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The murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer has galvanized the nation and the world. His murder was only one in a long, long list of murders and lynchings over decades. But this was a perfect storm that made its heinousness obvious to all: This was not the instant firing of a gun in a moment of fear, but a torturously long, drawn-out 8 minutes, 46 seconds, during which three other police officers stood around, onlookers pleaded for mercy, and the whole thing captured on video that was shared over social media.

So while there were other unprovoked killings Breonna Taylor, shot in her own Louisville apartment in the dead of night after police invaded with a no-knock warrant this one was undeniable in demonstrating the ingrained culture that dehumanizes in order for such violence to occur, and the smug security of police, given the unparalleled power of a gun and a badge, that they would not be held accountable.

Enough is enough, protesters by the tens of thousands in hundreds of cities throughout the country and the world, chant, even putting their own lives at risk, not just from the baton-wielding, tear-gas throwing, flashbang-grenade hurling, rubber-bullet firing police dressed as an invading army, but from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The protests have come to suburbia and our hometown as well most affectingly, one this weekend organized by Great Neck High School students which drew well over 500 people to Firefighters Park in Great Neck Plaza. (They withstood accusations on Facebook they were terrorists.)

They decried the structural racism at the heart of a police culture that has its origins in catching slaves, then morphed into an enforcement mechanism for white supremacy, along with so many other structural inequities that, by design, have kept African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities unequal in society.

While the elements of police brutality and criminal injustice are well-known, they are kept in force year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation by supremely politically powerful police unions.

Indeed, the most dramatic reform is to completely rebuild police departments there are 16,000 of them. Some police departments have actually done this Camden, NJ, for example and it may be the only way to really root out the structural inequities as well as bias. Now Minneapolis city council has voted to disband its $193 million police department. What that actually means is that, like Camden, it intends to rebuild it in order to make it functional and appropriate in a country that supposedly is based on principles of equal justice for all.

They will likely scrutinize how police officers are recruited, hired and tracked for a record of police brutality (like Timothy Loehmann, who murdered 12-year old Tamir Rice). How are officers trained and what do they understand their mission to be? One trendy training program (as John Oliver disclosed on Last Week Tonight) is in the art of Killology where officers are instructed that if they are not predators prepared to kill, they have no business being police.

Not only are the problems well-known, but the solutions have been methodically investigated, analyzed, quantified and put in the form of recommendations by the Obama administration after the Ferguson, Mo., riots that followed Michael Browns unprovoked murder by police. The task force developed a template for 21st Century Policing, including ending militarizing police. Obamas Department of Justice under Eric Holder obtained consent decrees from the most vile police forces. But like the template to address a global pandemic handed to the Trump administration, it was immediately discarded and the consent decrees withdrawn.

George Floyd has created the rarest opportunity for reform, however. With breathtaking speed for New York or any state government, major measures for a Say Their Name police reform agenda have already passed the Legislature allowing for transparency of prior disciplinary records by reforming 50-a, banning chokeholds, prosecuting callers for making a false race-based 911 report and designating the attorney general as an independent prosecutor in cases involving the death of unarmed civilian by law enforcement.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to go further to seize the momentum, correctly seeing this time as transformational to reinvent policing.

This is a long time coming, Cuomo said. It is time to reimagine and reinvent policing for 2020Police are public servants for that community if the community doesnt trust, doesnt respect police, police cant do their job.

Democrats in Congress have also seized on this transformational moment as well, introducing the Justice in Policing Act, which at the federal level would ban chokeholds; challenge qualified immunity; prohibit no-knock warrants; counter the trend toward militarization of police; require body and dashboard cameras; require independent prosecutors in cases of police brutality; establish a national database to track police misconduct; and (finally) make lynching a federal hate crime.

Others want more. There are calls to defund police which like Theyre coming for your guns and Open Borders! is a catchy slogan that fits on a sign that has been deliberately distorted by Trump and the Republicans and used to incite fear among (white suburban) voters, who are being told their neighborhoods will be overrun by criminals, gangs and rapists.

What defund police means is reassessing what functions the police do. Do we want protectors or warriors? Are police the best ones to address situations involving mental health, drug overdoses, domestic violence or school discipline? More accurately, people are calling for divest-reinvest: Take that money and invest in social workers, mental health professionals and guidance counselors, roles that the police have said they are not equipped to handle.

And it means investing in community programs that in themselves reduce crime. Thats what Cuomo is proposing in a Justice Agenda to root out the causes of criminal injustice, all on view in conjunction with the coronavirus epidemic and its disproportionate impact on communities of color. It goes to addressing the disparities in education, housing, health care, poverty.

