need fewer purveyors of surveillance tech, not more. If it eliminates a few Clearviews, we’re probably all better off. But all the same, be wary of large companies calling for more regulation. It usually means they’re looking to harm their competitors, rather than become more ethical themselves.

Filed Under: facial recognition, moratorium, police, privacy, regulations, rekognition
Companies: amazon

Behind Every Terrible Police Officer Is An Even Worse Police Union Rep

Failures

from the get-in-the-sea,-Bob-Kroll dept

The biggest impediments to serious police reform are the shields erected around them, preventing officers from being held responsible for just about anything. Officer Derek Chauvin, whose brutal killing of a black man has provoked a national civil uprising, may be criminally charged at the moment. But that’s no guarantee he won’t end up a cop again, even if he ends up convicted.

Whitewashing police misconduct is par for the course. Police unions — which have little in common with the labor unions that have put some employees on more equal ground with their employers — have ensured officers are extended a ton of extra rights to help them escape accountability for their abuses of power. The average perp is dragged downtown and sweated down by interrogators until they crack. The average cop accused of a crime usually has a day or two free from tough questions to get their story straight. They also have union-appointed legal reps at their disposal and a contractual burial of paperwork detailing their previous misdeeds. Should they manage to somehow get fired, they head directly into arbitration, arguing for their reinstatement against city officials who have to work with at least one arm legally tied behind their back.

The Minneapolis PD is no exception. Its union is powerful. And it’s led by someone on par with those fronting the NYPD’s police unions — the unions that have routinely disparaged the public, the press, and city leaders for daring to criticize any officers’ actions.

Police Officers Federation of Minnesota leader Bob Kroll may not be as nationally famous as Pat Lynch or Ed Mullins. But he is locally infamous as the face of police misconduct — a man who aligns himself with President Trump and his glorification of cops and their violence. Melissa Segura has written a piece about Bob Kroll’s involvement in making the Minneapolis PD worse (along with the general terribleness of police unions), but my first exposure to Bob Kroll’s awfulness came via a St. Paul (MN) native and former coworker/current friend of mine, who’s living only miles away from the epicenter of the current civil unrest.

As is pointed out by my friend and BuzzFeed, the city tried to curb the baser instincts of officers by steering them away from training that teaches them to treat everyone they run into as a violent threat. For years, a former cop has been traveling the country putting officers into the “warrior” mindset, delivering hideous guidance and advice, like promising officers the best sex they’ll ever have will follow their killing of a citizen.

More than a year before a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pinned George Floyd to the ground in a knee chokehold, Mayor Jacob Frey banned “warrior” training for the city’s police force.

Private trainers across the country host seminars, frequently at taxpayer expense, teaching “killology” and pushing the notion that if officers aren’t willing to “snuff out a life” then they should “consider another line of work.” Frey explained that this type of training — which has accompanied the increasing militarization of the police over the last few decades — undermined the community-based policing he wanted the city to adopt after a string of high-profile killings in the region.

But then the police union stepped in.

The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis worked out a deal with a company to offer warrior training. For free. For as long as Frey was mayor.

Steering clear of training that exacerbates current law enforcement issues would have a positive effect on cops and their relationship to the people they serve. But that’s unacceptable, according to the Minneapolis police union and its leader. Instead, Kroll sends cops out on the union’s tab to partake in particularly toxic masculinity, allowing them to fully embrace the worst aspects of their personalities as some sort of law enforcement “tool.”

Every dues-paying cop knows the benefits of this relationship. It means they have an always-available legal defense fund they can dip into. They know their trail of destruction cannot be used against them during current investigations. And they know the public can do almost nothing about, since police unions tend to wield more power than their oversight, whether it’s city governments or independent oversight boards.

While we understand law enforcement agencies are arms of the city governments they ostensibly serve, we also expect them to — at least publicly — maintain some sort of political agnosticism. We don’t want cops pulling us over because we’ve bumper-stickered our support for candidates they don’t like across the back of our cars. We also want to believe they’re not aligning themselves with any ideology that might result in inequitable treatment of the policed. That ship has sailed, ladies and gentleman. The cops in Minneapolis have boldly — and very publicly — said they’re solidly supportive of the powers that be.

