NY attorney general sues NYPD over Floyd protest response

The progress from Western colonial global expansion, and the construction of American wealth and industry on the backs of enslaved Blacks and Native peoples, followed by the abrupt "emancipation" of the slaves and their exodus from the South to the Northern cities, has led us to our current divided society. Divided by economic inequities and unequal access to social resources, the nation lives in a media dream of social harmony, or did until YouTube set its bed on fire. Now, it is common knowledge that our current system of brutal racist policing and punitive over-incarceration serves the dual purpose of maintaining racial prejudice and the inequities it justifies. Brief yourself on this late-breaking development in American history here.

NY attorney general sues NYPD over Floyd protest response

Postby admin » Fri Jan 15, 2021 6:10 am

NY attorney general sues NYPD over Floyd protest response
by Michael R. Sisak
Associated Press
1/13/21

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This May 31, 2020 file photo shows New York City Police facing off with activists during a protest march in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of the Brooklyn borough of New York. New York's attorney general sued the New York Police Department on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021 alleging the rough treatment of protesters last spring in the wake of George Floyd's killing was part of a longstanding pattern of abuse that stemmed from inadequate training, supervision and discipline. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s attorney general sued the New York Police Department on Thursday, calling the rough treatment of protesters against racial injustice last spring part of a longstanding pattern of abuse that stemmed from inadequate training, supervision and discipline.

Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit includes dozens of examples of alleged misconduct during the spring demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s police killing, including the use of pepper spray and batons on protesters, trapping demonstrators with a technique called kettling and arresting medics and legal observers.

“We found a pattern of deeply concerning and unlawful practices that the NYPD utilized in response to these largely peaceful protests,” James said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit.

James, a Democrat, was tasked by Gov. Andrew Cuomo with investigating whether NYPD officers used excessive force to quell unrest and enforce Mayor Bill de Blasio’s nightly curfew. She issued a preliminary report in July that cited a “clear breakdown of trust between police and the public.”

James is seeking reforms including the appointment of a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD’s policing tactics at future protests and a court order declaring that the policies and practices the department used during the protests were unlawful.


The lawsuit in federal court named the city, de Blasio, police Commissioner Dermot Shea and Chief of Department Terence Monahan as defendants. James criticized de Blasio for saying the use of kettling was justified and Shea for saying that the NYPD “had a plan which was executed nearly flawlessly” when officers aggressive cracked down on protesters on June 4 in the Bronx.

In June, at the height of the protests, de Blasio was accused of misleading the city when he told reporters that he personally saw “no use of force around peaceful protests,” even after officers had been caught on video moving on demonstrators without provocation and bashing them with batons.

De Blasio said he met with James on Wednesday and that they share the goal of pushing for major police reforms, such as implementing recommendations in previous reports on the NYPD’s protest response. De Blasio, also a Democrat, said however that he did not agree a lawsuit was the solution.

“A court process and the added bureaucracy of a federal monitor will not speed up this work,” de Blasio said. “There is no time to waste and we will continue to press forward.”

John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said the department is committed to reform but that James’ lawsuit “doesn’t seem to meet the standard for a federal monitor, and it doesn’t seem to illustrate a pattern and practice” as required.

The head of the city’s largest police union blamed a “failure of New York City’s leadership” for sending officers “to police unprecedented protests and violent riots with no plan, no strategy and no support.”

“They should be forced to answer for the resulting chaos, instead of pointing fingers at cops on the streets and ignoring the criminals who attacked us with bricks and firebombs,” Police Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch said.

James’ lawsuit is the second major legal action to stem from the NYPD’s handling of the protests.

In October, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society sued the city on behalf of protesters who say they were assaulted and abused by police.

Andrew Smith, a Black man who was seen on video getting pepper sprayed in the face by a white officer who’d tore down his facemask, said that officer “showed the world the inadequate training, the violent racist culture of the NYPD when he attacked me when my hands were high up in the air.”


A civil rights organization and a city watchdog agency have also criticized the department’s actions.

Human Rights Watch issued a report in November on the Bronx crackdown and the city’s inspector general issued a report in December that found that the NYPD was caught off guard by the size of the protests and resorted to aggressive tactics that stoked tensions and stifled free speech.

