Mediaboss Marketing

San Francisco Prides decision to ban police officers from marching in uniform in next months parade elicited strong reactions last week: Law enforcement, firefighters, Mayor London Breed and openly gay District Six Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who previously served as the Police Departments lead spokesperson, all said they would boycott the 52nd annual event because of it.

The ban doesnt apply to police officers providing security at the parade. It requires only that the ones who march wear anything but their full police uniforms.

The backlash shows how, even in liberal San Francisco, asking cops to leave their dress blues at home can be controversial despite a years-long national effort to create more distance between the LGBTQ community and a fraternal order that doesnt have a history of treating queer people justly.

While San Francisco Pride announced its police uniform ban in 2020, pandemic-related parade cancellations kept it from being tested until now, which is why some local politicians and residents are in such a huff. But bold political stances have always been part of this citys annual celebration of LGBTQ community and culture, which culminates with the summer weekend procession that regularly draws massive crowds in the tens of thousands.

The roots of this particular stance go back six years.

More from Justin Phillips

After the Orlando nightclub massacre in June 2016, local Pride organizers announced increased security metal detectors and roughly 25% more police at its racial and economic justice-themed parade that year.

This happened at a moment when Black Lives Matter was ascending behind its work to bring attention to police killings, including the 2015 death of Mario Woods, shot 20 times by San Francisco police officers for reportedly refusing to drop a knife. The Bay Area chapter of Black Lives Matter backed out of participating in the Pride parade as a grand marshal, with BLM member Malkia Cyril noting at the time that increasing the police presence at Pride does not increase safety for all people.

At the time, then-SF Pride board President Michelle Meow said she understood the BLM move and that, going forward, Pride would rethink what safety means outside of police protection, because that is not the answer, the Guardian reported.

Five months later, the U.S. Department of Justice released a scathing report about the San Francisco Police Department, detailing the same institutionalized racial bias that BLM had cited for sitting out the Pride parade.

By 2019, anti-police demonstrators blocked the parade route on Market Street at Sixth Street for almost an hour, The Chronicle reported. Video footage circulated on Twitter shows officers shoving people, and at one point dragging a protester across the pavement. In the background, parade-goers can be heard shouting, Cops out of Pride!

SF Pride asked that the citys Department of Police Accountability look into SFPDs actions. When the city responded a year later by saying it found no evidence of wrongdoing, local Pride leaders issued a statement condemning the findings and announcing the uniform ban.

From 2017 to 2021, LGBTQ organizers in New York, Washington, D.C., Denver and other cities either banned uniformed officers from marching in their parades or disinvited cops altogether.

The actions push back against power structures, like police, that have historically mistreated marginalized communities. Even today, LGBTQ people are much more likely to be arrested than straight people and remain overrepresented in every facet of the criminal legal system, according to a report last year from the Prison Policy Initiative.

In a statement Monday, Breed called her parade boycott a very hard decision. Dorsey, the man she appointed supervisor, labeled the uniform ban a policy of exclusion.

San Franciscos Transgender District responded in an Instagram post Thursday specifically calling Breeds choice a betrayal of inclusive values and ethics that have defined the city... as a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community for decades.

While the relationship between local law enforcement and the LGBTQ community is less fraught than in other parts of the country, anti-LGBTQ hysteria is resurgent in some states, shaping school curriculum and legislation. And trans people remain far more likely than cisgender people to experience physical violence when interacting with police, according to the Anti-Violence Project.

Even the SFPD lacked a policy requiring officers to refer to transgender, gender variant and gender nonbinary individuals by their preferred pronouns until 2018.

Let me echo the point BLM made six years ago: Law enforcement uniforms and guns dont signify safety for everyone. SF Prides ban isnt anti-police. Its pro-peace of mind for groups rarely afforded it.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips appears Sundays. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips

Excerpt from:
S.F. Prides police uniform ban was years in the making. The backlash to it is troubling - San Francisco Chronicle

Wednesday will be the second anniversary of the lurid street murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The killings of Black people had become almost banal in their incessancy and redundancy, but something about this one captured during an advancing pandemic that had forced people apart and inside, watching the world through windows and screens drew thousands of people out into the streets, where boarded-up storefronts produced the tempting tableau of a country strewn with canvases.

Some saw in the uprising the potential for revolution. They talked about the protests in the lofty language of a racial reckoning, an inflection point, a fresh start on Americas path to absolution from its original sin.

