Police “Reforms” You Should Always Oppose by Mariame Kaba in Truthout

I learned so much from the 2021 AERA Division G  -  Vice Presidential Session where I served as discussant titled, "Children, Policies of Containment and the Carceral State" organized by Dr. Pedro Nava with a powerful set of presenters, namely, Drs. Sophia Rodriguez, Subini Ancy Annamma, Savannah Shange, and Erica Meiners. Thanks to Dr. Shange for sharing this piece with me.-Angela Valenzuela

Police “Reforms” You Should Always Oppose by Mariame Kaba in TruthoutDecember 7, 2014

 

 

I read today that President Obama has offered some measures for “reforming” the police. Here is a simple guide for evaluating any suggested “reforms” of U.S. policing in this historical moment.

1. Are the proposed reforms allocating more money to the police? If yes, then you should oppose them.
2. Are the proposed reforms advocating for MORE police and policing (under euphemistic terms like “community policing” run out of regular police districts)? If yes, then you should oppose them.
3. Are the proposed reforms primarily technology-focused? If yes, then you should oppose them because:
a. It means more money to the police.
b. Said technology is more likely to be turned against the public than it is to be used against cops.
c. Police violence won’t end through technological advances (no matter what someone is selling you).
4. Are the proposed “reforms” focused on individual dialogues with individual cops? And will these “dialogues” be funded with tax dollars? I am never against dialogue. It’s good to talk with people. These conversations, however, should not be funded by tax payer money. That money is better spent elsewhere. Additionally, violence is endemic to U.S. policing itself. There are some nice individual people who work in police departments. I’ve met some of them. But individual dialogue projects reinforce the “bad apples” theory of oppressive policing. This is not a problem of individually terrible officers rather it is a problem of a corrupt and oppressive policing system built on controlling and managing the marginalized while protecting property.

What “reforms” should you support (in the interim) then?

1. Proposals and legislation to offer reparations to victims of police violence and their families.
2. Proposals and legislation to require police officers to carry personal liability insurance to cover costs of brutality or death claims.
3. Proposals and legislation to decrease and redirect policing and prison funds to other social goods.
4. Proposals and legislation for (elected) independent civilian police accountability boards with power to investigate, discipline, fire police officers and administrators. [WITH SOME SERIOUS CAVEATS]
5. Proposals and legislation to disarm the police.
6. Proposals to simplify the process of dissolving existing police departments.
7. Proposals and legislation for data transparency (stops, arrests, budgeting, weapons, etc.)

Ultimately, the only way that we will address oppressive policing is to abolish the police. Therefore all of the “reforms” that focus on strengthening the police or “morphing” policing into something more invisible but still as deadly should be opposed.

From the Editors of the Austin American-Statesman: We need reform. Abbott gave us a campaign stop.

This editorial by the editors of the Austin American-Statesman provides helpful, if urgent, guidance for police reform. We should all be concerned that Texas also allows no-knock warrants of the kind that resulted in Breonna Taylor's death.  In fact, as per this February 1, 2019 article published in the Texas Monthly titled, "A No-Knock Raid in Houston Led to Deaths and Police Injuries. Should Police Rethink the Practice?" a similar horrific situation arose in Houston last year.

In response to Black Lives Matters together with the Austin Police Department's own culpability in aggressive policies leading to unnecessary death and injury, the current proposed city budget that you can read about here goes into effect on October 1, 2020, reducing the APD budget from $434 million to around $290 million, reapportioning it to social services and an alternative safe policing program.

In the meantime and in response, Gov. Greg Abbott supports legislation that would punish cities that make police force reduction cuts by withholding from local governments opportunities for city growth via tax revenues and denying them annexation powers. These bills are on the horizon for the next Texas legislative session that re-convenes in January, 2021.

I want to thank the editors of the Austin American-Statesman for calling out Abbott's lack of leadership while offering clear directions for policy.

-Angela Valenzuela

#EndPoliceViolence #endpolicebrutality #atxcouncil @austintexasgov #SayHerName #SayHerNameBreonnaTaylor #CJReform #TexasCJC

Editorial: We need reform. Abbott gave us a campaign stop.

by American Statesman Editorial Board

September 27, 2020

What a squandered opportunity.

After months of Texans holding largely peaceful protests demanding changes in the way communities are policed, Gov. Greg Abbott took to the stage this week to discuss public safety. His big announcement? Rioters who assault police officers, hurt others or cause property damage — crimes already punishable by jail time — should face stiffer penalties.