Mark Winston Griffith, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform applauded the lawsuit, saying: “NYPD violence against protesters is a long-standing problem and it’s a credit to Attorney General James that she’s using the power of her office to challenge the systemic lack of accountability for this violence.”

In a joint statement, the NYCLU and Legal Aid Society said: “We hope this will be the beginning of a serious reckoning over police violence and militarized use of force against protesters, especially people of color, and a check on the impunity many officers have come to see as their right.”

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Re: NY attorney general sues NYPD over Floyd protest respons

Postby admin » Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:01 pm

US police three times as likely to use force against leftwing protesters, data finds: Law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests show a clear disparity in responses, new statistics show
by Lois Beckett @loisbeckett
theguardian.com
Thu 14 Jan 2021 01.00 EST

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A demonstrator is pepper sprayed shortly before being arrested during a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, Oregon, on 15 October. Photograph: Marcio José Sánchez/AP

Police in the United States are three times more likely to use force against leftwing protesters than rightwing protesters, according to new data from a non-profit that monitors political violence around the world.

In the past 10 months, US law enforcement agencies have used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and beatings at a much higher percentage at Black Lives Matter demonstrations than at pro-Trump or other rightwing protests.

Law enforcement officers were also more likely to use force against leftwing demonstrators, whether the protests remained peaceful or not.

The statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests across the United States since April 2020, show a clear disparity in how agencies have responded to the historic wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence, compared with demonstrations organized by Trump supporters.

Barack Obama highlighted an earlier version of these statistics on 8 January, arguing that they provided a “useful frame of reference” for understanding Americans’ outrage over the failure of Capitol police to stop a mob of thousands of white Trump supporters from invading and looting the Capitol on 6 January, a response that prompted renewed scrutiny of the level of violence and aggression American police forces use against Black versus white Americans.


The new statistics come from the US Crisis Monitor, a database created this spring by researchers at Princeton and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project (ACLED), a nonprofit that has previously monitored civil unrest in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

The researchers found that the vast majority of the thousands of protests across the United States in the past year have been peaceful, and that most protests by both the left and the right were not met with any violent response by law enforcement.

Police used teargas, rubber bullets, beatings with batons and other force against demonstrators at 511 leftwing protests and 33 rightwing protests since April, according to updated data made public this week.

The Guardian compared the percentage of all demonstrations organized by leftwing and rightwing groups that resulted in the use of force by law enforcement. For leftwing demonstrations, that was about 4.7% of protests, while for rightwing demonstrations, it was about 1.4%, meaning law enforcement was about three times more likely to use force against leftwing versus rightwing protests.

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A protester confronts police officers as Trump supporters riot outside the US Capitol on 6 January. Photograph: Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images

The disparity in police response only grew when comparing peaceful leftwing versus rightwing protests. Looking at the subset of protests in which demonstrators did not engage in any violence, vandalism, or looting, law enforcement officers were about 3.5 times more likely to use force against leftwing protests than rightwing protests, with about 1.8% of peaceful leftwing protests and only half a percent of peaceful rightwing protests met with teargas, rubber bullets or other force from law enforcement.

“Police are not just engaging more because [leftwing protesters] are more violent. They’re engaging more even with peaceful protesters,” Dr Roudabeh Kishi, ACLED’s director of research and innovation, told the Guardian. “That’s the clear trend.”

ACLED’s data also shows that US law enforcement agencies were more likely to intervene in leftwing versus rightwing protests in general, and more likely to use force when they intervened. American law enforcement agencies made arrests or other interventions in 9% of the 10,863 Black Lives Matter and other leftwing protests between 1 April 2020 and 8 January, compared with only 4% of the 2,295 rightwing protests.

Half of the time police made any intervention into a leftwing protest, it involved using violent force, ACLED found, compared with only about a third of the time for rightwing protests.


Overall, 94% of the leftwing demonstrations in the past ten months were peaceful, compared with 96% of the rightwing demonstrations, according to ACLED’s most recently updated data. Kishi cautioned that the process of categorizing demonstrations as peaceful did not take into account whether demonstrators who engaged in violence or property damage were responding to aggressive or violent behavior from the police.

