Month: July 2025

Vital City | Safe Only at Certain Speeds

Not since the 1980s has New York been so roiled by bicycles. The offending element then was unruly bicycle messengers slicing through Manhattan gridlock with contracts, renderings and other valuable bits of commerce and culture. Today’s controversy is more diffuse. It encompasses a new industry (food deliveries mediated by rapacious app companies); a new class of workers (immigrant deliveristas, whose economic precarity is now compounded by Trump’s crackdown on undocumented workers); and a new technology (the e-bike) that lets any rider hit cruising speeds of 20 or even 25 miles per hour.

— Read on www.vitalcitynyc.org/articles/safe-only-at-certain-speeds

Community Voices: A Public Primer on News Reporting on Police Violence

As you read this report keep the following in mind:

  • News report is supposed to report the facts and not sell an AGENDA
  • Police Violence is not DEFINED
  • In this report Police Violence is naively considered as ANY police use of force
  • The report ignores CONTEXT of the police-citizen contact
  • People’s feeling are not FACTS
  • The FACTS are that police use force in less that 5% of police-citizen contacts and Deadly Force in less that 0.1% police-citizen contacts.

The research report, Community Voices: A Public Primer on News Reporting on Police Violence offers a practical review of the community impacts of, helpful and harmful narrative patterns in, and recommended standards for reporting on police violence. Through participatory analysis conducted in partnership with Community Co-Lead Mo Korchinski and clients at the Unlocking the Gates Services Society, these findings have been developed by community members who have experienced police violence to offer guidance to journalists, editors, and others who are interested in critical heart-based storytelling. The Student Co-Lead on this project, Emily R. Blyth, developed the research behind this publication through her time with the 2023-2024 CERi Graduate Fellowship program as a part her doctoral research which examines policing practices in Canada as a source of health inequity. This action-driven and accessibly written publication centers the voices of impacted community members to support the difficult work of reporting on police violence in ways that can expose the harms that police cause and that refuse to perpetuate those harms though uncritical narratives.

Get the Report HERE

Police stops and naïve denominators | Crime Science

A comparison of the racial composition of police stops to the entire population of a city or jurisdiction is frequently cited as evidence of racial bias in proactive policework. This article argues that using base population is naïve to the realities of the distribution of crime and policing. Using the example of Philadelphia, PA (USA), the impact of different benchmarks to estimate racial disparity in stop data is demonstrated. The range of alterative benchmarks include the spatial distribution of calls for service, the locations of violent crimes, and the demographic composition of suspects in crime as reported by the public. The article concludes by arguing that if cities ask police departments to prioritize certain problems and places, benchmarks to which police are held accountable should better reflect those priorities.
— Read on link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40163-025-00252-y

How Mask Bans Threaten Free Speech, From New York to North Carolina | The Marshall Project

The problem with relying on identification technologies or some type of biometric technology is that you have to have a database that can compare the captured real time data. There is no all-encompassing database where cell phone usage can identify a person or facial recognition can identify a person. It’s difficult to identify a person after the incident.

Removing the mask would act as a deterrence. Why do people rob banks with masks on, because they don’t want to be identified. People who go to protests and act illegally would be deterred from doing so if they couldn’t wear masks. Most people are uncomfortable greeting a mask wearing stranger at their house. That’s because there is a certain connotation about people’s motives when they are wearing masks.

Privacy advocates worry banning masks at protests will encourage harassment, while cops’ high-tech tools render the rules unnecessary.
— Read on www.themarshallproject.org/2024/11/12/mask-bans-protest-surveillance