Certain illegal acts should be even more illegal.

Of course, such behavior is dangerous and intolerable. Such acts have been the outliers, though, in the otherwise nonviolent protests in Texas over the past few months, since George Floyd’s death galvanized calls to end abusive police practices. Yet Abbott shamefully squandered this important moment, ginning up outrage about rioters and ignoring the deeper injustices that brought protesters to the streets to begin with.

Perhaps we should have expected as much: Abbott’s appearance was a campaign event, and his message played nicely into the Republicans’ law-and-order mantra this election season. But in this moment, Texans needed Abbott to discuss policing not as a politician, but as our governor.

We should be talking about no-knock warrants and SWAT raids. Abbott’s press conference came the day after a Louisville, Kentucky, grand jury cleared police officers for killing Breonna Taylor during a horribly botched SWAT raid of her apartment. Just sit with that for a moment: The law allows police to get warrants to bust into people’s homes while they sleep, and officers can use deadly force if a resident, like Taylor’s boyfriend, opens fire on the people he thinks are intruders.

Last year a Houston couple died in a similar type of violent and unnecessary raid. Authorities later indicted an ex-Houston cop for allegedly falsifying information to get the warrant.

The larger practice of no-knock raids still cries out for dramatic reform. This tactic should be reserved for only the most extraordinary cases and justified by rigorous vetting. No one else should die in their own home from a pointless raid.

We should be talking about banning chokeholds and requiring de-escalation. Both are provisions of the George Floyd Act proposed last month by the Texas Legislative Black Caucus. Neither should be controversial with anyone who watched the video of Floyd gasping to breathe in his final moments, a Minneapolis police officer’s knee pressed into his neck.

We should be talking about ending arrests for fine-only offenses. As we’ve noted before, these arrests drive up jail costs for taxpayers, contribute to overcrowding and burden defendants with a jail stay when a simple summons to appear in court would do. Ending such arrests is also a component of the George Floyd Act, and if we’re serious about addressing racial inequities, this is one of the places to start. Among those facing these low-level charges, the data show minorities are more likely to go to jail and whites are more likely to get a ticket.We should be talking about reining in pretextual traffic stops. Because Sandra Bland, pulled over in 2015 for failing to use her turn signal when changing lanes, didn’t have to die in a Waller County jail cell. Because Javier Ambler II, pulled over last year after failing to dim his headlights and then fleeing from Williamson County deputies, didn’t have to die after repeated jolts from a Taser.

We should be talking about police tactics against protesters. We recognize officers need tools to defend themselves or to disrupt a gathering that has turned dangerous. But we’ve also seen the horrific head injuries Austin police inflicted — in some cases on bystanders — by using so-called “less lethal” ammunition on protesters in May. APD has since stopped using lead pellet-filled “beanbag” rounds for crowd control. Lawmakers should make that prohibition statewide.

We could go on. Qualified immunity. Police training. Transparency when someone dies in police custody. Abbott had his pick of important public safety issues to discuss this week. He chose instead to rail about rioters.

What a waste. Texans hunger for real public safety reforms. Abbott was content to play politics as usual.

We are tired of it': Latinos denounce police violence as they protest George Floyd death by Suzanne Gamboa

This piece is about how many Latinos, like African Americans, are also regular targets of police violence. What's the latest anyway with all the children we have locked up in detention centers around the country?  A number of those children have died in federal custody, as well.

I really appreciate how Texas State Congressman Joaquin Castro calls out Governor Abbott as sanctioning police violence with the passage of Senate Bill 4 (SB4), a 2017 law passed in Texas during his administration that among other things, deputizes local governments and police to enact federal immigration policy. This means that local officers can both legally racially profile folks and ask them about their immigration status whenever they stop or arrest someone even for minor traffic violations, like a malfunctioning car lamp light which happened to someone I know and but for local mobilization efforts, would have gotten deported.

That said, according to this information put out by the ACLU, people do need to know their rights under SB4.

While clearly not all of police violence is related to SB4 as this article by Suzanne Gamboa indicates, it is nevertheless the case that with anti-immigration polices and the Federal U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE), Latinas/os have the tragic distinction of having a "police force" designed specifically for them.  How racist is that?

And yes, Governor Abbott and the anti-immigrant state leadership are indeed "the problem," as Representative Castro states.  

If our nation is heading in the direction of de-funding police departments, can we not also abolish ICE while we're at it?

-Angela Valenzuela

#AbolishICE 

We are tired of it': Latinos denounce police violence as they protest George Floyd death

Beside police brutality cases, Latinos point to "stop-and-frisk" policies and officers stopping people to question them about their immigration status.