But flashes of guilt, outrage and shame often stir fleeting fealties, and the heavy gravitational pull of racial privileges and power can quickly draw mercurial allies back into the refuge of the status quo.

Some good came of the protests, to be sure. Some states and local municipalities passed or instituted police reforms. Money poured into Black Lives Matter, as well as other racial justice organizations and Black institutions. Individuals began personal journeys to become more egalitarian and more actively antiracist. And artists produced hundreds of murals and thousands of pieces of other street art that, for a time, transformed this country.

In the end, transformative national change proved to be an illusion. Inflation, a war in Ukraine, public safety, abortion and even a baby formula crisis have overtaken the zeitgeist. Support for Black Lives Matter has diminished. Federal police reform and federal voter protection both failed to pass the Senate. And the founders of Black Lives Matter have been drawn into controversies about how they handled its money.

Ive learned not to expect much from America; it has a deep capacity for change but a shallow desire for it. I have embraced the wise desire not to be betrayed by too much hoping, as James Baldwin put it. But I worry about young people in all of this. It is their faith thats most vulnerable to damage. They were the ones who most believed that change was not only possible but imminent, only to have America retreat and retrench.

Now not only are their allies reversing course on issues like police reform; the country is also facing a full backlash toward protest itself. Dozens of states have passed laws restricting the right to protest (just this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida barred citizens from protesting outside private homes), and more than a dozen have now criminalized teaching full and accurate racial history.

The Great Erasure is underway, not so much an attempt to erase the uprising itself as an attempt to blunt its effects.

There is no example of this erasure more striking than the continual destruction, removal or slow vanishing of much of the street art produced in the wake of Floyds killing.

According to a database compiled by three professors at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota Heather Shirey, David Todd Lawrence and Paul Lorah there were once approximately 2,700 murals, graffiti, stickers, posters affixed to surfaces and light projections created in response to Floyds killing, mostly in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Shirey and Lawrence called it the largest proliferation of street art around one idea or issue or event in history. But many of those pieces have disappeared, sometimes because of exposure to traffic or the elements and sometimes because of deliberate attempts to erase them. Business owners quietly removed the graffitied planks from their storefronts. Some of the murals have been defaced.

For this project, my colleagues and I looked at 115 murals created after Floyds death and tried to determine how many had been maintained. (It is not a comprehensive list, although it is hard to imagine any such list could be.) Only 37 were fully intact. In cities from Oklahoma to California, few vestiges remain of what were once vibrant murals, painted on asphalt and walls.

In 2021, six police officers sued Palo Alto, Calif., because it had commissioned this mural, which included aportrait of Joanne Chesimard, a former member of the Black Liberation Army convicted of killing a state trooper in1973. The lawsuit was dismissed, but by that point,the city had already removed the mural.

This mural, designed by Avrion Jackson, was one of six that an army of some 1,000 volunteers paintedaround Kansas City in 2020. Last fall, the organizers said they planned to raise funds to restore the murals, but work on this one has not yet begun.

In spring 2020, city officials teamed up with local organizations to commission variousartists to design and paint each letter of this eclectic colorful mural. The city reopened the street to traffic that fall, and the paint has since worn away.

When this mural first appeared on Fulton Street in June 2020, the districts council member said he would seek to turn the street into a permanent pedestrian plaza. But it soon opened to traffic, which erased the lettering.

Over the past two months, I talked to art historians, museum directors and curators, activists and artists who had created murals. The picture that emerges is of a group determined to preserve as much of the art as possible while understanding that it cant all be saved, and an acknowledgement of the inherent, ephemeral nature of street art. This art was created in a moment, for a moment. Permanence was often not its central consideration. But to lose it would be to lose a cultural record of the time, a record of the profound significance and magnitude of what transpired: A generation of young people and young artists found their voice and used it, creating an arts movement that sits in the canon alongside the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s and the Harlem Renaissance. You might even say it mirrors on an enormous scale the Wall of Respect mural first painted in 1967 by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture in Chicago.

What may have been different about this movement was the outlook of the generation that created it. Aaron Bryant, curator of photography, visual anthropology and contemporary history at the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture, described it to me as a sense of entitlement. These activists and artists believe they have an absolute right, and even a responsibility, to express themselves, he told me. They arent necessarily a generation that was raised to be silent.

