September 10, 2008 – 1:33 pm
By now you’ve likely heard about the police repression of protesters at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota last week. Police made a massive show of force, arresting over 800 people, making a special effort to target journalists who were documenting the protests and the police violence going on.
Perhaps more shocking and concerning [...]
Along similar lines to Geert’s recent blog post on quality of life policing and a forthcoming blog post about the return of Springfield’s blackshirts, here is a post about ‘elite’ police units and the abuses they commit around the United States. It’s from a SUPERB blog, Injustice in Seattle.
Link: Becoming The Monster: Problems With Proactive [...]
Less than one month after being sworn in as Springfield’s acting top cop, Commissioner William Fitchet announced the formation of a new four-officer Ordinance Squad to issue warnings and citations for violations of city ordinances ranging from playing music too loud to jaywalking to having an unkept lawn. (See “Police hearten blight victims” from April [...]
Claire Gordon, in yesterday’s Yale Daily News, gives the rundown of some problems with the U.S. prison system. Not only does the United States imprison a higher percentage of its people than any other nation in the world, the system is hugely burdensome to taxpayers and disproportionately punishes people of color. As Gordon puts it, [...]