The US Crisis Monitor previously found that, despite Trump’s rhetoric and the intense media coverage of property damage or violence during protests this summer against police violence, more than 93% of Black Lives Matter protests since April had involved no harm to people or damage to property.

The majority of the protests ACLED categorized as leftwing were Black Lives Matter demonstrations, but also included pro-Biden demonstrations; protests by left-leaning groups such as Abolish Ice, the NAACP, or the Democratic Socialists of America; and protests associated with anti-fascists or left-leaning militia groups and street movements.

The rightwing protests included pro-Trump and pro-police demonstrations, including “Blue Lives Matter” rallies; rightwing protests against coronavirus public health restrictions; protests involving QAnon conspiracy theory supporters and others associated with the “Save Our Children” movement; and the “Stop the Steal” rallies promoting Trump’s false claims about his 2020 election loss.
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Re: NY attorney general sues NYPD over Floyd protest respons

Postby admin » Tue Jan 26, 2021 2:25 am

Rev. William Barber Says Biden Admin Must Not Sacrifice Racial & Economic Justice for False Unity
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
JANUARY 25, 2021

We look at how COVID-19 has increased economic inequality with anti-poverty campaigner Reverend William Barber, who delivered the homily at the official inaugural prayer service. Barber says President Joe Biden’s focus on unity cannot come at the expense of major reforms needed to fight systemic racism, poverty, environmental destruction and more. “It cannot be just kumbaya. It has to be fundamental change,” he says. “We cannot be the wealthiest nation in the world, where billionaires in this country made a trillion dollars between May and November during COVID, while poor and low-wealth people of every race, creed, color, sexuality have suffered and continue to suffer.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. To get our daily digest emailed to you, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

As the number of U.S. COVID cases tops 25 million, we turn now to the Reverend William Barber to discuss the challenges ahead for the new Biden administration, from the pandemic to poverty to growing inequality. Reverend Barber is president of Repairers of the Breach, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. He gave the homily at the post-inaugural prayer breakfast as President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris began their first full day in office.

REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: The only way to ensure domestic tranquility is to establish justice. It is pretending that we can address the nation’s wounds with simplistic calls for unity. That is not how we can close the breach. The breach is telling lies when we need truth, greed when we need compassion.

AMY GOODMAN: Part of Reverend Dr. William Barber’s homily at the official inaugural prayer service last Thursday. The Poor People’s Campaign has launched a platform of 14 policy priorities for Biden’s first 100 days in office. Reverend Barber joins us now for more from North Carolina.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Reverend Barber. Well, continue on the theme, why you chose this issue of unity to take on. And you take a very critical look at it. What do you want to see accomplished?

REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, ,thank you so much, Amy, for having me on this morning.

You know, I was asked by the administration to preach this once-every-four-year, interfaith inaugural service, that was streamed out from the National Cathedral. And interestingly enough, they chose the Scripture, Isaiah 58, which is a very powerful Scripture, recognized by Christians, Jews and Muslims. And it actually says that there is a way to be what we call repairers of the breach, repairers of the gaps in societies, the inequities of society. In fact, the Scripture actually says we have to. And the first step is, you have to repent of the sin of how we got here. That Scripture was written in a time of narcissistic, mean, lying and greedy leadership. But then it actually says you can be a repairer of the breach if you stop unfair practices, if you lift from the bottom, if you care for those who have been marginalized by oppressive politics and oppressive leadership.

So, the reason why it was important to say — and I think this is really what the president is saying, if we listen closely — is, unity does not mean unanimous. Unity, in this sense, has to mean enough of us, enough of us who come together and believe there is no way to heal the soul of the nation, i.e. the attitude of the nation, if you don’t heal the sickness in the body of the nation. And that means enough of us have to decide that we have to address systemic racism in all of its forms, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare, the war economy and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism.

So, we cannot say we are unified. It cannot be just kumbaya. It has to be fundamental change. And what I talked about in that sermon was a third Reconstruction and facing the issues that divide us. It is public policy, that we must have enough of us unified to actually move the nation forward. It’s not unanimous. We don’t have to have unanimous. It’s not even unanimity, not everybody. It’s enough of us who believe that we have to go forward.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you spoke to the Biden domestic policy team in December. Did you speak with President Biden, Vice President Harris? I know you hosted president — well, candidate Biden when he was running for president. And what did you say?

REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Yes, we did. He actually — we invited Trump, as well. And President Biden spoke to over 1.4 million people in September, when he was a candidate. And he actually said something very interesting. He said that ending poverty would not be an aspirational thing for his administration, but a theory of change. A theory of change. And we took him seriously at that.

After the election, we didn’t really want to meet with the president and vice president after the election. We wanted them to get their team in place. We wanted to meet with them after they were inaugurated, in the White House, with poor people, economists, lawyers, public health officials and moral leaders.

And what we met with was the domestic policy team, where Ambassador Susan Rice is leading it. And it was a very powerful meeting. I did not just meet with them alone, and Reverend Liz Theoharis. We actually took in 32 people — white Kansas farmers, Black fast-food workers, undocumented persons. We took in people from Appalachia to Alabama, along with lawyers, economists and others. And we presented a 14-point policy for the healing of the nation, a moral and economic agenda for the first 50, 100 days. And what we said were these 14 things. I can do them real quickly.

They must enact comprehensive, free and just COVID relief, that lifts from the bottom. We must have guaranteed quality healthcare, that leads to universal healthcare. We must expand Medicaid immediately, regardless of any preexisting conditions. We must have a raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour immediately. We must update the poverty measures, so we are actually getting a real picture of poverty in this nation. We must guarantee housing for all. We must enact a federal jobs program to build up infrastructure, and investments in public institutions, climate resilience, energy, in poor and low-wealth communities especially. We must protect and expand voting rights now. We must guarantee safe, quality and equitable public education, that supports protections against resegregation of schools. We must have comprehensive and just immigration reform. We must ensure all of the rights of Indigenous people. We must enact fair taxes and repeal the Trump tax cuts. We must use the power of executive orders to undo all the negative executive orders. And namely, we must redirect the bloated Pentagon budget towards the priorities of real national security, like education, healthcare, infrastructure and wages. And we ask for a meeting at the White House with poor and low-wealth people. That’s the agenda that we believe will heal the nation, because it will deal with the sickness in the body of the nation.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this issue of the $15 minimum wage? You do have President Biden signing an executive order to move towards $15 an hour for federal workers. But why just federal workers? And what is the path you actually see forward? And then comment on this $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and the battle it will face, and what message for those, you have, who are opposed to it. Do you think it goes far enough?

REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, in 1963, at the March on Washington, one of the agenda items, in addition to the Civil Rights Act, was a $2 minimum wage, which is transposed to today would be $15. We are 50-some years late.

And people can’t survive on $7.50, and particularly in a time when, during COVID, billionaires have made almost a trillion dollars. Only 39% of the people in the United States of America can afford a $1,000 financial emergency. We have 62 million people in this country that make less than a living wage. If we actually had a living wage that kept pace with inflation, the living wage would be $20-some an hour. The minimum wage was not minimum when it was passed years ago.

And so, right now in the midst of COVID, where we had 140 million poor and low-wealth people, going into COVID, and millions more have been added because of COVID, we have to have $15 an hour. And it can’t be five years from now, 10 years from now. It must be immediate. Now, the president can sign an executive order for federal workers now, but what we must have is legislation that passes $15 an hour.

And it’s amazing to me that some of the people are talking against this, particularly these Republicans that come out of the South. They live in the states that are the poorest and have the lowest wages, which should always let us know that people who come out of the South, many of them, they use racial tactics, like voter suppression and second primaries, to get elected. But once they get elected, they actually pass bills or block bills, that benefit corporations. So there’s a connection between racism and greed that we must always understand.

Now, when it comes to the COVID relief plan, the comprehensive $1.9 trillion, it’s a powerful beginning. There are some things that are not in there that we’re evaluating now. But that needs to pass, and it needs to go through reconciliation. We don’t need to allow a filibuster that can stop that. It’s a trillion dollars too late, in a real sense, because the first CARES Act that was passed, 84% of that money went to corporations and banks. And then they held up passing the next $900 million. McConnell did.