The art produced during and after the uprising was powerful, emotional and energetic, like a lightning storm. But like lightning, the illuminated contours of the way it split the sky soon dimmed and vanished.

The art tapped into something and provided a language for it. As Franklin Sirmans, director of the Prez Art Museum Miami, put it, Some of the best art is created under situations of not only duress but of immediate response, and that is part and parcel with this sense of collective identity that I think many of us felt in that moment, and to see it visualized was really heartening.

For me, it was transcendent. It brought a fresh, abounding energy to a standing tradition.

Murals as instruments of memorial have long been a feature of Black grief and remembrance. They are what Amaka Okechukwu, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at George Mason University, so eloquently describes as gravestone murals or wake work haunting the urban spaces where Black lives have been lost.

By no means are these murals the expression solely of African Americans. They can be found in many communities and in many cultures around the world, where the tradition of producing them is centuries old.

But in a way, Floyds murder globalized gravestone murals in service of a singular subject. Perhaps the most iconic of these murals were those with the words Black Lives Matter written in large block letters down the middle of streets. The first was painted by the District of Columbia and was so large that it was legible on satellite images.

People like Sarah Lewis, associate professor of history of art and architecture and African and African American studies at Harvard University, saw it as a powerful testament symbolizing the precarity of black life in open terrain. But activists soon pointed out that the politicians who supported the art often resisted policies designed to rectify the historic injustices Black Lives Matter had highlighted. When the District of Columbia painted its mural, the local Black Lives Matter chapter called it a performative distraction from real policy changes designed to appease white liberals while ignoring our demands. Mayor Muriel Bowser was on the wrong side of history, they said. Black Lives Matter means defund the police.

These tensions stretched beyond Washington.

In Minneapolis, at the intersection where Floyd was murdered now called George Floyd Square the George Floyd Global Memorial project has taken on the Herculean task of preserving all protest objects, items the group calls offerings, including art and murals, in the square. So far it has collected over 5,000 artifacts, preserved them with the help of art conservators and stored them in cardboard boxes in a small room in a community theater. The group has ambitions to one day build a museum to house it all. Some of the murals in George Floyd Square were being repainted when I visited this month, ahead of the observances of the second anniversary of Floyds murder. New ones have been added featuring other Black people killed elsewhere, some lost to community violence rather than state violence.

This level of ambition makes Minneapolis both the epicenter of the preservation efforts and an anomaly. Governments in cities across the country, like Tulsa, Okla. and Redwood City, Calif., have erased the murals, reflecting the reality that many lacked the true, sustained commitment to Black lives.

Activists painted this mural on what was once "Black Wall Street," the wealthy community ravaged in Tulsa's 1921 race massacre. City officials later removed themural because it was never officially approved, but before they did, protesters erected paper tombstones on the siteto memorialize Black lives lost to violence.

A married couple worked with volunteers to paint this mural on the fence outside their home in 2020. It was painted over the following year to comply with city ordinances that prohibit fences from being more than one color or from displaying words, pictures or signs.

Further complicating the preservation efforts is the degree to which these pieces of art were politicized from the moment of their creation: Murals were going up as Confederate monuments in cities like Montgomery, Ala., continued to come down. It fueled the fears held by white supremacists that white people and white culture would eventually be superseded.

In their zero-sum worldview, BLMs pro-Blackness was inherently anti-white. President Donald Trump called a Black Lives Matter mural to be painted in front of Trump Tower in New York City a symbol of hate. Historical revisionists held fast to the lie that Confederate monuments were about history, rather than racism. The fight was over which art representing which points of view was more deserving of public display.

Its perhaps also no coincidence that much of the artwork created after Floyds death is vanishing as the public embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement is waning. Polls last year by the Pew Research Center found that support for Black Lives Matter, which peaked in the immediate aftermath of George Floyds death, had fallen back to its 2017 levels, pre-George Floyd. Black support had remained high; it was the support among white people that fell.

Activists chafe at the notion that the BLM movement itself is waning.

Every off year we write Black Lives Matters obituary, and we eulogize it and we talk about the waning Black Lives Matter Movement, Frank Leon Roberts, creator of the Black Lives Matter Syllabus, a public curriculum for teaching BLM in classrooms and communities, and newly appointed assistant professor of English and Black studies at Amherst College, told me.

The movement actually is not waning, he said. The movement from its inception has operated in waves. He predicts that there will inevitably be another heinous event of police violence which will once again incite something in the people, and then well be having this same conversation.