But none of this will happen as long as Trump and the Republicans are in power.

Link:
Viewpoint: Seize the moment for police reform - Blog - The Island Now

For years, Camden, New Jersey, was known as the murder capital of the United States. The city of 74,000 people would record murder rates six times the national average and was plagued by open-air drug markets, robberies, looting and violence.

In November 2012, Scott Thomson, Camdens then-chief of police, decided to conduct a radical overhaul of policing disbanding the citys 141-year-old local force and handing law enforcement of the city over to the county police department.

Many of the laid-off officers were rehired by the county at lower salaries and fewer benefits, which ultimately doubled the size of the county police department. More officers were assigned to patrol the streets a trust-building tactic, Thomson told Bloomberg last week, to increase non-crisis interactions between officers and residents. Police were also required to undergo de-escalation training, wear body cameras and adhere to stricter rules on the use of force in the line of duty.

Seven years later, the homicide rate in Camden has more than halved, from 69 in 2012 to 25 in 2019.

Forward to 2020, and Camden is hailed as one of the few U.S cities that saw a completely peaceful Black Lives Matter protest on May 30, a march led by organizer Yolanda Deaver and Police Chief Joseph Wysocki.

Deaver told CBC that she had asked Wysocki to hold the banner with her during the protest. The chief said I set the tone, Deaver recounted, but he set the tone because he didnt come in with riot gear.

Camden isnt the only city to operate without local police. Compton, Calif., also took the same step in 2000, handing over policing to Los Angeles County.

In 2015, the U.S. attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, stated that the Justice Department was considering a similar solution for the police in Ferguson, Mo., after the murder of Michael Brown. Ultimately the city and its lawmakers struck a less-drastic agreement, but one that still included many reforms.

This idea of police reform isnt new, says Dexter Voisin, dean of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. However, he said its gaining more traction now as authorities across the U.S. and Canada re-examine public safety amid weeks of global protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism. For example, on Monday, two Toronto councillors said they will put forward a motion to defund the citys police force by 10 per cent and use that money for additional community resources.

In the U.S., the mayors of Los Angeles and New York City have both pledged to divert funding from their local police forces toward social services and communities in need.

Nine Minneapolis council members a veto-proof majority have opted for the more radical measure of dismantling the local force and replacing it with a new model of public security. Mayor Jacob Frey, however, said he does not support the full abolition of the police department.

Its unclear which option Minneapolis will choose. However, Council President Lisa Bender told CNN that the council is against the idea of having no police department in the short term. Rather, she said it is looking to shift police funding toward community-based strategies.

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a University of Toronto expert on policing and racialized law enforcement, says its important to distinguish between the different terms used when it comes to police reform.

I think theres some confusion between defunding the police, disbanding police and police abolition, he said.

The concept of police reform exists on a continuum, according to Voisin, and depends on each communitys notion of public safety. For some, it could mean redirecting funds away from the police to community organizations that can better respond to the needs. For others, it could mean redirecting funds with the aim of dismantling over time and replacing (the force) with other types of community policing, he said.

WHAT IS POLICE DEFUNDING

Defunding the police recognizes that were giving funding to the police to perform functions that theyre not necessarily well-positioned or well-equipped to perform, Owusu-Bempah said.

Weve been asking them to do more and more over time and there are organizations and agencies that are better equipped to do some of the tasks that police are doing, he said, referring to issues arising from mental illness, poverty and substance abuse.

Voisin thinks that defunding police helps to keep the force accountable.

When their budget continues to grow and becomes unchecked, it leads to the development of what we call the super cop, the militarization of police, which is arming the police to deal with social issues, he said. You cant really deal with these social problems through increased policing.

Redirecting funds toward what Voisin calls some of the structural drivers of crime and mental health poverty, unemployment, homelessness, race-related racism can create a much better outcome, he said. Its part of a larger conversation that the public-policy approaches around public safety have not been equally serving all communities.

DISBANDING AND ABOLISHING

The idea of disbanding or abolishing police forces falls on the more radical end of the spectrum when it comes to police defunding.

The words are synonymous in some way, said Owusu-Bempah, in that they both advocate for the closure of certain police departments. The difference lies with what comes after.

Camden, for example, chose to close its local police force due to serious institutional problems within the existing police agency at the time, he said. However, they did not eliminate policing altogether. Rather, with the help of the county police force, the city changed the way policing was conducted, via retraining and a raft of new policies.

It was acknowledged that, essentially, they just need to disband police and start again, he said, whereas the term abolish would mean the permanent removal of police altogether.

