THREAD: With people focused on Derek Chauvin, it is vital to say something: he was released before trial on $1 million bail in a murder case. For 500,000 poor people in cages right now, our bail system looks like this video:
It's easy to release people safely before trial, even in serious cases. The bail system chooses to cage poor people not b/c they pose a risk--data is overwhelming that people do not commit crimes while on release--but to coerce fast guilty pleas b/c it is an assembly line.
Let's focus this moment on liberation and not punishment. Let's dismantle the cash bail system, free poor people from cages, and end one of the great scandals of modern times.
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THREAD: As more states legalize marijuana, it's important to note: there has not been a corresponding decline in local police budgets. Why? (1)
For years, police in the U.S. have chosen to make more arrests for marijuana than for all of what cops call "violent crime" combined. You might think that legalizing marijuana, then, would lead to reductions in resources for cops b/c one of their primary tasks is now gone. (2)
But one overriding feature of bureaucracies--especially a bureaucracy that serves elite interests of surveillance, profit, and control--is that they always try to get bigger. (3)
This thread is a short story about how, behind the barrel of every police officer's gun, there is a lawyer somewhere making it all possible, rationalizing police violence, and calling it "justice." (1)
In Seattle, police place bicycles in poor neighborhoods as "bait," hoping to "catch" human beings who might try to use the bicycle. Police love "fishing" metaphors. (2)
One day in 2018, 41-year-old Jolene Paris was near a Goodwill store that was a gathering spot for houseless and near-houseless people. She saw a silver bicycle in the dirt near some shrubs. She wheeled it around the Goodwill parking lot, asking if it belonged to anyone. (3)
THREAD: Marvin D. Scott III has just been killed inside a Texas jail cell after being arrested for possession of marijuana. His story is important. (1)
After Sandra Bland's death, Texas increased funding for police, sheriffs, and jails. That money was used to hire more cops and jailers, give them raises and overtime, get military weapons and surveillance, and expand racial profiling. More human beings will die. (2)
Marvin Scott's family told reporters that he was working to address mental health issues. But Texas has woeful mental health infrastructure and pays police and jails to be its primary response to illness. (3)
THREAD: like thousands of glossy reports before it, new report finds that LAPD "mishandled" BLM protests. if i went around illegally beating, shooting, kidnapping, and caging my political opponents, would the NYT say i "mishandled" it? (1) nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/…
every few weeks, these journalists report on new reports finding systemic corruption and brutality in **every major US police force** and then they quote **very serious** police chiefs saying that "mistakes were made." then something dangerous happens... (2)
the reporters, unable to draw any connections and with no context/analysis about the history/function of US police, spend the article talking about lack of "preparation" and "training" and the need for more resources for cops. (3)
THREAD: This 39-second video could be from almost any city in the country at any time in U.S. history. A Black man jailed for "drinking beer in a parking lot" and kept in a cage because he can't pay $5,000 cash. Show it to someone. (1)
It's heartbreaking when the man says "I just want to get released." There's such violence here. This is how people with power have chosen to decide who is caged and who is freed from 3,163 local jails. How can we trust anything else that this giant, racist bureaucracy does? (2)
Think about what this video says about the cops who arrested him, the prosecutors who charged him and asked for cash bail, the politicians whose orders they were all following, the judges who use cash bail each day, the deputies who follow judges' orders, and all of us. (3)
Have you ever heard about the government using “risk assessment” algorithms? This is a thread about racism, and it will tell you a lot about how our legal system works that you didn't know. (1)
Across the country, you can be separated from your children or kept in a jail cell based on a series of interview questions about your friendships, romantic relationship history, and whether you live in a poor or Black neighborhood. How? (2)
Government bureaucrats have formulas called “risk assessment algorithms” that use interview questions about your background to predict how they say you’ll act in the future. (3)