The UK Home Secretary has accelerated prejudicial stop and search powers in a supposed attempt to stop crime. They should instead pause and reflect on how these powers exacerbate racism and harms to Black and other people of colour in the UK.
The origins of modern-day #policing can be traced back to the "#Slave Patrol." The earliest formal slave patrol was created in the Carolinas in the early 1700s with one mission: to establish a system of #terror and squash slave #uprisings with the capacity to pursue, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners. Tactics include the use of excessive force to control and produce desired slave behavior.
“Over-policing Black and brown communities is what leads to police brutality, it’s what ends lives, it’s what destroys families. We can’t talk about police brutality without discussing the role over-policing plays. It doesn’t mean anything that you protested the police who killed George Floyd if you too would’ve made the 911 call that put the police on his neck.” —Olayemi Olurin
When George Floyd was killed many continued to deny the existence of systemic oppression or that these problems were present in UK police forces. But from MacPherson to Casey, London to Manchester, reports have shown that isn't true.
And earlier this year, the charity INQUEST found Black men were seven times more likely to die than white people following police restraint but that there was no adequate accountability for racism within police forces.
What we know about #tech is that it accelerates results and so when an institutionally racist organisation like the police use #technology to deploy more efficient policing, it further embeds and exacerbates inherent discrimination #racism.
Online content is being mined and used as digital evidence to create gang narratives, which with extended criminal liability, is used to imprison young Black people and people of colour for offences they have not commited.
#FacialRecognition is used by the police to try and match people to watch lists but its error rate is unacceptable, particularly for younger people and people with darker skin.
See Big Brother Watch's briefing on facial recognition surveillance.
UK #Police have algorithms analysing huge amounts of information, using discriminatory factors like ‘cramped houses’ and ‘jobs with high turnover’ to predict someone's likelihood to commit a crime.
FBI misused surveillance powers more than 280k times in a year - The FBI misused controversial surveillance powers more than 278,000 times between 2020 and early 2021 to conduct warrantless searches on George Floyd protesters, January 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol, and donors to a Congressional campaign, according to a newly unclassified court opinion. #surveillance#LawEnforcement#policing#FBIhttps://www.theregister.com/2023/05/22/fbi_fisa_abuse/
Today the government’s anti-democratic mission is seen clearly. As well as suppressing dissent through draconian anti-protest laws, the Met used live facial recognition surveillance during the coronation.
So, this guy solicited nude videos from an undercover police officer he believed to be a minor in 2018. It took nearly five years to convict him and (apologies but I’m going to use all caps here) HE REMAINED AN ACTIVE DUTY NYPD OFFICER UP TO HIS CONVICTION THIS WEEK. In the press release, the NYPD goes on and on about how he betrayed his oath but they don’t seem bothered with letting him keep his badge for years after he did.