Thread by @equalityAlec

THREAD: Have you wondered about the secret targeting of Nipsey Hustle by cops before his death? Internal docs from LAPD now reveal a dystopian campaign to target Nipsey, and pervasive corruption to benefit real estate developers. Some of the stuff in here is chilling.

The story begins when Nipsey fulfilled his longtime dream of buying the Marathon Clothing Store. The City, developers, and police had other plans for the property, and they began a yearslong effort of surveillance and brutality to try to stop it.

In one internal document generated by Palantir (a corporation that profits by helping police cage poor people more efficiently with big data), LAPD records appear to show 58 stops and 7 arrests at the intersection outside Nipsey Hustle's store in the week after its Grand Opening.

Incredibly, a similar document dated two weeks after Nipsey opened his store shows "a single patrol car made 103 stops and 3 arrests" in 7 days. All of this police activity was supposedly searching for a generically described suspect: "a Black male between 16 and 18 years old."

This targeted police violence was the culmination of a long campaign by police and City of Los Angeles attorneys to target Nipsey and others in the community to prevent them from investing in land that big banks and developers wanted.

Here's what Nipsey said: “This was always one of our dreams - in this parking lot we were always outside hustling in the actual lot, and we realized it made sense to be owners, or for us to have businesses in this parking lot.” automatingbanishment.org/section/5-raci…

The desire for people from that predominantly Black community to "be owners" brought out the full force of LAPD, the City of Los Angeles bureaucracy, big banks, and wealthy real estate developers intent on using Trump's opportunity zones to extract billions from poor communities.

But it wasn't just Nipsey. Across Los Angeles (and across the U.S.), police have worked hand in hand with tech companies and real estate developers to build the bureaucratic architecture of control that enables them to control who owns what/where and who invests in what/where.

If you want to understand how police work with wealthy investors to enable gentrification and wealth extraction on a massive scale, you must read this report by people from the community in Los Angeles. It's long, but it will change how you see the world. automatingbanishment.org/section/5-raci…

If you's interested in further reading on the massive collaborations between police, developers, banks, tech companies, retail industry, and prosecutors you can follow @stoplapdspying and check out more here:

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1471156867854438400

In addition to the report, you can learn more from this great reporting by @SamTLevin theguardian.com/us-news/2021/n…