Thread by @stoplapdspying

What base is this work accountable to?

https://twitter.com/barryfriedman1/status/1371190309871321093

A month ago we asked: who are reform professionals like @barryfriemdan1 accountable to when they push their harmful proposals?

https://twitter.com/stoplapdspying/status/1362818962023620609

Looking at their website, @policingproject's accountability is clear. Their Advisory Board is half police officials, plus surveillance executives, @CatoInstitute, and @CKinstitute. That's who @barryfriedman1 is “Reimagining Public Safety” with. policingproject.org/our-advisory-b…

It gets worse. @barryfriedman1's funders include @axon_us, @Microsoft (which sells policing technology to LAPD and funds @policingproject’s "work on ethical regulation of policing technology”), @awscloud (surveillance infrastructure), and @mark43 (used to surveil Los Angeles).

The Axon funding is especially disturbing. LAPD hired @barryfriedman1 to legitimize and sanitize their body cam surveillance in 2017. LAPD has since paid Axon over $36 million for body cams. Axon then kicks money back to @barryfriedman1’s nonprofit for “support for our work."

The work @barryfriedman1 did for LAPD helped launch his then-small organization, which now has 18 staff (plus hiring at least 3 more) and 8 senior fellows. LAPD trotted him out to justify its body cam policies and act as a buffer. Then he used that work to build a huge nonprofit.

Policing Project’s other LAPD ties are worth naming too. Their board includes Arif Alkikhan @LAPD_OCPP, who was also a senior advisor to John Ashcroft and once described by L.A.’s mayor as “instrumental in putting 1,000 new LAPD officers on our streets.”

Alikhan also served as LAPD’s Director of Constitutional Policing during the Operation LASER predictive policing program, which was shut down after the community exposed its violent toll. An official audit also showed LAPD violated the City Attorney's own rules for the program.

What does Alikhan do now? He left LAPD to launch a police technology company and “reimagine public safety” on @policingproject’s board. This ecology – nonprofits, academics, businesses, and cops collaborating to strengthen policing – is always how police violence evolves.

If you’re wondering why we go after organizations like @policingproject, their website explicitly says they're spending their millions to oppose communities who want surveillance technologies banned.

That includes us.

We're not expecting @barryfriedman1 to address any of this. People like him have no notion of accountability to the community. They are functionaries of the state, paid by our oppressors to bless new forms of violence.