The Minneapolis chapter sold “Cops for Trump” T-shirts on its website, and national police unions have publicly endorsed Trump.

This followed another public endorsement of Trump by union leader Bob Kroll, who appeared onstage with Trump during a rally.

Kroll, the president of the Minneapolis Police Federation, wore a bright red “Cops for Trump” T-shirt, and spoke at Target Center about how the president supports police departments across the country as they face scrutiny following years of high-profile police shootings.

“The Obama administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable,” Kroll said. “The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around … he decided to start let cops do their job, put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of (on) us.”

And, as if Kroll’s relationship with the public wasn’t screwed up enough, there’s another aspect to his life that suggests some of the local press may be hesitant to engage in criticism of the Minneapolis PD. Kroll will offer controversial (or bigoted) comments on just about anything that happens to mildly annoy him. But he won’t talk about being literally married to the local press.

[Kroll] came under fire after reportedly suggesting that then-U. S. Rep. Keith Ellison was a terrorist. Another time, he was suspended after being accused of using a homophobic slur about a gay aide to former Mayor R.T. Rybak. Both episodes, which Kroll continues to deny happened as reported, were cited in a 2007 federal lawsuit brought by five black officers, including Arradondo, as examples of institutional racism within the department’s ranks.

Like many cops, Kroll keeps his private life private, particularly his marriage to WCCO-TV reporter Liz Collin. He refused to discuss the subject — going as far as saying he’d no longer talk to the Star Tribune if it reported they were married. He said he was concerned it would negatively affect her career.

Kroll runs an organization that wields more power than the people charged with controlling the officers he represents. The negative pasts of cops are wiped away by boilerplate. And since an officer’s past can’t be used against them during current investigations, fewer and fewer complaints end up sustained as time goes on. The internal investigation process is self-defeating, thanks to the union’s intervention.

Minneapolis’s contract, similar to others, states that “investigations into an employee’s conduct which do not result in the imposition of discipline shall not be entered into the employee’s official personnel file.” Translation: Since only around 1% of complaints adjudicated since 2012 have resulted in an officer being disciplined, city records show, most complaints will be erased.

There are shades of qualified immunity (another large impediment to police reform) in the union contract. If complaints can’t be sustained — and an officer’s pattern of conduct rendered irrelevant — it makes it almost impossible for investigators to prove any misconduct was either part of a pattern or previously shown to be a violation of policy.

“Because the city never disciplines anybody, any discipline is inconsistent with past practice,” [activist Dave Bicking] said, referring to the common practice of basing decisions on past precedent. “You can’t discipline now because you’ve never disciplined before. It’s a real Catch-22.”

The end result is an officer killing an unresistant person in broad daylight in front of several cameras while three other officers joined in. This is why no officer moved to stop Chauvin from performing his dangerous restraint technique, even after it had already determined George Floyd was no longer responsive and no pulse could be detected.

If you want to change policing, you have to start with the entities that allow officers to indulge in their worst excesses. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear any city is strong enough to stand up against police unions. Playing hardball with contracts makes city leaders appear soft on crime and most tend to steer very clear of anything that might provoke a strike or work slowdown. But it appears other unions — ones whose worst excesses rarely result in their employees killing other people — are sick of police unions and their bullshit.

“Bob is the president and what I believe is he really perpetuates a culture of violence towards people of our community, members of the black community and really all people of color,” said Bill McCarthy, president of Minnesota AFL-CIO, which represents thousands of workers across the state. “He’s setting the tone, he’s setting this culture of violence against his citizenry among the ranks and so he needs to go.”

[…]

Education Minnesota, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals, AFSCME Council 5, SEIU Minnesota, and the Minnesota Nurses Association have now all issued their own statements in support of the AFL-CIO.

This may possibly end with Bob Kroll resigning or being forced out. But the union will remain. And Kroll’s replacement will likely be someone just as willing to shield officers from their destructive acts. Until that entity is gone — or rendered mostly powerless — the abuses that have set this nation on fire will continue.