But police killings have continued unabated. In fact, last year saw a record number of police shootings, the most since The Washington Post began keeping count in 2015. The police killed 1,055 people across the country in 2021. And yet, there were no nationwide protests.

In my life I have arrived at the conclusion that real liberation equity, safety and the pursuit of happiness is not rooted in feelings and personal evolutions. Only a change in the parameters of power political, economic and cultural, who has it and who gets to exercise it, who is benefited by it and who is harmed by it can transform this country.

Passions flare and subside; power endures. Like the art, broad-based, transracial interest and energy to support the Black Lives Matter movement are fading. I mourn the loss of that energy, but I also mourn the loss of the movements art from public space. In the streets it was both declaration and confrontation, brazen and assertive. It was forcefully in your face.

Now, even among the artifacts that can be or have been saved, the context will change from the urgency of in-situ to the sterility of institutions or the impersonal distance of digital space.

The art that once shouted and demanded and documented the movement is being culled and reduced to the dulcet-toned advocacy of a few heroic curators.

Read more:
Opinion | George Floyd and the Fading Signs of Black Lives Matter - The New York Times

A new inscription will be unveiled at the Milton Keynes Rose in Campbell Park on Wednesday 25 May 2022 at 5pm with a ceremony that is open to the public.

25th May is the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an event which was instrumental in the development and spread of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Following a public consultation exercise in 2021, a new pillar inscription at the Milton Keynes Rose will mark 25 May and Black Lives Matter.

The wording on the inscription refers to George Floyds death and states:

No person should put their knee, chain or noose

on anothers neck because of their colour

Revd Edson Dube, who led the campaign to have the inscription on behalf of the MK Council of Faiths, said: "25th May is a date which globally will forever be commemorated and remembered for the crime that was committed against Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis.

"This date is one of deep importance to both the city and the people of Milton Keynes as the date stands as a consistent reminder of the need to eradicate hate, racism and prejudice from our community and the world."

Debbie Brock, Chair of the Milton Keynes Rose Trustsaid: "The Trust is grateful for the considered and helpful nomination it received in favour of the Black Lives Matter pillar and welcomes the day being commemorated for many years into the future to remind us of the horrific murder of George Floyd and to affirm that in Milton Keynes Black Lives Matter."

Read the rest here:
New pillar honouring Black Lives Matter Movement to be unveiled at the Milton Keynes Rose - MKFM

The 2020 racial justice demonstrations in New York City became a stage for the brutal police tactics that drove protesters to the streets following the murder of George Floyd on May 25 of that year. Dozens of videos of New York City Police Department officers shoving, beating and pepper-spraying protesters emerged, sparking even more outcry. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio was widely criticized for his response or lack thereof to NYPD aggression against protesters, leading members of his own staff to publicly denounce his approach to criminal justice and policing.

What began as an emotional response to police brutality evolved into a movement to defund the police. Beyond calls for cuts to the massive NYPD budget, demands from protesters in 2020 were far-reaching, including everything from emptying Rikers to enhancing officer accountability.

On a state level, the Legislature responded to protesters demands by passing a package of reforms aimed at lifting the Blue Wall of Silence, a term that refers to police departments attempts to hide officer misconduct, by limiting the use of chokeholds by police and requiring officers to record demographics when making low-level arrests.

The City Council also passed a package of reforms that summer on officer accountability and to tamp down excessive force, along with cataloging surveillance technology.

But as the Black Lives Matter protests swept the city and the country, so did a pandemic-induced counterforce to the progressive policereform movement. The unraveling of societal norms contributed to a national increase in shootings and homicides.Domestic violence incidents spiked as victims were stuck at home with their abusers. The uncertainty drove record increases in gun sales across the U.S. School closures, along with household disruptions, were widely believed to have contributed to an increase in killings and violence among youth. Distrust in police reached an all-time high.

In the two years since Floyds murder by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the popular movement sparked by his death these factors have contributed to a marked shift away from policies and rhetoric meant to radically change the role of policing in New York. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, has reinstated the controversial NYPD anti-crime unit and proposed an NYPD operating budget that maintains the increases under de Blasio, exceeding the budget put in place before the protests.

Adams participated in the 2020 protests as Brooklyn borough president. During the mayoral primary, he touted his work as a reformer of the NYPD who called out racism from the inside. He helped paint Black Lives Matter in front of Trump Tower in July of that year.

