Tag: Policy

Police oppose new plan to overhaul qualified immunity

The contentious debate over qualified immunity for police officers returned to Beacon Hill as law enforcement leaders forcefully pushed back against a bill that would ease the path for civil rights claims against officers in Massachusetts courts.
— Read on www.lowellsun.com/2025/08/03/police-oppose-new-plan-to-overhaul-qualified-immunity/

Jacksonville cops in hot water after brutalizing driver • Florida Phoenix

“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Aug. 28, 1963

As galling as it has been to watch a Jacksonville sheriff’s deputy break a car window and punch a non-combative man in the face, the feeble justification from the sheriff and a determination from the state attorney that cops did nothing wrong is just as infuriating.

The Feb. 19 videotape of an encounter with William McNeil, Jr. and a posse of rogue officers from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and their brutal response, is a searing reminder of everything wrong with policing in America.
— Read on floridaphoenix.com/2025/08/02/jacksonville-cops-in-hot-water-after-brutalizing-driver/

How You Start is How You Finish? The Slave Patrol and Jim Crow Origins of Policing

Originating in Virginia and Maryland, the American slave codes defined slaves from Africa as property rather than as people (Robinson 2017); that is, without rights. American slave codes were rooted in the slave codes of Barbados. According to Dr. Robinson (2017), the British established the Barbadian Slave Codes (laws) “to justify the practice of slavery and legalize the planters’ inhumane treatment of their enslaved Africans.” American policing in the South would begin as an institution—slave patrols—responsible for enforcing those laws (Turner et al., 2006), as slave uprisings were a threat to the social order and a chronic fear of plantation owners.

The first slave patrols were founded in the southern United States, the Carolina colony specifically (Reichel, 1992), in the early 1700s. By the end of the century, every slave state had slave patrols. According to Dr. Potter (2013), slave patrols accomplished several goals: apprehending escaped slaves and returning them to their owners; unleashing terror to deter potential slave revolts; and disciplining slaves outside of the law for breaking plantation rules.
— Read on www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/archive/how-you-start-how-you-finish-slave-patrol-jim-crow-origins-policing/

Intercept Briefing Podcast: Policing’s Past Haunts the Present

Rick Loessberg and Akela Lacy trace the trajectory of America’s unfinished reckoning with policing, from the 1967 Kerner Report to the George Floyd protests to Trump 2.0.
— Read on theintercept.com/2025/08/01/briefing-podcast-racism-police-protests-kerner/

See also at:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-intercept-briefing/id1195206601?i=1000720202827

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

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