Filed Under: bob kroll, killology, minneapolis pd, police, police unions
Companies: police officers federation of minnesota

Trump, DOJ Claim ANTIFA, Other Extremists Are Hijacking Protests. DOJ Filings Show No Link To Outside Groups.

Too Much Free Time

from the all-narrative,-no-facts dept

The Trump Administration has decided to give cops a pass on killing black people. Wait. Hear me out. The Blue Lives Matter administration began its term by declaring war on the general public if it refused to lick boot properly. And now ANTIFA is behind the riots and looting seen around the country.

On June 9th, the President tweeted that the elderly man shoved to the ground by Buffalo (NY) police officers could be an “ANTIFA provocateur.” The president cited facts not in evidence: a One America News piece of speculative fiction delivered by its in-house double agent — a reporter who also has written for Russian state-affiliated media outfit, Sputnik.

Bill Barr echoed these sentiments, claiming violent extremists were infiltrating protests, apparently making the underlying protests unmeaningful.

With the rioting that is occurring in many of our cities around the country, the voices of peaceful and legitimate protests have been hijacked by violent radical elements. Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent, and extremist agenda.’

Barr said that there is evidence that those extremists include Antifa and other groups of different political persuasions, as well as “foreign actors playing all sides to exacerbate the violence.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray elaborated on this, noting that “these individuals have set out to sow discord and upheaval.”

This echoed what a senior Justice Department official told Fox News Wednesday about how the feds have seen signs of “very organized” coordination from “professional” agitators, some linked to Antifa.

The DOJ may be publicly supporting these wild-ass claims by administration officials (one of which is the President of the United States), but there’s nothing in the paperwork to support these allegations. The front mouths may be frothing about ANTIFA hijackings but for all their efforts, they haven’t found anything to corroborate their wishful thinking. Ryan Lucas of NPR has the receipts.

NPR has reviewed court documents of 51 individuals facing federal charges in connection with the unrest. As of Tuesday morning, none is alleged to have links to the antifa movement.

Of the cases brought so far, 20 involve allegations related to arson; 16 involve the illegal possession of a firearm, more often than not by a felon; another eight people face charges related to inciting a riot or civil disorder.

There is one case linked to an “extremist” movement, though. Three Nevada men facing criminal charges are allegedly part of the “Boogaloo” movement, which advocates — usually impartially — for violently overthrowing the government and engaging in another civil war of us (the people) vs. them (the government).

Unfortunately, this isn’t the narrative that plays to the voting base, so it’s been ignored by Bill Barr and President Trump in order to present protests against police violence as opportunistic anarchism meted out by far left extremists opposed to the current administration. Not that the facts matter. Bill Barr is still insisting this is probably an ANTIFA thing, even when there appears to be no evidence backing his claims.

In his Fox interview, Barr repeated his assertion that an array of extremist groups has been instigating the violence, although he did — as he has repeatedly since the unrest over Floyd’s death began — single out antifa as the primary culprit.

Investigations are, of course, ongoing. And they will presumably continue until the DOJ satisfies Barr’s unofficial directive. That’s why extremely stupid things are happening, like the FBI trying to talk a random twitter user into becoming an informant after he jokingly told the FBI he was a regional ANTIFA director.

There’s a narrative being pushed here and it’s one designed to focus law enforcement attention on the president’s perceived enemies — not anyone currently endangering lives/buildings with criminal acts. It’s meant to recast demonstrations against police violence as fronts for violent extremists. The Trump Administration is trying to neutralize something it can’t ever hope to fully control. Pretending this is all about ANTIFA allows the administration to pretend it isn’t part of the problem.

Filed Under: antifa, arrests, donald trump, propaganda, protests, william barr

Federal Legislators Pitching Massive Police Reform Bill That Would End Qualified Immunity

Legal Issues

from the lots-of-things-cops-won't-like,-all-in-one-place dept

There’s some national-level police reform on the way, courtesy of Democratic lawmakers. Unfortunately, it’s going up against a party that holds a majority in the Senate and has pledged an oath of fealty to our very pro-cop president. This will make it difficult to pass in its unaltered form. And that’s even if it’s given a chance to come up for a vote when it hits the Senate, considering the Senate Majority Leader’s antipathy towards legislation he doesn’t agree with.

