NEW Investigation:
A Unicorn Riot investigation uncovered dossier records from a privately curated database of Romani people in the US, and a web of training programs; many of these have been canceled due to pressure from activists and concerned citizens. unicornriot.ninja/2022/police-us…
Unicorn Riot found a pattern of trainings from multiple law enforcement training academies and police departments, 10 records from a privately maintained database of Romani people, spoke with an Academy Director in Fredericksburg, VA, & activists who monitor anti-Roma bias in USA
A former Illinois police officer, along with a 501c3 nonprofit private national policing organization, has been teaching Law Enforcement Officers to racially profile & think of Romani People in racialized terms, our investigation of two decades of policing trainings has revealed.
(Content advisory: we are including the derogatory term for #Roma people only in direct quotations).
In late December 2021, a group of activists stumbled across a Tumblr post featuring a flier from 2010 titled, “‘The perfect victim’ Criminal Gypsies/Travelers and the elderly.”
The flier claimed a “criminal gypsy element” had “invaded every metropolitan area,” and that the training provided by Gryphon Training Group would help show law enforcement “how these predators work.”
This discovery and tipoff led to a year-long Unicorn Riot investigation into Gary Nolte, the former law enforcement officer, & NABI, an org he worked as a part of.
Nolte used "gypchuntr@aol.com" as business email address, a clear indicator he sees the ethnic group as a target.
Much like Jewish people, Roma have been the target of hate crimes & discrimination for centuries, both being victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust. To this day, Roma face forced sterilization, segregation, discrimination, & police brutality from government entities worldwide.
The word “G*psy” that Nolte plasters throughout his /many/ course fliers is an exonym and a slur that refers to the Romani people, but is also sometimes used to refer to another community of nomadic people from Ireland called Travelers.
In the US, antiziganism (anti-Roma sentiment) has manifested as archaic laws specifically designed to discriminate, as well as “G*psy police task forces.”
National Association of Bunco Investigators, NABI, is specialized in training police departments to profile Romani people.
In the past, Nolte’s classes have gained the attention of the public, and as a result Nolte’s classes have been canceled several times. In October 2016, the Bellevue Police Department canceled one of his #Roma courses after public outcry erupted on Twitter.
In November 2016, Clackamas, Oregon County Sheriff’s Department also canceled their course after it was brought to public attention. On Feb. 24, 2022, the Kansas City Police Department announced that they would be canceling hosting one of Nolte’s courses.
The Private Database of #Romani Individuals
One of the primary resources utilized by officers that have attended Nolte and NABI’s courses is, in Nolte’s own words, “a data base [sic] containing suspects of all Gypsy descents,” that is hosted and maintained by NABI.
This database includes a field if the subject is Romani: “G” for g*psy or “W” for white, sex, a physical description, Social Security number, arrest report numbers. Vehicles and sensitive intelligence tracking numbers from the FBI & NCIC (National Crime Information Center) also.
One man was logged in the database under a “feud” heading after a charge was levied by a relative. Another individual’s listed reason for being in the database was for pawning an expensive watch.
The database sample obtained by Unicorn Riot also includes a list of license plate numbers from family members of “suspects” in NABI’s database that were obtained by law enforcement members of NABI stalking a #Romani wedding.
Unicorn Riot talked to one of the hosts of @romaunraveled podcast about the dehumanization of Roma people in America:
@romaunraveled Additional Docs - Unicorn Riot has more data on NABI and Nolte activity
- anti-Roma police trainings 2007-2022. Data collected by @therealjaume, Fen Kovach, Cristina, Michael Borner and others. (XLSX spreadsheet)
- Event flyers 1999-2022 (ZIP)
- Very bigoted website screenshots
Unicorn Riot reached out to multiple law enforcement training officials. We learned more about how some courses were canceled and considerations about how biased these trainings are against #Roma people.
See the story for details: unicornriot.ninja/2022/police-us…
Unicorn Riot has covered databases linked to law enforcement's NCIC system. (2019) #Icebreaker Pt 7 – ICE Case Management Handbook Based on Federal Law Enforcement “System of Systems” unicornriot.ninja/2019/icebreake…
The Rocky Mountain Information Network (RMIN) is a Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) #fusioncenter network sponsored by the federal government, mentioned briefly in a Denver Police document we released in 2016. ( unicornriot.ninja/wp-content/upl… PDF page 75)
Another report refers to NCIC police databases in leaked Homeland Security agent manuals obtained by Unicorn Riot in full. #Icebreaker Pt 3 – Confidential Homeland Security Fugitive and Compliance Enforcement Handbooks (2018) unicornriot.ninja/2018/icebreake…
This investigation into NABI, Nolte, and anti #Roma police training programs took nearly a year to sort out. Support our investigative journalism here: unicornriot.ninja/donate
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NEW: Noisy Philly Counter-Demo Challenges 'TERFs' at Independence Hall [article + video] unicornriot.ninja/2022/noisy-phi…
Unicorn Riot interviewed nearly a dozen hoarse but spirited attendees.
