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Rebecca Kavanagh Profile picture
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7 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
90% of people arraigned in criminal court in New York City are BIPOC. This isn't because they commit more crime. It's because police selectively enforce the law.

It's called systemic racism and it's not a "2020 trend."
This happens at every level of the system, but the example that is perhaps easiest to grasp is the disparity in enforcement of marijuana laws.

Marijuana usage is consistent across racial lines, yet 97% of people arrested or ticketed for weed possession in NYC are Black or Brown.
Here is the cite for the percentage of people arraigned in criminal court who are BIPOC. In Manhattan it is 93%, in Brooklyn 86%. brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/…
For marijuana, I said 97%. Correct figure for 2019 is 94%. queenseagle.com/all/nearly-eve…

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More from @DrRJKavanagh

Rebecca Kavanagh Profile picture
7 Dec
The Staten Island bar owner who ran over a sheriff's deputy then dragged him for 100 yards was charged with 10 offenses, mostly misdemeanors, and released on his own recognizance.

One of the offenses was bail-eligible, but a judge chose not to set it.

apnews.com/article/new-yo…
This isn't how it works for Black people.

In Ohio, earlier this year, police shot Matthew Burroughs eight times, claiming they feared he was about to drive into them. He was already in his car and they had stopped him after he had paid a traffic ticket.

wfmj.com/story/41516826…
In Brooklyn, in 2017, a 15-year-old child was charged as an adult with attempt murder and held without bail when he unintentionally dragged a police officer with his car. nydailynews.com/new-york/teen-…
Read 5 tweets
Rebecca Kavanagh Profile picture
6 Dec
The Staten Island man who has declared his bar an "autonomous zone" deliberately drove into a group of sheriff's deputies, hit one, who was thrown onto his hood and dragged for 50 yards.

If a Black person did this they'd be charged with Attempt Murder.

nypost.com/2020/12/06/aut…
In fact in Brooklyn in 2017, a 15-year-old child was charged as an adult with Attempt Murder, after a cop was dragged by a car he was driving, even though the dragging was unintentional.

nytimes.com/2017/06/16/nyr…
.@nypost leaves out some critical details about the Staten Island incident, most critically that the bar owner was not even in his car, but jumped in solely for the purpose of driving into the sheriff's deputies.

I'll tweet a better article when one is posted online.
Read 6 tweets
Rebecca Kavanagh Profile picture
29 Nov
This reads like something out of Dickensian England, except it's Coffeyville, Kansas.

People put in debtors prisons, because they can't pay medical bills by a judge with no law degree taking orders from a debt collector who gets a cut of the bail money.
features.propublica.org/medical-debt/w…
And it's not just happening in Kansas. "In Indiana, a cancer patient was hauled away from home in her pajamas in front of her three children; too weak to climb the stairs to the women’s area of the jail, she spent the night in a men’s mental health unit."
"In Utah, a man who had ignored orders to appear over an unpaid ambulance bill told friends he would rather die than go to jail; the day he was arrested, he snuck poison into the cell and ended his life."
Read 9 tweets
Rebecca Kavanagh Profile picture
19 Nov
The Pasco Sheriff’s Office keeps a secret list of kids it thinks could “fall into a life of crime” based on factors like whether they’ve been abused or gotten a D or an F in school, according to the agency's internal intelligence manual. projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/…
420 kids are on the list. The Sheriff’s Office doesn’t tell the kids or their parents about the designation and claims the list is used to help deputies assigned to schools to offer “mentorship” and “resources” to students.
Internal documents, however, show that, far from mentoring, in fact deputies are encouraged to work their relationships with the students on the list to find “the seeds of criminal activity” and to collect information that can help with investigations.
Read 6 tweets
Rebecca Kavanagh Profile picture
19 Nov
What, not Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx DAs penning an op-ed about how cruel parole and probation are, when they fought so hard to keep people on RIkers Island during the height of the pandemic who were their for mere technical violations of both?

nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…
Not these same DAs citing the names of the first two people who died of COVID on Rikers Island, Raymond Rivera and Michael Tyson, who were there because of non-criminal technical violations of parole, like they didn't put them there in the first place?
People who bump up minor offenses like shoplifting of soap to felonies so people can face years in prison claiming they have done all they can to end mass incarceration?

Give me a break.
Read 4 tweets
Rebecca Kavanagh Profile picture
17 Nov
People defending Lindsey Graham, should read up on what happened to Olivia Pearson.

In 2018, Georgia prosecutors tried Ms. Pearson for felony voter fraud for showing a young first-time Black voter how to use a voting machine. She was acquitted.

ajc.com/blog/investiga…
This year, she was arrested for trespass when she arrived at a polling location with a former student, who is illiterate. Ms. Pearson, who is a Georgia city official, had completed the required forms to assist her former student with the voting process.
slate.com/news-and-polit…
An old foe, Misty Martin, the elections supervisor for Coffee County, refused her entry to the polling location and called 911. Ms. Pearson left, but returned later to find three police cars blocking her entry to the polls. One cop presented her with a criminal trespass warning.
Read 7 tweets

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