That being said, the bill should still be discussed. There’s a non-zero chance it will eventually make its way to a president’s desk. Possibly not this one’s, but there’s an election in November.

The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 [PDF] addresses a number of issues that have turned our nation’s law enforcement agencies into the paragons of unaccountability currently being protested en masse around the nation. The first stop is officers’ legal defenses when sued or prosecuted for violating rights.

There are two parts to this equation and the first is what prosecutors must prove when charging cops with criminal acts. This bill lowers the standard, making it a bit easier for prosecutors to get charges to stick. From the fact sheet [PDF]:

Makes it easier to prosecute offending officers by amending the federal criminal statute to prosecute police misconduct. The mens rea requirement in 18 U.S.C. Section 242 will be amended from “willfulness” to a “recklessness” standard.

The bigger change is one that attacks the Supreme Court’s “qualified immunity” construct. There’s no law to amend here because there was never any law created to grant police officers this extra right. If this bill becomes law, qualified immunity will cease to exist. The bill refers to 42 USC 1983, which is what gives citizens the right to sue officers for violating their rights. Nothing in that law says anything about qualified immunity.

This bill would add something to the law removing the qualified immunity defense constructed by the Supreme Court.

‘‘It shall not be a defense or immunity to any action brought under this section against a local law enforcement officer (as defined in section 2 of the Justice in Policing Act of 2020) or a State correctional officer (as defined in section 1121(b) of title 18, United States 22 Code) that—

‘‘(1) the defendant was acting in good faith, or that the defendant believed, reasonably or otherwise, that his or her conduct was lawful at the time when the conduct was committed; or

‘‘(2) the rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws were not clearly established at the time of their deprivation by the defendant, or that at this time, the state of the law was otherwise such that the defendant could not reasonably have been expected to know whether his or her conduct was lawful.”

Officers will still be able to argue these things, but they won’t be able to move for summary judgment just by saying a couple of magic words. They’ll actually have to submit counterarguments and evidence if they hope to avoid losing a civil rights lawsuit.

Unfortunately, this won’t apply to federal law enforcement officers, who have mysteriously been given a carve-out by this bill. But it will be a good start if it sticks. Taking away officers’ “GET OUT OF LAWSUIT FREE” cards should have an impressive deterrent effect. Being able to prove your actions were justified is far more difficult than simply claiming any “reasonable” officer would have made the same decision under the circumstances.

There are other good reforms in there as well, although the elimination of qualified immunity is clearly the headliner.

The bill would ban chokeholds and carotid holds by federal law enforcement and make federal grants to state and local police dependent on their banning of these restraint methods. It also bans the use of no-knock warrants by federal agents and similarly restricts the distribution of federal funds to local cops who still engage in this practice.

The bill also mandates more training for cops, in hopes of reducing biased or racist policing, and makes de-escalation tactics a requirement in tense situations, rather than the usual hail of bullets in response to any “quickly evolving” interaction. It gives the DOJ more power to conduct investigations of local law enforcement agencies and establishes funding for state Attorney General investigations of problematic police departments.

The bill would also significantly modify the 1033 program, which has turned a lot of police departments into military outfits by showering them with military vehicles, guns, aircraft, and clothing. The bill would ban the transfer of armored vehicles, grenades/launchers, aircraft with “no established commercial flight application,” silencers, and long-range acoustic devices.

Another (theoretically) helpful aspect of the bill is the camera mandate. Most federal officers do not wear body cameras and often ask locals to remove theirs when participating in joint operations. That will no longer be standard practice. The bill mandates use of body cameras by all federal officers and for all marked federal police vehicles to have dashcams.