Full video premiering now: Philly Noise Demo Confronts 'TERFs' at Independence Hall [4K] (29min)
On Sunday, November 13, a hundred-plus counter-demonstrators tried to drown out about 30 protesters who were demonstrating against transgender people's access to medical transitions #TransAwarenessWeek
29min video premiering now:
NEW: Over 100 unionized @Starbucks locations launched a one-day strike Thursday, Nov. 17, to demand that the company engage in good faith union negotiations & address understaffing at locations across the country.
Members of @SBWorkersUnited, the national union representing @Starbucks employees, organized the strike for Nov. 17 to coincide with the company’s annual “Red Cup Day” promotion, a major revenue booster for the coffee chain. ↕️ unicornriot.ninja/2022/starbucks…
Participating in the #RedCupRebellion, striking workers on the picket line in #SaltLakeCity told Unicorn Riot that they launched the strike not only in solidarity with other locations but in response to first-hand experience with unfair working conditions & anti-union activity.🧵
Last month we named the members of the neo-nazi group Patriot Front who vandalized a mural honoring Black tennis champion Arthur Ashe mural in Battery Park, a mostly Black neighborhood in Richmond, VA: unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…
Yesterday, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights (@LawyersComm) filed a federal lawsuit against Patriot Front, Nathan Noyce and Thomas Dail (the 2 members seen on leaked video defacing the mural), Patriot Front leaders Thomas Rousseau & Paul Gancarz, and 23 John Doe defendants.
The new civil suit alleges that Noyce, Dail, and Patriot Front as a group committed at least three civil rights violations under the Ku Klux Klan Act and Virginia state laws against “Racial, Religious, or Ethnic Harassment”: lawyerscommittee.org/lawyers-commit…
NEW: Attacks and Collective Punishment, a Cycle of Palestinian-Israeli Conflict 🧵
Featuring stories of this deadly cycle, we watch Israel blowing up the family homes of prisoners in July, a Sept. raid on Jenin targeting the Khazem family & a celebration of the PIJ in Oct. 🎥
2022 has been a deadly year of violence between Israelis and Palestinians with several Palestinian attacks earlier this year, near-daily deadly Israeli raids, a rise in settler violence against Palestinians and a war in August. unicornriot.ninja/2022/attacks-a…
A handful of attacks by Palestinians killed nearly a dozen people inside Israel earlier this year. In retaliation Israeli occupation forces have conducted thousands of deadly raids across the occupied West Bank, killing over 140 Palestinians by September.🎥unicornriot.ninja/2022/over-2200…
On Wednesday morning, animal rights activists Amy Soranno and Nick Schafer were sentenced to 30 days in jail, 12 months of probation, and are required to provide their DNA to the National DNA Data Bank. ➡️unicornriot.ninja/2022/animal-ac…
Soranno and Schafer were able to walk free out of the courthouse, however, because B.C. Supreme Court Justice Frits Verhoeven ruled that they won’t be taken into custody until Oct. 21, 2022, when they will enter the Okanagan Corrections Centre.
In response to the sentencing decision, dozens of animal rights activists descended on Excelsior Hog Farm to demonstrate their opposition to the farm itself, and to the criminalization of Soranno and Schafer whose trial stems from a demonstration at the same farm in 2019.
🆕We just uploaded the raw audio interviews with the striking Alabama prisoners we spoke with at the end of September. Listen to the full recordings of Logical Solutions, Swift Justice, and Kinetik Justice here➡️unicornriot.ninja/2022/alabama-p…
The three of them are just a few of the many prisoners across Alabama who launched a coordinated work stoppage on September 26, refusing to attend their work assignments and essentially shutting down normal operations of the prison system in the state.
The inhumane conditions in AL prisons have been extensively documented. A 2019 Department of Justice report found that the ADOC “does not reasonably protect prisoners from rampant violence” and sexual abuse, and that conditions in Alabama prisons “violate the Constitution.”