Police

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  1/3/2022
  

  NY Mayor's Proposal to Lock Up Mentally Ill Has Long History

  by Elliott Young

  The impulse to heal the mentally ill has long battled the impulse to lock them up as a threat to the society. Eric Adams is trying to do the latter while claiming to do the former. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/14/2022
  

  NYPD Warehouse Fire Jeopardizes Cold Cases, Exonerations

  Civil Rights lawyer Ron Kuby called the fire a blow to "the hopes and dreams of uncounted innocent people." 

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• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  12/15/2022
  

  The Orwellian Rise of "Suicide by Cop"

  "Suicide by Cop" emerged as a descriptive phrase in the context of a crackdown on crime and an abandonment of police accountability, making a large portion of killings by officers seem natural and unavoidable. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/2/2022
  

  Is the Feeling of Safety from Home Security Cameras Worth the Invasion of Privacy?

  Historian Matt Guariglia of the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that the cozy relationship between tech companies and police departments threatens to make camera footage less private according to the wishes of law enforcement. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  10/11/2022
  

  Jeffrey Dahmer's Accomplices? Racism and Homophobia

  by Kidiocus King-Carroll

  Dahmer was able to kill repeatedly because the Milwaukee police were indifferent to the safety of gay men of color.

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• SOURCE: The Baffler
  10/5/2022
  

  Two Years After George Floyd: What Next?

  by Austin McCoy

  Despite the massive insurgency of 2020, activists struggle as news media amplify reactionary moral panics about history curricula and crime to justify increasing the funding and power of police departments that have seen superficial reforms at best. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  10/4/2022
  

  The Writer of "The Onion" SCOTUS Brief Takes Parody Seriously

  The satirical newspaper's brief employed the rhetorical mode to lay out the free speech implications of a case involving a man who faced retaliatory arrest for making a parody facebook account for his local police department. 

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• 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. 

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• 8/7/2022
  

  A Primary Source Shows the Connection Between 1920s Flappers and Social Media Youth Organizers Today

  by Jason Ulysses Rose

  While youth are often dismissed as frivolous, their media often reveal engagement, creativity, and wisdom that ther political elders would be wise to heed – in the 1920s as today. 

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• 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. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  5/31/2022
  

  Los Angeles's Response to 1992 Riots Remains Model of How Not to Do It

  by V.N. Trinh

  The strategy of encouraging private business development, without seriously reforming police, fixing public schools, or addressing poverty, proved unequal to the task of promoting justice in LA. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/29/2022
  

  Racist Jokes Were the Glue of the LAPD Culture that Led to 1992 Riots

  by Raúl Pérez

  The LAPD was never forced to confront the documented ways that a culture of racial stereotyping and bigoted jokes cemented the systemic abuse of communities of color in the city. 

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• 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. 

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• 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. 

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• 4/24/2022
  

  Footage in NYC's Archives Sheds Important Light on the Northern Civil Rights Movement and Police Efforts to Undermine It

  by L.E.J. Rachell

  Surveillance footage in the New York City Archives helps to highlight the importance of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to the northern civil rights movement – and the techniques the NYPD used to disrupt it. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  4/19/2022
  

  T. Thomas Fortune: The Forgotten Founder of Abolition Democracy

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  T. Thomas Fortune's critique of Reconstruction is a radical intellectual document that has valuable lessons for the activists and scholars associated with the prison abolition movement. 

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• SOURCE: The American Prospect
  4/18/2022
  

  The Police Have No Legal "Duty to Protect" Anyone. Should they Get More Money?

  The Supreme Court has ruled that police officers have no definitive legal duty to take protective action on behalf of anyone. Would this fact influence debates about funding them if it were more widely known? 

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• 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”. 

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• 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. 

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• 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.