Share this page!

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Twitter logo
18 May, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Thread: When we did our investigation into the illegal home raids by D.C. police that brutally target Black families, we were horrified by the precision of the military tactics. The D.C. police were being trained by the Israeli military. (1) theintercept.com/2017/09/15/pol…
People with power and privilege in our society need to see and understand these stories. (2)
This is how police budgets in the U.S. are spent: (3)
99.3% of this military violence in D.C. was against Black families. (4)
All of this is part of a broader global exchange between military, police, and corporate forces. To understand it more deeply, please check out @stschrader1's work in Badges Without Borders or his other articles. (5) nplusonemag.com/issue-38/polit…
None of this will stop until we begin to shrink the size and power of these bureaucracies of pain and punishment, home and abroad, and build new systems of mutual aid. For inspiration and practical guidance, please read We Do This 'Til We Free Us by @prisonculture. Thanks. (end)

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Alec Karakatsanis

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @equalityAlec

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
19 May
Thread: You hear a lot of talk about "public safety" from cops, prosecutors, and judges. Setting aside the many other problems with their conception of what "safety" means and who gets to be "safe," there's another hilarious flaw. (1)
As I have studied and fought cash bail for the past 7 years, this "public safety" mantra is everywhere. But it makes no sense. These bureaucrats would literally release every single person from their cages if they paid enough cash. (2)
So, there are many reasons cops, prosecutors, and judges do what they do. But literally **the one thing we know cannot be motivating them** is "public safety." (3)
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
19 May
Imagine being a *serious* scholar in the most over-policed society in modern history and publishing pro-police "research" without confronting the most basic flaws in your research design. The complicity of academics in state violence is shameful.
Fancy people shilling for cops are complicit in enormous harm. I describe many of the flaws with this kind of research here. But there are so many more. It's such nonsense "research" asking and answering all the wrong questions. currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-cr…
These people should retract this paper until they can have a public workshop to discuss how to repair this harm.
Read 6 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
17 May
Thread: Please do not forget that the Capitol Police are working behind the scenes right now to try to get a $100 million budget increase. This should be a huge scandal. (1)
The Capitol Police is one of the most useless, fraudulent bureaucracies we have. Its officers mostly arrest poor people in the surrounding D.C. area and bilked taxpayer for 720,000 hours of overtime last year. They are hugely overstaffed. (2)
But the media reporting on this is awful. The media uncritically tells you that this police force is "understaffed" and cites capitol-police propaganda, without skepticism, that the force needs to add hundreds of new officers (3). rollcall.com/2021/04/21/cap…
Read 5 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
16 May
Thread: The Mississippi Court of Appeals just upheld a sentence of death in prison without the possibility of parole for Allen Russell, a Black man who possessed 44 grams of marijuana. n(1)
Just reflect on one thing for a moment: what kind of cruel and senseless system uses metal chains and state violence to take a person from his family to die in a cage because he held in his hand a plant on a list of plants the government says you can't hold? (2)
This case does not involve "bad apples." The cop who arrested him, the prosecutor who charged him, the trial judge who sentenced him, and the appeals judges who said his sentence was cool **were all doing exactly what they are trained to do.** (3) apnews.com/article/missis…
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
14 May
Thread: In a little over a week, we will be arguing one of the most important court cases you've never heard of. The case will determine the future of the money bail systems in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. A few thoughts: (1)
The basic question in the case is this: can the government keep a human being in a jail cell solely because the person can't make a cash payment? Or, does the constitution require that the government demonstrate a good reason to jail a presumed innocent person? (2)
After seven years of fighting these money bail practices across the country, it amazes me that this can even be a controversial question in our legal system. That fact says a lot about our civilization. (3)
Read 6 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
14 May
Thread: So much of what is wrong with our society appears in this article. Fancy lawyers, professors, consultants, the DOJ, and a federal judge are using decades of massive civil rights violations to **reject** reducing Baltimore police funding. (1) baltimoresun.com/maryland/balti…
These elite "reformers" ad DOJ lawyers want to spend "tens of millions" of dollars on ludicrous "reforms" like a program called "Ethical Policing Is Courageous." You can't make this stuff up. (2)
They don't mention how cops used their "training" and funding for decades in Baltimore: ruthlessly target Black and working class organizing, racial terror, surveillance, and methodical destruction of community-based violence interruption. Shameful. (3) theintercept.com/2020/07/26/bal…
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @equalityAlec has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @equalityAlec!

Read all threads by @equalityAlec

:(