The Gangs Matrix is finally being disbanded after years of criticism.
BUT the discriminatory profiling of racialised communities is unlikely to end as the institutionally racist Met Police rebrands the database as the Violence Harm Assessment.
Police body-worn cameras threaten privacy as they move easily between public and private spaces.
Often justified as a way to increase accountability, intrusive tech is always open to abuse, particularly in policing where there are systemic issues of racism, misogyny and homophobia.
With footage being shared, deleted or concealed by the police, we ask whether this tech enables greater abuses of power? ⤵️
Detroit’s police oversight officials approved the promotions of four officers with less than a day to review.
In the same meeting, they had to consider the police department’s recommendations to discipline three officers.
“You don’t have to be squeaky clean to get my approval for your promotion. As a matter of fact, the person that has no dirt on their uniform never got in the game,” said Police Commissioner Linda Bernard.
'Technologies touted as being useful in extreme cases will just end up as an oversized tool for policing misdemeanors and petty infractions, and will undoubtedly put already-marginalized communities further under the microscope.'
Colonial and casteist ideas still shape criminalisation and policing in India
The disproportionate policing and incarceration of Denotified Tribes and other caste-oppressed communities must be understood as a result of colonial and Brahminical power, writes Nikita Sonawane.
Caught on tape: RCMP (Federal Police) unit laughed about police brutality, people with disabilities and the campaign for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
Why To Avoid Calling 9-1-1 For A Mental Health Crisis
For safety, family members of those living with serious mental illnesses should rely more on themselves for de-escalation. Much of the early research on the effectiveness of crisis intervention training was based on post-training surveys that asked police officers how they thought the training would affect their behavior in the field. Most officers said it would increase their empathy and that probably does help in situations that do not spiral out of control. But more recent research has found that when officers feel threatened they still tend to reflexively rely on their gun to neutralize a threat. So there should be training for families and caregivers with a laser-like focus on the dangers of calling 9-1-1, rather than such risks just being a small part of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Basics or the NAMI Family-to-Family training, if they are mentioned at all. If there were such a program for families and caregivers, here are ten points that should be emphasized:
Weapons, especially guns, should be kept away from persons who may experience a mental health crisis. Red flag laws that have been proposed can be ineffective since they are temporary and the timing of a mental health crisis is unpredictable. So families should play a leading role in keeping dangerous weapons away from persons with serious mental illness. This would make life safer for a person living with mental illness, their caregivers, family members, friends, social workers, and emergency first-responders. All of this seems like a no-brainer to me. But when I told a former employee whose son had a psychotic break that he needed to lock up his weapons and ammunition, he replied that it was something he had not even thought about. Later he told me his son, who has schizophrenia that responded well to medication, did consider suicide by firearm.
Persons with mental illness are over-represented in the criminal justice system, among those killed by police officers, and even among those on death row. Reducing contact with the police is the best way to reduce the chance of a family members with mental illness becoming entangled in the criminal justice system.
I have been told that some African American families and others who have historically had negative experiences with police develop family and community plans for resolving conflicts without relying on police officers. NAMI families should be encouraged to do the same.
When you call 9-1-1 for help with a mental health crisis, you have no control over whether you will get a response from social workers, EMTs, or police officers. That decision is made by the dispatcher and is affected by their attitude about mental illness which you know nothing about. Police officers are the most typical first-responders who are dispatched to mental health crisis calls. There is a risk that police will get involved even when 9-8-8 is called.
When a police officer responds, you have no control over whether a family member will be taken to a hospital or jail—you relinquish that control to the responding police officer. Although my adult child with schizophrenia has not been violent for years, my wife and I were scratched and spit on in the past. A former local police chief, though a supporter of diversion, said in a meeting that a suspect who spit on a police officer would probably be taken to jail.
When a police officer responds, you have no control over whether an officer who is a specialist in crisis intervention will be dispatched. You also know nothing about a responding officer’s personal attitudes about mental illness. Local police officers have said at meetings that the closest officers typically respond first and they make the decision about whether to wait for specialized officers to handle a crisis. They often do not wait.
When a police officer responds, at least one gun is introduced to a situation where there may not have been one previously.
Police officers receive more training in neutralizing a perceived threat with a gun than they receive in using other methods like de-escalation. Any use of force may result in injury or death—use of a taser, baton, or fists is a bad outcome.
If a police officer is threatened or thinks a civilian is threatened, they are likely to reflexively draw a weapon which is often a gun since that is what a police officer is most trained to use.
Once a gun is unholstered in a crisis situation, it is difficult for a police officer to re-holster it during that crisis situation. One hand also is now occupied with the gun and is unavailable for wrestling with a subject. Among a police officer’s greatest fears is having their gun taken away and used against them, which increases the chance of them using it when a subject refuses to drop a weapon and approaches them.
My colleague Douglas Flowe reviews Emily Brooks, Gotham's War Within a War:
Brooks ultimately depicts La Guardia’s [mayoralty] as the “origin story for the nonpartisan, deeply discriminatory form of policing we know so well today." [which depends on the fiction that] “unbiased police power can craft an orderly and equitable city in a deeply unequal society.”
This scares the hell out of me. Not only are they going to use our photos for a purpose we never consented to, but I would expect the misidentification rate for Black people to be far higher than whatever is claimed. As someone who has been stopped by the police before due to a ridiculous case of mistaken identity, I can only imagine trying to talk them out of an arrest when they say "computer says this is you".
"Understanding that police are in the business of maintaining order as they define it helps explain what otherwise seems strange behaviour by police. ... The answer, of course, is the cops are on the side of the cops."
"Expressions of #fragility expose a calculated, purposeful strategy of insisting on the status of victim when confronted."
The indignation uses the loss of the prerogative, only and always, to be the one who transgresses the boundaries of others, but never to be in the position of having one’s own boundaries transgressed.