But the citys second Black mayor now finds himself on the opposite side of the police reform debate. While he once stood in solidarity with Black Lives Matter demonstrators, local leaders of the protest movement have reacted to many of his new policing policies with vitriol. Brooklyn Movement Center Executive Director Anthonine Pierre recently penned an op-ed in the Daily News in which she accused Adams of caving to the demands of the police instead of meeting the needs of Black communities.

Its really disheartening at this point to be going back to broken windows policing the way Giuliani did.

Jessica Sanclemente-Gomez, board chair of the Justice Committee

Its really disheartening at this point to be going back to broken windows policing the way Giuliani did.

Adams, in turn, has used the movements own rhetoric to contest the criticism and what he views as the movements lack of action against gun violence. If Black lives matter, then the thousands of people I saw on the street when Floyd was murdered should be on the streets right now stating that the lives of these Black children that are dying every night matter, Adams said in April on NY1, speaking about the Brooklyn subway shooting in April. We cant be hypocrites.

In this new political climate, Adams has also promised policies to target underlying causes of crime and community-police relations such as new investments in the citys mental health crisis teams and youth programs advocates said theyre overshadowed by a return to what they view as problematic policing tactics.

All Adams has done is create more of a narrative of The way we combat violence is by more policing, Jessica Sanclemente-Gomez, board chair of the police reform organization the Justice Committee, told City & State. And its really disheartening at this point to be going back to broken windows policing the way (former Mayor Rudy) Giuliani did. That clearly showed no real dent in creating a better system and better flow of accountability.

Adams, when asked by City & State where he thinks the city stands in implementing the reforms he and others called for in the wake of the 2020 protests, said he remains committed not only to holding bad cops accountable, but also to supporting police.

You had (calls to) defund the police. I didnt call for those. I support police accountability. I also support police support. We need to be there for law enforcement officers, he said during a Q&A with reporters on May 18. The small number that are not suitable to be police officers, they need to expeditiously be removed from our department because they hurt our police department.

There are some specific reforms I called for there may be reforms that I dont think are reforms. I think they could hurt public safety. And Im never going to do anything thats going to hurt public safety.

Reforms enacted at the state and city levels have resulted in some changes to holding police accountable for incidents of violence and racial bias, but they have also faced fierce legal challenges and stonewalling from police departments and their unions.

Heres where some of the most prominent police reforms that came out of the 2020 protests stand today.

What was promised: Amid calls from protesters, de Blasio agreed to cut the NYPD budget by $1 billion. The City Council approved the budget in August 2020, and council leaders and activists accused the mayor of using some budget trickery to create a perception that funding had been cut more significantly than it was.

Where we are now: De Blasio ultimately fell short of the demands, and the police budget has since been restored to an amount thats even higher than it was before the 2020 protests.

The fiscal year 2021 budget, which was approved in July 2020 amid the summer protests, included $4.9 billion in city-funded NYPD operating expenses, what was projected to be a $345 million reduction, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. A large portion of the proposed reduction came from unrealistic cuts to overtime, the CBC reported. These savings are unrealistic; they were not accompanied by a plan or operational strategy, and prior efforts to reduce overtime at the uniformed agencies have been more successful in slowing growth rather than decreasing expenses.

In reality, the city spent $317 million less on the NYPDs city-funded operating budget in fiscal year 2021 compared to fiscal year 2020, according to the CBC. Overtime expenses exceeded the projected cuts by $216 million.

The fiscal year 2022 NYPD budget raised the NYPDs operating expenses by $465 million to a level even higher than its preprotest budget.

In addition to promises to cut overtime spending, de Blasio also pledged to shift funding for school safety agents and crossing guards to the city Department of Education, but that never happened. Adams first proposed budget also keeps school safety agents under the NYPD.

There may be reforms that I dont think are reforms. I think they could hurt public safety. And Im never going to do anything thats going to hurt public safety.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams

There may be reforms that I dont think are reforms. I think they could hurt public safety. And Im never going to do anything thats going to hurt public safety.

Adams NYPD spending plan, pending approval from the City Council, raised city-funded operating expenses by $539 million, according to the CBC. This increase is largely due to the city employing a one-time, $500 million use of American Rescue Plan funds in the previous fiscal year, said CBC Deputy Research Director Ana Champeny. However, the full picture of projected NYPD spending in fiscal year 2023 has yet to be determined due to an expected influx of federal funds. As of now, city-funded operating expenses are budgeted at $5.3 billion.