Closing down a police station is feasible in different contexts, Owusu-Bempah said.

In Toronto, he said, smaller communities could replace policing with a more civilianized and non-weapon-carrying force that might try and maintain order in a more informal way.

Continue reading here:
Calls to defund and dismantle police forces are growing, but what exactly does that mean? - National Post

May 25, 2020

OPINION by T. KEITH GURNEE

I usually like what Stewart Jenkins writes, but his recent piece about Trump as The Denier in Chief was over-the-top pointed. While President Donald Trump is often guilty of acting nonpresidential and exaggerating his accomplishments, hes gotten a lot of things done, including his timely response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The question is: would Stews candidateJoe Gaffeman Bidendo any better? Its hard to believe how Biden has gotten to where he is today. Despite a sputtering campaign, his exaggerating his record, his penchant for plagiarism, his mental misfires, and his propensity for a constant stream of gaffes the latest a televised response to a black correspondent wherein Biden spat out if you dont support me you aint black! Joe somehow finds himself not only as the de facto nominee of the Democratic Party but even holding a comfortable lead over President Trump in national polls.

Having been a Democrat most of my life, todays Democratic Party is unrecognizable from that which attracted me to it during John F. Kennedys presidency. As a No Party Preference voter today, the Democratic Party left me during the Clinton years. Still, when Joe Biden announced his candidacy for president back in 2019, I had hoped that if any Democrat were to be elected to the presidency, please let it be Joe Biden.

Biden seemed the only choice among legitimate contenders that centrist Democrats, Independents, and disaffected Republicans could get behind. As the most experienced candidate, it looked like it was Joes race to lose. But after reflecting upon his past and during this past year, he not only doesnt appear to be up to the task, but it looks like Bidens having a real problem with the truth. Indeed, this may be Bidens Achilles Heel that too few understand and that could prove to be his undoing.

For example, in April 2019, Biden appeared on The View TV show, looked into the eyes of its viewers, and said We didnt have one single whisper of a scandal under the Obama administration, a statement that he repeated two months later. That statement, in and of itself, was an absolute falsehood. Here are but a few of the scandals that occurred during his term as VP under the Obama administration:

1. The Fast and Furious firearms operation/gunrunning sting of Atty. Gen. Eric Holder that flopped in 2010, allowing 1,400 guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, two of which were used to murder a U.S. border agent, only to be followed by a cover-up and stonewalling by the Obama administration.

2. The Obama/Biden administrations failure to act on its proclaimed Syrian Red Line of 2012 when Syria used chemical weapons to kill its own people. That failure directly led to the genesis of ISIS and its murderous activities in beheading Americans and the taking of thousands of innocent civilian lives.

3. The terrorist swap scandal of 2012 when the administration traded five known Islamic terrorists detained in Guantanamo for the deserter Beau Bergdahl, whose desertion led to the deaths of six American soldiers who searched for him.

4. Secretary of State Hilary Clintons Benghazi scandal that resulted in the deaths of four Americans in 2012 followed by another coverup in 2013.

5. The IRS targeting scandal when the IRS was weaponized to harass political groups in 2013, followed by another cover-up.

6. The NSA mass surveillance scandal discovered in 2013 by the leaks of Edwards Snowden.

7. The Russian/Ukrainian invasion scandal of 2014 that the Obama/Biden administration tolerated by sending blankets to the Ukrainians while refusing to send them what they needed to help them resist the Russian invasion and their seizure of Crimea.

8. The Biden Ukrainian scandal that funneled millions of dollars to Joes son Hunter from foreign governments in Ukraine and China while Joe Biden himself openly and successfully urged the Ukraine to fire a high-level official investigating the Bidens connections.

9. The Iran nuclear deal of 2015 which sent millions of U.S. dollars to Iran, which were used to export terrorism by bankrolling Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen while continuing its quest for nuclear weapons.

10. In what could be the biggest scandal of them all, the Obama/Biden administrations FISA abuse scandal of 2016 that weaponized the FBI, the intelligence agencies, and the Justice Department to set up a takedown of an often unpopular but duly elected president. The other shoe has yet to drop on this one.

Then came the Democrats Impeachment disaster earlier this year that Biden openly supported. Showcasing the shamefully poor performances of Adam Schiff, Jerome Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, and Fritz Schumer who put on the weakest of cases, the impeachment trial ended up little more than a popcorn fart. And now comes the revelation that Sen. Biden groped a legislative aide in 1993 who once lived right here in Morro Bay.

Not a trace of scandals Joe? This bundle of snafus under Bidens watch have featured a veritable legacy of scandals. Joe would do better to own up them and apologize for them rather than conveniently forgetting them or sweeping them under the rug.