So, we need that kind of — we cannot get out of this COVID pandemic and the economic problems without deep investments. And we have to remember, it must be investments from the bottom, because when we talk about who’s dying, it’s not just that Black and Brown are three and five times more likely to die. Poor people, whether they be Black, Brown or white, are the ones that are dying. Poor people, low-wealth workers, those who work those face-to-face jobs, construction and food services, they are the people that are getting the sickest, and they are the people that are dying. And there’s no way we can come out of this economically, unless we have investments.

So we think that 1.9 is great. It’s not final. We’re evaluating it now. What we are glad about — the $1.9 trillion, excuse me, not million — is that we see a call for $15. We see the call for more moneys to schools and more moneys to cities. We see the call for healthcare. We see the call for free and just COVID relief. But what we must do is we have to say, as a nation, we cannot be the wealthiest nation in the world, where billionaires in this country made a trillion dollars between May and November, during COVID, while poor and low-wealth people of every race, creed, color and sexuality have suffered and continue to suffer, the very people who are holding this economy up. And that’s what I tried to say in that sermon, what the Scripture said. Unless you lift from the bottom, you can never really have unity and never really repair the breaches and the divisions of the nation.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Barber, the Senate is receiving the article of impeachment against Donald Trump. The trial will begin the week of February 8th. Your thoughts on what you believe justice would look like for President Trump, of course, charged with inciting the insurrection of neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, white supremacists on January 6th?

REV. WILLIAM BARBER II: I have a number of opinions on that, Amy. You know, we had six weeks of nonviolent civil disobedience in the capital, just trying to deliver to McConnell, because he wouldn’t meet with us like other — like Nancy Pelosi and others. Six weeks, we tried to deliver a position, a policy agenda, for poor and low-wealth people, tried to meet with him. And when we went to the offices to try to meet with him and deliver, we were arrested for praying. We were arrested and charged and put in handcuffs in that same Capitol building. I was arrested with clergy and poor and low-wealth people, in those same areas, for praying. So there’s no way in the world you’re going to arrest nonviolent protesters — in fact, when we came, the police were already there. They had the long guns. They had the zip ties. They met us. When we tried to go on the plaza just to pray at the steps — not to go up the steps, but pray at the steps — hundreds of us were arrested. In fact, over 5,000 people were arrested over six weeks across this nation, from
May of 2018 to — excuse me, from March of 2018 to June of — May of 2018 to June of 2018.

Secondly, when it comes to Trump, he should have been found guilty long before this. The Senate didn’t do its job. McConnell didn’t do his job. McConnell has proven that he was more interested in putting — getting people on the seats on the Supreme Court than protecting people from caskets and dying in COVID, that he’s more interested in his own power than finding a president guilty that time and time again has violated and engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors.

There must be punishment for this. And I’m a preacher who believes in mercy and love. But love has to also include justice, has to also include justice This was dangerous. And in my tradition, theological tradition, it was demonic. Did you see the people climbing the walls and foaming? This was a mob mentality. Now, the talking heads kind of messed up when they said we’ve only seen this twice in America. No, Black people and Brown people, Indigenous people and women and labor movements through history have seen this kind of mob mentality, that will destroy whoever is in its path, that will hurt whoever is in its path, that will burn churches and hang bodies. We’ve seen this before. What happened is, it just spilled over to the Capitol. And it’s not just Trump. He is the latest one to come along. He lit the match of gasoline that’s been poured for years. But he has to be prosecuted. We have to have this trial. And it will expose — it will expose the Republicans, if they do not act.

And here is just one simple way of looking at it. What would they do if it was Obama? What would they do if it was William Barber? What would they do if it was my new friend, Raphael Warnock? What would they have done if it was Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer? What would they do if it was Amy Goodman that led a violent insurrection, or encouraged and incited a violent insurrection? We all know the answers to those questions. And nothing less can happen to Trump. If they don’t do it, we actually endanger the democracy even more, because it says that some people can skirt the law, and other people will always be prosecuted, even if they are nonviolent.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Dr. William Barber, I want to thank you so much for being with us, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, president of Repairers of the Breach.
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