THREAD: This morning, the New York Times used the jury deliberations in Minnesota as the occasion to get more attention for a newsletter full of "reformist" police propaganda that it sent to untold numbers of NYT readers.
The piece has the usual tactics I have described in other threads: quoting cops as experts, using vague phrase "many experts" to limit the range of debate to "reformist" cop views, using politicized words like "meaningful" without basis, entirely erasing critical views, etc
We will see if @DLeonhardt is open to learning and to reflecting on his own complicity in the everyday violence perpetrated by the police bureaucracy. I hope he is open to a discussion about it.
THREAD: Local news reports that Biden is nominating a former judge, Keva Landrum-Johnson, to be U.S. Attorney in New Orleans. A few years ago, we uncovered that Judge Landrum-Johnson was running a modern day debtors' prison. The story is shocking. (1)
Judge Landrum-Johnson and other judges were illegally jailing very poor people in New Orleans if they couldn't pay debts. They even created a "Collections Department" inside the court to illegally collect debts! When our clients couldn't pay, they were caged. It gets worse. (2)
Judge Landrum-Johnson and other judges took a cut of the profits to run their courts, creating an unconstitutional financial conflict of interest that destroyed whatever "neutrality" they were supposed to have as judges. It gets worse. (3)
Overwhelming evidence of federal crimes committed by police against journalists and not a peep from the Biden DOJ. I'm not advocating prosecution, but I'm pointing out that prosecutors only choose to charge *some* people for *some* crimes. There's nothing neutral about it.
Thread: You probably missed an important story this weekend. Cops in Minnesota arrested, sexually assaulted, electronic body-scanned, and mocked for not "speaking English" an Asian-American CNN producer who was covering racial justice protests. (1) documentcloud.org/documents/2061…
Cops from multiple different Minnesota agencies violated a federal court order and abused numerous journalists, including stealing phones, beating them, and torturing them (inflicting serious pain and injury for the purpose of causing pain). These are all federal crimes. (2)
The reaction from the media was to send a sternly worded letter from a lawyer reminding police about the First Amendment and asking them politely not to do it again. A few thoughts: (3)
Thread: Another embarrassing NYT article on police by @SteveEder and @mhkeller. Not a single proponent of defunding police quoted, and all the usual copaganda tricks. I genuinely wonder if they see their own complicity. nytimes.com/2021/04/18/us/…
They spew police talking points, suggest link btw police and "violent crime," and report as fact that powerful people "designed" these fake reforms to address injustice or that the powerful opposed real change because of genuine "fear" of "violent crime." Shameful naivete.
These reporters like @SteveEder and @mhkeller are complicit in enormous violence. Reach out to people with views outside your bubbles and try to learn something before you write about issues of such consequence to vulnerable people. Here are a few:
THREAD: one of our clients was a 6-year-old Black child. DC police executed an illegal search warrant raid at his house without any probable cause. Cops forced his mother to watch as they grabbed the child and searched inside the little boy's underwear for "contraband." (1)
It turned out that DC cops got hundreds of such warrants for years that blatantly lacked probable cause, executed them without knocking, and at nighttime, searching for small amounts of drugs. 99.2% of these raids were of Black families (2) washingtonpost.com/sf/investigati…
We @CivRightsCorps sued DC seven times for raids on Black families. When we showed DC gov that over 99% of these illegal "training and experience" search warrant raids were for Black families and showed story after story of brutality, DC council/mayor increased police budget. (3)
Thread: Police ignore way more crimes than they address. They only "enforce the law" against some people, some of the time, in some places, and every aspect of it is based on who has power. The idea they pursue "public safety" is propaganda.
Most of what Boston police do is discretionary targeting of poor people for living on the street, drug use, and other minor "crimes." And yet the budget for cop "overtime" alone is twice what Boston spends on all parks and recreation for its people. (2) data.aclum.org/2020/06/05/unp…
Remember when the Boston police went on a rampage to destroy the wheelchairs of disabled people who were homeless? (3) commondreams.org/news/2019/08/0…