Today, Biden is still considered as having the best chance to beat Donald Trump. Will democratic and independent voters be willing to overlook the scandals of such a flawed candidate out of their abject hatred of Donald Trump? With Bernie Sanders out of the race, will the Dems lose the enthusiasm of the Progressives who just might stay home instead of voting come election day?

Only time will tell.

See more here:
Joe Biden's problem with the truth - Cal Coast News

A nationwide effort by Democrats is underway in at least 16 states to overturn restrictions on mail-in voting and third-party ballot harvesting. States where suits have been filed include the swing states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

The effort is being backed by the National Redistricting Foundation, a Democratic group headed by the Obama administrations Attorney General Eric Holder. The suits appear to be funded by Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC. A Wall Street Journal headline from April read, Biden Campaign Indicates Priorities USA Is Preferred Super PAC Nod from the presumptive Democratic nominee sends a message to top donors on where to focus contributions.

For example, the Pennsylvania lawsuit, funded by Priorities USA, seeks to mandate mail-in ballots, require the counting of votes received by mail after election day, and strike down Pennsylvania prohibitions on ballot harvesting, meaning the third-party mass collection of absentee and mail-in ballots.

The efforts in other states are similar. Democrat lawsuits in Minnesota take a similar, if less direct, path. A suit filed in Minnesota earlier this year by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seeks to strike down a law prohibiting ballot harvesting.

Last week, conveniently just after Minnesota Democrats failed to get mail-in voting through the state legislature, another suit was filed by the Minnesota Alliance for Retired Americans Educational Fund, the local chapter of D.C.-based political action group Alliance for Retired Americans, a prominent left-wing and union-linked group that supports Democratic causes across the United States. The plaintiffs claim that requiring voters to have a notary public or registered voter witness and sign their absentee ballot is a threat to safety.

Another plaintiff in the same suit is a 24-year-old Yale Law School student, who complains that he cast his Minnesota absentee ballot too late in 2018, which disallowed it from being counted.

Getting rid of Minnesotas rule requiring a witness when casting an absentee ballot and requiring that ballots be received by election day would turn Minnesotas absentee voting system into a de facto mail-in balloting system. Critics allege Minnesotas absentee voting system is already subject to abuse. For example, more than 25,000 Minnesota voters in 2018 had a challenged voter-registration status, meaning something in the states systems flagged them as ineligible to vote. Nevertheless, these voters are allowed to vote absentee and self-certify that they are eligible.

In the 2008 election between former Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Al Franken, D-Minn., election judges controversially rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, and more than 1,000 ineligible felons were still allowed to cast votes in that election. After Coleman initially won by about 700 votes, a recount declared Franken the winner by a mere 312 votes.

Unfortunately, the corporate media has grossly mischaracterized these lawsuits, couching their aims in humanitarian terms. Minnesotas Star Tribune ran a headline titled Older Minnesota voters file suit to change absentee voting rules. The corporate media has conveniently ignored that Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic to accomplish their longtime goal of overturning much of American election law.

Even more stunning, all 16 lawsuits are being run by Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias. Elias was chief counsel to both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the 2016 presidential election, and was one of the key figures in the Russiagate conspiracy to remove President Donald Trump from office.

Elias and another Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, hired the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS to try to create ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. This led to Fusion GPS paying money to former British spy Christopher Steele, who paid money to anonymous Russian sources via a British national named Edward Baumgartner, who had ties to Russia.

These Russian sources, working with Steele and Fusion GPS, came up with the allegations in the so-called Steele dossier, which circulated throughout the highest levels of the Obama administration during the 2016 election. This occurred despite no part of the dossier being anything close to verified. The intelligence agencies had good reason to doubt the dossiers author, and knew it was politically motivated.

Nevertheless, the Obama administrations intelligence agencies used them to spy on the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team.In one specific instance, Democratic lawyers Elias and Sussmann directly worked to plant now-debunked stories in the media about a server in Trump tower communicating with Russias Alfa Bank. Elias has faced no repercussions to date for his role in the Russiagate matter.

In total, Democrats plan to spend tens of millions of dollars on the lawsuits run by Perkins Coie and Elias. The Trump campaign and Republican groups are planning to spend at least $10-$20 million to counter the Democrats efforts.