Rather than calling for blanket budget cuts to the NYPD, progressive City Council members and community activists have become more targeted in their rhetoric, instead focusing on reinvestments in programs and services to curb the underlying causes of crime and negative interactions with cops.

In a statement responding to Adams Blueprint to End Gun Violence, the progressive advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform had a mixed reaction.

Pieces of Mayor Adams plan support non-police safety solutions that we have been demanding for years, like expanding the Summer Youth Employment Program and providing resources for programs and organizations in communities working to interrupt violence, the organization wrote in a statement. But these initiatives are made secondary to an approach that increases the power and reach of the NYPD, expands the notoriously violent plainclothes unit, and doubles down on dangerous police surveillance technologies.

Adams gun violence plan included plans to offer a record number of 100,000 summer job opportunities for young people ages 14-24. Advocates, however, have called for at least an additional 50,000 spots to meet the high demand for the program.

Reformists said that while theyre not marching the streets en masse, the 2020 protests shone a spotlight on their movement and drew new recruits and resources that they have used to further their goals. Theyre now working to strike a balance between the defund rhetoric and more practical solutions.

You cant just say, defund the police and that's it, Sanclemente-Gomez said. Its defund the police to redirect that funding to potentially pay teachers more or to provide more affordable housing. Communities want a lot more and for us to not really be able to dive deep into what that strategy could look like, is a disservice to us as organizers.

What was promised: Among the bills state lawmakers passed targeting police reform in the wake of Floyds death was the repeal of the states Section 50-a law. Sponsored by Assembly Member Daniel ODonnell and state Sen. Jamaal Bailey, the bill largely rescinded the 1976 law that shielded officer disciplinary records from the public. Under the 2020 legislation, disciplinary documents are subject to release via Freedom of Information Law requests.

Where we are now: The 2020 law has faced legal roadblocks from police unions that have sued to prohibit the release of records, some successfully. Police departments have also found ways to circumvent 50-as repeal by using narrow interpretations of the law to deny records requests. The New York Civil Liberties Unionsued the NYPD in September, claiming its complaint database published in March 2021 following 50-as repeal only included details of investigations that were substantiated.

Sanclemente-Gomez said the 50-a legislation was definitely progress and sparked a new conversation surrounding police accountability, but it is not the silver bullet by any means. We just chipped away at the problem.

Legislation introduced earlier this year by Assembly Member Jessica Gonzlez-Rojas and Baileysought to formally eliminate the availability of the unsubstantiated excuse. The bill would amend the 2020 law to explicitly state that records can not be denied because such records concern complaints, allegations or charges that have not yet been determined, did not result in disciplinary action or resulted in a disposition or finding other than substantiated or guilty, according to the bill text.

While the legislation is still in committee, another bill that changed some of the provisions under the repeal of 50-a was recently passed and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on March 18. The law removed the requirement that a judicial hearing be held to determine if disciplinary documents related to an ongoing investigation an exception frequently cited by police departments can be withheld. Instead, under the newly passed amendments, government agencies must simply obtain a certificate from the investigating agency that the FOIL-requested records may be withheld because they would impede an ongoing investigation, according to an explanation of the bill, which was sponsored by Democrats state Sen. James Skoufis and Assembly Member Steve Englebright.

There was some disagreement about whether the new changes would hinder or help public access to records. The government watchdog group Reinvent Albany said the newly enacted provisions improve transparency by requiring police departments to explain why releasing records would impede an ongoing investigation. But some legal experts have said it gives police departments more leeway in making those determinations by eliminating judicial intervention. We are back to a situation where the police simply have to give no justification, just blanket denials for access to information. They can simply cite the existence of an ongoing investigation, lawyer James Henry told the New York Post.

What was promised: Amid the protests, de Blasio promised to do away with the citys anti-crime unit that was notorious for its controversial use of stop and frisk. Former NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who put Eric Garner in a lethal chokehold while arresting him on Staten Island in 2014, was a member of the anti-crime unit. Made up of about 600 undercover police officers, the unit was formally disbanded in June 2020 under former NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea. I would consider this in the realm of closing on one of the last chapters on stop, question and frisk, Shea said at the time.

