Thread by @stoplapdspying

BREAKING: Along with @LACANetwork @BLMLA and 39 other community groups, we just sent City Council a letter about the new City Council report on LAPD's violence last summer. The report is a bold attempt to win LAPD more resources and spy powers. drive.google.com/file/d/1MCQIgu…

As we wrote in @KNOCKdotLA today: “It should surprise no one that this investigation, featuring almost zero effort to hear from the community, offers nothing but calls to expand policing. It’s hard to see this review as anything but a police coup.” knock-la.com/lapd-report-pr…

This report was written by a team of six LAPD veterans and insiders after interviewing 100+ police (and exactly 10 community members, all handpicked by City Council).

What does their police-fed investigation conclude? They say LAPD needs more resources and surveillance powers.

The first and biggest proposal in the report is the creation of a permanent new LAPD intelligence bureau devoted to "Public Order Policing" and armed with surveillance tools to monitor potential threats to public order. This is shockingly dangerous.

The proposal for a new Public Order Policing bureau is a barely masked attempt to revive the notorious and racist Public Disorder Intelligence Division (PDID), which was created in reaction to the Watts Rebellion.

PDID targeted everyone LAPD viewed as a threat, with agents infiltrating hundreds of community groups, keeping secret dossiers on activists, and supplying right-wing groups with secret intelligence.

We've published a timeline of PPID's repression: stoplapdspying.org/wp-content/upl…

LAPD has always used its spy powers to target Black and brown communities and repress those who criticize police. If an entire LAPD bureau is sitting around waiting for threats to “public order” while armed with tools to monitor political activity, we all know what they’ll do.

Blame for this disastrous report must go to City Council, which moved on June 8 – within barely a week of historic demonstrations against police violence, lies, and impunity – to appoint an LAPD insider to “examine” the police response. What did they think would happen?

There’s a long history of LAPD brutally attacking us and then asking to expand police resources as a response rather than listen to the community’s demands. We saw this after the Watts rebellion, we saw it in 1992, and we saw it after the Ferguson uprising.

The city now faces a chance to break from that "reform" cycle, to learn from this history and do something different. Now is the time to reduce LAPD’s power and resources, not increase them. Defund and abolish the police!

Sorry, here's a better link to the pdf: stoplapdspying.org/wp-content/upl…