Original post:
Law Firm That Attempted To Overturn 2016 Election Behind 2020 Lawsuits - The Federalist

Judge Emmet G. Sullivans appointment of an independent attorney suggests that Michael Flynn is not out of the woods yet.Photograph by Charles Dharapak / AP / Shutterstock

Michael Flynn, President Trumps first national-security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents, in December, 2017, in a case brought by the special counsel Robert Mueller. Earlier this month, the Justice Department asked Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who oversaw the case against Flynn, to dismiss it, on the ground that the F.B.I. had no basis to conduct an interrogation of him. What should Sullivan do? What can he do? Can a judge maintain a prosecution that the governmentthe prosecution itselfrefuses to continue? Can this judge deny the governments motion and just proceed to sentence Flynn? The answers are not entirely clear. But there is a clue about what may happen in an especially dramatic chapter from Sullivans past.

Last week, John Gleeson, a retired federal judge, published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, denouncing the Justice Departments attempt to dismiss the case. The record reeks of improper political influence, Gleeson wrote. Government motions to dismiss at this stage are virtually unheard of. He offered the court a suggestion: It can appoint an independent attorney to act as a friend of the court, ensuring a full, adversarial inquiry, as the judge in the Flynn case has done in other situations where the department abdicated its prosecutorial role. Sullivan clearly read the piece, because he promptly appointed Gleeson himself, who is now in private practice, to argue against the dismissal of the case against Flynn.

Gleesons passing reference to Sullivans history in other situations as a foe of prosecutorial misconduct is the clue to what may happen this time. It was a reference to a disgraceful episode in the recent history of the Justice Department: the failed prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. In brief, Stevens was charged with neglecting to report as gifts certain renovations that had been made on his vacation home in Alaska. He was convicted in a trial before Judge Sullivan in 2008, shortly before he lost a bid for a seventh term in the Senate. During and especially after the trial, it came out that prosecutors had withheld a variety of exculpatory material from Stevenss defense. In light of this, Eric Holder, in one of his first acts as Attorney General, in 2009, dropped the prosecution. Not satisfied with simply ending the case, Sullivan ruled that the interest of justice requires the appointment of a non-government disinterested attorneyin that case, it was Henry F. Schuelke III, a Washington lawyerto investigate the prosecutorial misconduct. While Schuelke was conducting his inquiry, Stevens died in a plane crash, and one of the prosecutors committed suicide. (I wrote about the Stevens prosecution saga here.)

In other words, Sullivan has appointed Gleeson to much the same role as he had named Schuelke, a decade earlier. Of course, there is a major difference between the Stevens and Flynn cases. Stevens was about an excess of prosecutorial zeal, while Flynn is about insufficient effort by the Justice Department: cheating to win versus cheating to lose. Nothing has changed on the merits of the case against Flynn, therefore there is no credible explanation for the motion to dismiss, other than there might be some kind of improper behavior going on here, Sam Buell, a professor at Duke Law School and a former federal prosecutor, told me.

The big question for Gleeson, then, is how he will want to proceed with his investigation. He could simply review the Justice Departments pleadings in the case and conclude, as he did in his op-ed piece, that there is no basis for the governments legal conclusionthat the F.B.I.s interrogation of Flynn was justified, and his guilty plea for lying should stand. At that point, Sullivan would have to decide whether to grant the governments motion and end the case, anyway, or proceed to sentence Flynn. (Sullivan could also seek to charge Flynn with contempt for lying in his courtroom about his interactions with the F.B.I.) It would apparently be without precedent for Sullivan to sentence a defendant even though the government has moved to dismiss the case, but that doesnt necessarily mean it cant happen.

Alternatively, Gleeson could ask to proceed much as Schuelke did, and ask Sullivan for permission to examine witnesses to determine why the Justice Department reversed course. (Schuelke took two years and produced a five-hundred-page report about the misconduct in the Stevens case.) An investigation with witnesses would open the door for Gleeson to examine William Barr, the Attorney General, and others in his chain of command to determine if there was any improper influence in the governments decision. Either way, it looks as if Gleeson will move with considerably more dispatch than Schuelke did. In a letter to Sullivan this week, Gleeson wrote that he will make his first report to the court on June 10th.

In the meantime, on Tuesday afternoon, Flynns lawyers asked the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to order Sullivan to dismiss the case, as the Justice Department requested. In the absence of such an order, which seems unlikely, Gleeson will plow ahead. He said that his submission on June 10th will report any additional factual development I may need before finalizing my argument. This means that he will indicate at that time whether he wants Sullivan to call witnesses before deciding whether to dismiss the case. The judge, for his part, has set a hearing in the case for July 16th, which may turn out to be only the beginning of his inquiry into why the Justice Department tried to drop the case against Flynn.

Read more here:
A Case From a Judges Past May Offer a Clue as to How the Michael Flynn Inquiry Will Proceed - The New Yorker