Departments

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Police

  • SOURCE: Teen Vogue
    8/11/2022

    Another 90's Trend is Back: DARE

    by Rebecca Kavanagh

    The brainchild of LAPD Chief Darryl Gates, DARE wasn't good at steering kids away from drugs. But it was good at bringing police into schools and encouraging kids to report anyone using drugs to the cops. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    6/1/2022

    Why the Police Have No Duty to Protect You

    A series of Supreme Court decisions in recent decades have reinforced police officers' discretion about how and if to act, and made in nearly impossible for the public to hold the police accountable for those choices, even when lives are lost. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    4/22/2022

    Racist Policing Has Roots in Controlling Sex Work

    by Sarah A. Seo

    Anne Gray Fischer's book shows that police policy toward sexuality in public space changed in ways that made Black women's public lives subject to increased control and that entrenched the discretion of police to stop people for suspected minor offenses that is associated with "broken windows" policing today. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    4/21/2022

    How the Public Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Wiretapping

    by Andrew Lanham

    Brian Hochman shows that the white backlash to civil rights and racial justice protests helped to undermine longstanding civil libertarian opposition to electronic surveillance and normalize the idea of the government spying on Americans. 

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    4/19/2022

    "More Cops" is Not the Answer for NYC

    by Simon Balto

    The entire, terrifying episode that unfolded across 29 hours in New York was a testament to the futility of spending more money on police, and to the lie that police “keep us safe”. 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    3/9/2022

    Review: The Pragmatism of Police Abolition

    Activist and police abolitionist Derecka Purnell's book draws on personal and academic history to push readers to question what they think an ideal society looks like, and whether police forces are an instrument for achieving it. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    11/17/2021

    Law Enforcement Has Long Practiced Double Standards for Activists

    by Denise Lynn

    Nobody should be shocked that the FBI has aggressively surveilled Black Lives Matter organizers while deciding that the online organizing of the January 6 attack on the Capitol was protected speech; this double standard has characterized law enforcement's approach to racial justice protest. 

  • 11/7/2021

    Historically, Black Distrust of Police is About More than Acts of Violence

    by Christopher Hayes

    The Harlem rebellion against the NYPD in July 1964 was sparked by a police killing of a teenager (and a grand jury's refusal to indict him), but reflected the role of the police in maintaining a profoundly unequal social order that affected everyday life in Black neighborhoods, a situation that has changed little. 

  • SOURCE: New York Magazine
    10/4/2021

    The Forgotten, but Consequential, New York City Police Riot of 1992

    Encouraged by Rudy Giuliani, thousands of New York City Police officers, some drunk, staged a riot at City Hall and on the Brooklyn Bridge to protest Mayor David Dinkins's 1992 proposal of an all-civilian, independent police complaint review board. Why has this pivotal event been scrubbed from many New Yorkers' memories? 

  • SOURCE: Black Perspectives
    7/12/2021

    Black Power and Anti-Carceral State Infrastructure

    by Joshua L. Crutchfield

    Mutual aid groups that formed in response to the COVID pandemic echo the ways that participants in the Black Freedom movement sought to create alternative instititutions for the benefit of communities and individuals that did not reinforce the power of the police.