It’s a comprehensive set of reforms and it’s going to be greeted by loud opposition from all levels of law enforcement. But that’s okay. The louder they yell, the more we know this is the right direction to go. If officers are ever going to start acting like anyone else but them matters, it will take more than tepid half-efforts. Destroying the judicially-created concept of “qualified immunity” should have an immediate effect. Raising the bar for officers to escape civil rights lawsuits has huge deterrent potential. Eliminating some of the worst patterns and practices (dressing up like soldiers, using no-knock warrants, etc.) should disrupt the “soldiers in a war zone” mindset that has contributed to ongoing violence against citizens even as crime levels and killings of police officers remain at historic lows.

The bill has a lot going for it at the moment. There’s plenty of public support for reform right now. Unfortunately, the bill’s opponents have shown a preference for coddling the most powerful man in the world rather than listening to their constituents. If the bill’s momentum stalls, it may take another horrific flash point to reignite its fire.

Filed Under: congress, justice in policing act, police reform, qualified immunity

NYPD Counterterrorism Official Worried About 'Anarchists' Who Are 'Good At Using' Encryption

Overhype

from the lolwut dept

With demonstrations against police brutality occurring all over the nation, cops dealing with protests are saying dumb things about encryption.

The NYPD invited CBS New York to come behold the power of its citywide surveillance system. The network is suitably impressive.

The NYPD’s Aviation Unit and cameras all over the city are the eyes and ears for officers interacting with protesters on the ground. All five boroughs are monitored 24/7 inside the NYPD’s Joint Operations Task Force.

Deputy Chief Ed Mullane was CBS’s host. After detailing the communications network that runs alongside the PD’s cameras and aircraft, reporters spoke to the NYPD’s Counterterrorism unit to see if it couldn’t conjure up some speculation about outsiders engaging in rioting and looting.

Here’s what was reported by NBC New York, which apparently didn’t get to tour the surveillance center.

Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said there is a high level of confidence within the NYPD that these unnamed groups had organized scouts, medics, and supply routes of rocks, bottles and accelerants for breakaway groups to commit vandalism and violence.

Here’s the kicker, delivered by a counterterrorism official who apparently believes this is somehow worth mentioning even though it’s indicative of nothing.

There are strong indicators they planned for violence in advance using at times encrypted communications, he said.

“Using at times encrypted communications.” Oh, you mean like anyone who has WhatsApp on their phone? Anyone using iPhone’s messaging app? Criminal or non-criminal, encrypted communications are pretty common these days.

Here’s a more direct quote, as supplied to CBS:

“One of the challenges we have is that these are loosely put together groups that have become good at using encrypted communication…”

Being “good at” using encrypted communications means little more than being able to use a smartphone. The only plausible reason anyone would bring something like this up in this context is to try to link encryption to criminal activity. There’s no other reason to do this, since NYPD officers themselves use iPhones for work. The NYPD obviously enjoys the benefits of encrypted communications and officers are probably pretty “good at it” by this point.

If encryption is a sign of potential lawlessness, we should perhaps be concerned that the NYPD is looking to encrypt many more of its communications in the near future.

After amNewYork reported this week of the NYPD’s plans to encrypt police radios in 2020, police officials said Thursday that it would likely not move forward with encryption for at least a year.

Moreover, police brass indicated that they are “open to discussion” as to who, outside of the Police Department, would have access to encrypted communications.

This would present a “challenge” to everyone who isn’t an NYPD officer. Journalists would no longer be able to monitor calls and would have to rely solely on post facto press releases and official statements. More concerning is the fact that other entities the NYPD relies on — volunteer fire departments and ambulance services — would not have access either, delaying their response time.

Encryption isn’t just a tool abused by — to use Miller’s exact words — “a number of anarchist groups.” It’s used by regular people all the time. And the NYPD obviously recognizes the benefits of secure communications or it would not be looking to encrypt radio traffic or supply its officers with iPhones.

The United States is a mess right now and it’s going to take a long time to sort things out. What we don’t need is public officials opportunistically muddying the encryption waters with vague assertions about anarchists and secure communications.

Filed Under: anarchists, encryption, going dark, nypd, protests