Where we are now: In one of his first major policing announcements, Adams said the city would bring back the anti-crime units, sparking criticism from progressive City Council members and criminal justice activists.

The anti-crime unit has just been rebranded in some other capacity, especially under Mayor Adams, Sanclemente-Gomez said. Were just going back to square one.

The units, now called Neighborhood Safety Teams, were deployed on March 14. The approximately 200 officers are divided into groups of five officers and one sergeant, stationed in 30 precincts and four housing police service areas where 80% of the citys gun violence occurs, officials have said. While the officers historically wore street clothes, they now wear a less conspicuous version of the NYPDs uniform. Adams said the officers selected for the teams would undergo enhanced training and a strict vetting process.

These anti-crime teams are not the anti-crime teams of old. They look different. Theyre vetted different. Theres significant oversight," NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said during a March City Council hearing.

A spokesperson for the mayor said Adams will not allow abusive practices to take place within the NYPD. To show his commitment to transparency and accountable policing, Mayor Adams is making sure the NYPDs new anti-gun unit will not make the mistakes of the past. Like all uniformed officers of the NYPD, the Neighborhood Safety Teams all wear body-worn cameras. Additionally, all members of the anti-gun unit wear modified uniforms that clearly identify them as NYPD, spokesperson Fabien Levy said in a statement.

The units were supposed to be responsible for finding illegal guns, but department data showed most of their arrests have been for low-level crimes. As of April 5, the most frequent arrest made by the units was for criminal possession of a forged instrument, such as a fake ID. The teams had made 27 such arrests of 135 total, according to the NYPD. As of May 10, the unit had made 397 total arrests and removed 69 guns, according to the department.

Meanwhile, a federal monitor reported earlier this month that the NYPD continues to underreport stops but has made significant strides regarding stop and frisk, including increases in justifiable stops and the use of body-worn cameras. However, the monitor found that 29% of stops made by the NYPD last year were not properly documented, something the department said was, in part, an effect of the pandemic. This report describes many accomplishments primarily relying on data from 2019-2020, the NYPD said in a statement. In the time period since the report, compliance has steadily and consistently increased.

What was promised: First introduced in 2017, City Council legislation requiring the NYPD to publicly report technology it uses and plans to acquire in order to surveil the public, such as drones and license plate readers, gained momentum during the 2020 protests and passed in June of that year. In 2019, national backlash to the use of facial recognition software by police and bans on the technology in other cities, such as Oakland and San Francisco, also brought renewed attention to the legislation. The NYPD has used facial recognition on children as young as 11 years old to compare crime scene photos to mug shots, The New York Times reported. Department leaders staunchly opposed the legislation, stating that it would help criminals and terrorists and endanger police officers, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said in an interview with AM 970s John Catsimatidis in 2017.

Where we are now: The NYPD in January 2021 released a list of the surveillance technology it deploys, including geolocation tracking devices and mobile X-ray technology, along with an impact and use policy for each device. Advocates said the data dump did not go far enoughand did not disclosewho is shared on the information collected from the technology or how the NYPD prevents racial biases historically associated with the technologies. In general, the disclosures obscure the breadth, depth, and complexity of the NYPDs surveillance, and in some instances even include misrepresentations and inaccurate statements, the NYCLU wrote in response to the release of the information.

Advocates continued to report racial bias associated with facial recognition software technology that faced widespread criticism for its use during the 2020 protests. The technology was used to track down Black Lives Matter activist Derrick Ingram, a co-founder of the group Warriors in the Garden, who was accused of yelling in an officers ear through a megaphone during the protests. Days later, in August 2020, dozens of NYPD officers swarmed his Hells Kitchen apartment building in an hourslong standoff. Amnesty International, along with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, sued the NYPD to demand it release records showing how it used facial recognition software during the protests.

In February, Amnesty International reported more troubling revelations about facial recognition software. The group mapped 25,500 CCTV cameras across the city and found that facial recognition technology was disproportionately used in nonwhite communities in Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens.

Adams Blueprint to End Gun Violence plan released in January suggested expanding the use of facial recognition, along with the responsible use of new technologies and software to identify dangerous individuals and those carrying weapons. He explained in a press conference: Were looking at all of this technology out there to make sure that we can be responsible within our laws. Were not going to do anything thats going to go in contrast to our laws. But were going to use this technology to make people safe.

