Police

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  4/20/2021
  

  By Bearing Witness — And Hitting ‘Record’ — 17-Year-Old Darnella Frazier May Have Changed The World

  “The world needed to see what I was seeing,” she said.

• 
• SOURCE: Politico
  4/20/2021
  

  The Chauvin Verdict: ‘The Terrain Going Forward Will Not Be the Same’

  Historians Keisha N. Blain and Simon Balto, with legal scholar Rosa Brooks, are among experts commenting on the significance of the conviction of Derek Chauvin of charges including third degree murder for the death of George Floyd. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  4/20/2021
  

  The Derek Chauvin Verdict Won’t Stop Cops Murdering Black People. We Still Aren’t Safe

  by Kellie Carter Jackson

  Historical reflection shows that Derek Chauvin's killing of George Floyd was not an anomaly. His conviction won't purge policing of racial bias. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/20/2021
  

  From Rodney King to George Floyd: Reliving the Scars of Police Violence

  "The murder trial of Derek Chauvin is at the center of a national reckoning on race and policing. But cycles of protests over systemic racism and policing are not new. We watched the trial with the families of Rodney King, Oscar Grant and Stephon Clark to see this moment in history through their eyes."

• 
• SOURCE: MSNBC
  4/19/2021
  

  Adam Toledo's Killing is Part of a Brutal Pattern of Child Killings in America

  by Keisha N. Blain

  Repeated acts of police violence against children underscore the fundamentally racist roots of policing in the United States and demand a diversion of resources from police to social services. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/18/2021
  

  Calls to Disarm the Police Won’t Stop Brutality and Killings

  by Maryam Aziz

  Calls to disarm police departments ignore the way that policing has used unarmed forms of violence in its efforts at social control, particularly of Black communities. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/19/2021
  

  Compliance Will Not Save Me

  by Ibram X. Kendi

  The idea that Black people can preserve their lives through absolute compliance with police is a vestige of the age of slavery and Jim Crow, but history shows that compliance has never secured safety under white supremacy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  4/15/2021
  

  This Much is Clear: Derek Chauvin’s Trial Won’t Change Policing in America

  by Simon Balto

  A historian of policing warns that, while many hope for a guilty verdict, that result, by identifying and punishing "bad" policing, may effectively render legitimate forms of violence and abuse that are historially part of policing in minority communities.

• 
• SOURCE: WBUR
  4/14/2021
  

  Professor Imani Perry Looks At Police Violence Through Lens Of History

  The Princeton professor of African American Studies discusses earlier patterns of state-sanctioned violence against African Americans and the politics of images of police violence. 

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• SOURCE: Minneapolis Star-Tribune
  3/28/2021
  

  Derek Chauvin Trial Represents a Defining Moment in America's Racial History

  University of Minnesota Professor Keith Mayes discusses the trial as part of a long and broad history of Black Americans' experiences with policing. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/26/2021
  

  The County Where Cops Call the Shots

  Aaron Bekemeyer's PhD dissertation research examines how police unions, like those in Suffolk County, NY, became powerful in the 20th Century. Jennifer Mittelstadt also comments on the exceptional status of police unions.

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• 3/21/2021
  

  Policing, Protest, and the Role of the University

  by David S. Busch

  Student activists at Northwestern, in other words, are asking a similar question that emerged out of the 1960s and famous protest moments at Jackson State and Kent State in 1970: What should be the university’s public purpose?

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• 3/21/2021
  

  Incognegro, Part II: How New York Law Enforcement Worked to Destroy Core

  by L.E.J. Rachell

  Ray Wood's memoir alleges that as a rookie NYPD detective he was coerced to act as an agent provocateur to convince members of New York's Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) chapters to commit crimes or other acts that would discredit and destroy the movement. The NYPD and FBI could clear the air by releasing their files on infiltration of Black-led organizations. 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  3/16/2021
  

  We Were Warned about a Divided America 50 Years Ago. We Ignored the Signs

  by Elizabeth Hinton

  The 1968 Kerner Commission Report on civil disorders recommended a program of public employment, housing and school desegregation, and a basic minimum income to tackle economic inequality and racial segregation as conjoined problems, as well as police reforms. Lyndon Johnson shelved the report, and we pay the price today. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/10/2021
  

  Charles Hill, Detective Who Found ‘The Scream,’ Dies at 73

  Charles Hill of Scotland Yard was without peer in recovering stolen art masterpieces. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/16/2021
  

  Police Unions Lose Bid to Keep Disciplinary Records a Secret

  The records would include records of civilian complaints, internal investigations of misconduct, and interdepartmental claims of harassment by superior officers. 

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  2/9/2021
  

  What ‘Defund the Police’ Really Means

  by Simon Balto

  The debate about "defunding police" must return to the community-driven vision of activists like assassinated Black Panther Fred Hampton, who envisioned a program of community empowerment that could divert the vast resources spent on policing toward other social ends. 

• 
• SOURCE: Orlando Sentinel
  2/3/2021
  

  Group Asks Florida Police Department to Remove Confederate Flag from Badges

  Pensacola's Citizens Police Advisory Board recommended that the badge design be changed to remove the image of the flag of the Confederate States of America.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/8/2021
  

  The Inaction of Capitol Police Was by Design

  by Kellie Carter Jackson

  "Police brutality against Black Americans and police inaction toward white Americans is not some surprising anomaly; it is the status quo."

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• 1/10/2021
  

  Images of the Capitol Riot Reflect a National Crisis

  by Danielle Taana Smith

  Treating Trumpism as an aberration rather than as the eruption of deep-seated impulses to bigotry and violence is a dangerous delusion.