Protesters chanting at the Texas State Capital in downtown Austin on May 31, 2020.Mario Cantu / Cal Sport Media via AP Images

For many Americans, Floyd’s death after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds was a breaking point.

But the national protests that have followed resonate with Latinos like Barrón, not just as an act of solidarity, but because of the ways police tactics and law enforcement have been used against Latinos — from laws that give police the authority to question a person’s citizenship and authorization to be in the country to deadly shootings in police actions.

“Being a Latino and having the experience where I see people both in my community and on the news all the time being hurt and being abused by a police officer, there doesn’t seem to be any accountability," Barrón said.

"You don’t need to be black to see how horrible it is,” he said. “With more police accountability, that will help us, too.”

In Austin, the protests were also billed as demonstrations against the April 24 police shooting death of Mike Ramos, described as African American and Latino. Police are investigating the officer, Christopher Taylor, who shot Ramos.

According to reports, police responded to a 911 call of people doing drugs in a car and that one of the people had a gun. Police said Ramos, 42, got out of the car but did not comply with officers’ commands. One officer fired at Ramos with a bean-bag rifle, prompting Ramos to get back in the car and start to drive away, The Austin American-Statesman reported.

According to reports, Taylor then fired at the car, killing Ramos. Police said no gun was found in the car.

At a news conference Sunday, Ramos' mother, Brenda Ramos, said: “I cry every day. Now I’m in this terrible, heartbreaking club. It’s a club of mothers of black Americans who have been murdered by police."

In a April 25 online news conference after Ramos' death, Angelica Erazo, vice chair of Austin’s Hispanic Quality of Life Commission, called on the Latino community to “not leave all the heavy lifting to the black community.”

“All too often, we do not show up when it comes to police violence and your voice is powerful and needed, too,” Erazo said.

Remembering Anthony Baez, stop-and-frisk

Following the killing of George Floyd, Juan Cartagena, president and general counsel of the national Latino legal civil rights organization, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, asked Latinos who have lost loved ones at the hands of police to “unequivocally say, Black lives matter!”

Cartagena, in a statement, pointed to the 1994 case of Anthony Baez, a 29-year-old security guard who died after a New York City police officer, Francis Livoti, put him in a chokehold while trying to arrest him and his brother outside their family home.

A New York state judge acquitted Livoti, who had other police brutality complaints against him. But the Justice Department won a civil rights conviction against Livoti, who was then sentenced to seven years in prison. Baez's mother's fight for justice, along with two other mothers on behalf of their children, was the subject of the film "Every Mother's Son."

In New York City, black men and Latinos, including many who identify as Afro-Latino, were caught up in the contentious stop-and-frisk policing practice that essentially sanctioned racial profiling as an anti-crime tactic.

The operation recently catapulted back into the news as former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg waged his presidential campaign and sought to enlist black and Latino support. An analysis from the New York Civil Liberties Unionfound that in 2011, when Bloomberg was mayor, more than 685,000 people had been stopped and frisked, most of them black or Latino — and nearly 9 in 10 were innocent.

Cartagena said that the video of Floyd’s arrest struck a chord with Latinos and others who have been following and seeing police abuse for decades.

“If you ever found a more perfect convergence of shared interest among Muslims, LGBTQ, black people, Latino people, everybody was clearly unified against the practices of stop and frisk,” Cartagena said.

When police enforce immigration

Often Latinos are seen only through the lens of immigration. But many have decried the increasing way they are criminalized under the guise of immigration enforcement.

In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that Texas and America mourn George Floyd “and the actions that led to his death are reprehensible and should be condemned in the strongest terms possible.”

Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called out the governor in a tweet as “part of the problem” and reminded Abbott that he “enacted — SB4 — that encourages racial profiling by law enforcement.”

The Texas law, SB4, was billed as a means to ensure that cities and communities cooperate with immigration officers, preventing so-called sanctuary cities. The law allows police to question the citizenship and immigration status of anyone they arrest, detain or stop, even on minor traffic stops. It allows the removal — and jail time — of any city police chief, sheriff or other official in charge if they prevent their officers or employees from cooperating with federal immigration officials.

Joaquin Castro

✔@JoaquinCastrotx

You enacted a bill — SB4 — that encourages racial profiling by law enforcement, Governor.

You’re part of the problem. #GeorgeFloyd https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1266805280890896387 …

Greg Abbott

✔@GregAbbott_TX