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sahra Profile picture
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3 Mar, 18 tweets, 6 min read
I've done a gazillion threads & stories on this... the extent to which over/underpolicing in disenfranchised communities has left youth feeling like they have no choice but to fend for themselves. And yet ppl are trying to get him to resign for acknowledging it.
While his tweet could have been worded better, it's genuinely weird that folks are wringing their hands over that and not the tweet that inspired it - one that seems to be celebrating a pretextual stop and search of questionable constitutionality
But for anyone wondering what I mean by all that, please see this 2013 story, where South L.A. youth invited to participate in a gun violence forum turned the tables and asked why they were punished for not feeling safe in their communities. la.streetsblog.org/2013/08/07/inv…
Or Slimm's story, where he contemplated getting a gun despite having left gang life behind him several years earlier. la.streetsblog.org/2018/05/01/i-c…
He didn't want to get a gun, but he couldn't help feel like he was a target every time he stepped outside his front door.
He never ended up getting one. But a few yrs ago, while working security at a grocery store (the parking lot of which was a hang out for the area's gang), members of the gang let him know they recognized him...It's hard to explain how terrifying that was.
When he first told me he was taking that job, I didn't want to piss all over his happiness and ask if he was sure he'd be safe. Few good jobs are within walking distance of folks' homes in South Central.
But now that they knew who he was and made a point of letting him know they were watching him, he wasn't the only one at risk. They had followed him to his girl's house (she had two young kids) and it put store patrons at risk, too
He ended up leaving that job.
LEAs have groomed media into seeing a 1-to-1 relationship btwn being armed/being a gangbanger and intention/aggression/criminality. And right now too many LEA twitter feeds are full of gun porn b/c they're making the case they shouldn't be defunded.
And it's damaging for a million different reasons. Besides validating and perpetuating harmful biases, it means it is that much more difficult to get justice for folks killed by police. Like Andrés Guardado...
Dijon Kizzee...
Or Fred Williams III, just to name some of the more recent cases
If you're not familiar with what it is to be simultaneously overpoliced and underpoliced, the idea that a kid would consider picking up that kind of weapon can be mystifying. And it SHOULD be mystifying.
But in that case, maybe don't go after someone who is speaking to that reality... target the injustices that make that that kid's reality.
And look at the history of the enforcement of segregation in your city and how it shaped the choices youth felt they had no choice but to make: [the history of redlining, South Central, gangs, and Nipsey Hussle] la.streetsblog.org/2019/08/15/nip…
Anyways. Having a police commissioner in L.A. that acknowledged that reality and challenged LAPD every now and then would be a refreshing change.
And in case you don't want to hear it from me:

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More from @sahrasulaiman

sahra Profile picture
2 Mar
If you tuned into council today, you might have heard public comment from Fernando Rejón, ED of the Urban Peace Institute. The #FundPeacemakers campaign had asked for $54mil of the budget reallocation be directed toward funding intervention efforts.
UPI runs the L.A. Violence Intervention Training Academy - a 140-hr course those looking to become city-contracted intervention workers take. They also provide technical training and assistance to the LAPD's Community Safety Partnership (CSP). urbanpeaceinstitute.org/our-work-urban…
They were there @ the outset of CSP (back when they were part of the Advancement Proj.) and were heavily involved not just in training officers, but in trying to build up community infrastructure in Latino & Black nbhds in Watts to engage LAPD & make LAPD responsive to residents.
Read 13 tweets
sahra Profile picture
2 Mar
Contrary to the complaints they've heard, "We are meeting the moment" w/ the move to override the mayor's veto, says CM Nury Martínez. But as @UnrigLA pointed out earlier, this new proposal only came after the mayor 🚫 their original funneling of the $ into beautification projex.
Most emblematic of the shamelessness of that first stab at redistributing those funds was David Ryu's effort to give himself a legacy, by putting funds toward a program he had championed.
Instead of working with other CMs to put the money into some of the programs they're directing the $ to now, Ryu put it toward the Children's Savings Account Fund...which gives $50 to all first graders to use **a decade from now.**
Read 20 tweets
sahra Profile picture
2 Mar
Thread re: LEA efforts to avoid defunding by championing internal programs that claim to provide the same kind of mental health, etc. assistance that advocates would like to be seen offered by real service providers or channeled toward preventative work
I think one of the things that needs to be underscored about these programs is how little support LAPD gave them internally, effectively undermining them & setting them up to fail, yet sees no irony in touting them as potential models.
2 DART 👮 from Newton who genuinely believed in the importance of being able to spend hrs at a time w/ families in crisis (vs, dropping in, arresting one party, & leaving) complained abt how the newer 👮 was paid half of their partner & given few hrs/mo in a div w/ high DV calls.
Read 7 tweets
sahra Profile picture
21 Feb
I don't have an opinion on what CM Raman's vote should've been, but I do have some thoughts on the process itself that put her in the position of having to vote on something she did not support b/c she didn't have an alternative paradigm she could vote for instead. [Deep breath]
First - she was voting on whether or not to approve $9mil for the continuation of the Community Safety Partnership (CSP) program in housing developments. The renegotiation of that five-year MOA had been in the works for much of last year. (see doc below)
hacla.org/Portals/0/Atta…
Moreover, Garcetti had not only reaffirmed his commitment to CSP last summer (below), he committed to institutionalizing CSP by bringing it into the heart of the dept. There is no alternative that the city has seriously contemplated that is not police-led.
Read 40 tweets
sahra Profile picture
19 Feb
I remember this column. It was deeply troubling, but she wasn't alone in her verdict. Also troubling was the outsized attention and sentencing seen here b/c it happened on USC campus; shootings elsewhere around South L.A. were largely ignored. latimes.com/opinion/story/…
The case was also used to justify more aggressive policing of the community around USC in 2013... something which USC is only now finally beginning to re-examine, eight years later. la.streetsblog.org/2013/04/30/a-t…
I had, however, forgotten she had quoted the Murder Cop of all people. And that she had said things like "It would be naive to write this off as just a gang or ghetto problem." It's so much worse than I remember. latimes.com/local/la-me-04… ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
sahra Profile picture
15 Feb
Some important new details that raise questions about a) why it took a bunch of teens of privilege to raise the alarm about McNeil and b) why the NYT continues to think Ben Smith is the one who should be reporting on the intersection of race and media
It's not surprising that the guy who dedicated a column to why he wouldn't stop reading Andrew Sullivan despite the man's affinity for race science and his overt bigotry would write this, but it's still surprising that he has this job.
yes
Read 5 tweets

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