What was promised: Both the New York City Council and the state Legislature passed laws banning the use of chokeholds by police. The Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, sponsored by then-Assembly Member Walter Mosley and then-state Sen. Brian Benjamin, was passed by the Legislature in June 2020. The bill made it so a police officer who injures or kills someone by using a chokehold or similar restraint could be charged with a class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The council legislation criminalized the use of restraints that restrict the flow of air or blood by compressing another individuals windpipe or arteries on the neck, or by putting pressure on the back or chest, by (a) police officer making an arrest. The NYPDs own policy has prohibited chokeholds for decades, but the new law made it so that officers who engage in the practice could face a class A misdemeanor charge under the law.

Where we are now: The NYPDs police unions sued over the legislation, and last yeara state Supreme Court judge ruled that the policy was unconstitutionally vague and must be rewritten. On May 19, an appeals court reinstated the law, writing the Supreme Court should have not found the diaphragm compression ban to be unconstitutionally vague. The diaphragm compression ban is sufficiently definite to give notice of the prohibited conduct and does not lack objective standards or create the potential for arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement.

Officers have continued to use the restraint tactic since Garners death, according to the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, which reported in January last year 40 instances in which officers have used chokeholds since Garners death.

What was promised: The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, along with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, was charged with investigating hundreds of complaints of officer misconduct during the 2020 protests. De Blasio, at the time, said he was concerned about the dozens of videos of officers behaving aggressively toward protesters, but he also expressed support for the departments handling of the demonstrations overall. Look, there are some specific instances I dont accept, where there needs to be discipline, the mayor told WNYCs Brian Lehrer on June 5, 2020. But the vast majority of what Ive seen is peaceful protest that has been respected as always, and folks making sure voices heard for change, and police have shown a lot of restraint.

Where we are now: The Civilian Complaint Review Board earlier this month reported that it has substantiated 267 of 316 cases of officer misconduct related to the 2020 protests and recommended the highest level of discipline for 88 officers. The NYPD has closed 44 of those cases and agreed with the Civilian Complaint Review Boards recommendations just 10 times. However, the board said it faced barriers in investigating many of the complaints due to its inability to identify some of the officers seen on the video footage engaging in aggressive tactics, forcing it to close 26% of cases for that reason.Some of the officers covered or refused to disclose their badge numbers when asked by protesters a violation of NYPD protocol under the 2018 Right to Know Act passed by the City Council. In releasing the results of the protest investigations on May 11, the Civilian Complaint Review Board said it would publish a report sometime this summer with recommendations on how to enhance the NYPDs protest response.

The CCRB was flooded with complaints, interim Chair Arva Rice said in a statement about the 2020 protests. In the height of the pandemic, our investigators used all possible resources, including thousands of hours of (body camera) footage, civilian footage, police records and more, to fairly and impartially investigate some of the most complicated cases the Agency has seen. She said, as of mid-May, the Civilian Complaint Review Board had finalized 98% of cases and submitted its recommendations to the NYPD.

with reporting by Jeff Coltin

See the original post here:
Two years after George Floyd's murder, where have all the police reforms gone? - City & State

Two groups of demonstrators with different worldviews anti-racism and anti-vaccine mandate activists converged for separate rallies at the state Capitol in Hartford Saturday afternoon.

A Black Lives Matter rally was held outside the Capitol to respond to recent activity in Connecticut by a neo-Nazi organization.

Power Up CT CEO Keren Prescott helped organize the anti-racism demonstration, called "End Hate Across the State." She said several people passed through trying to disrupt her rally.

Some did say they were with the Proud Boys. We had people booing, we had people coming through with their megaphones to disrupt, she said.

Organizers of the Black Lives Matter gathering tried to get their supporters to leave as soon as their event ended because an anti-vaccine mandate Freedom Rally was scheduled to begin.

Long Island resident Ann Wilcox was part of a group of anti-vaccine mandate demonstrators who drove through downtown Hartford, honking their horns and displaying American flags and bright yellow Dont Tread on Me Gadsden flags.

Im fighting for the policemen, the firefighters and the health care workers that lost their jobs because of that illegal shot they want to put in your arm, Wilcox said. Its pure poison.

Some members of the anti-vaccine mandate group falsely argued that the coronavirus is a hoax. In Connecticut, almost 11,000 deaths have been associated with COVID-19, according to state health officials.

This story has been updated.

Read more:
At Conn. state Capitol, a march to 'end hate,' while others gather for 'freedom rally' - Connecticut Public