Police/Legal/Prisons

On the 19th of August, FOX News began their broadcast with over ten minutes of crime news, then ran a poll asking viewers if they though police street level vice squads should be reinstated. When pressed by Black Lives Matter activist over admitting that police jump-out squads exist, Police Chief Cathy Lanier blamed all jump-outs on street level vice units hunting individual drug users and small-time dealers. Previously she had denied the existance of jumpouts altogether. Now FOX News is blaming here decision to eliminate the police units blamed for terrorizing whole blocks for the rise in crime. There was at least 70-80% as much crime last year, you'd think from watching FOX that there was ten times as much this year.

The 8th of August was the day before the 1 year anniversary of the murder of Michael Brown by cops in Fergerson, MO, It was also the day DC police (MPD) killed an African-American woman right here in DC. That night StopCopTerrorDC shut down streets from U st to I-395 to protest the continuing wave of police crime, violence, and outright murder of Black and Brown people throughout the US.

Video highlights of the march

On July 29th, Greenpeace dangled climbers from a bridge and staged a maritime blockade of the harbor in Portland, OR to detain Shell's icebreaker Fennica in port, where it had stopped for repairs. The blockade was selective, the climbers raised themselves to allow all other ship traffic to pass. On the 30th of July a Multnoman Co Sheriff's boat rammed through the kayakers in the water and the Fennica ran the blockade and escaped. At least one kayak was run under the police boat's bow. The Fennica is carrying the capping stack without which Shell is not permitted to drill into oil bearing rock strata in their offshore Arctic drilling program this summer. If it is stopped, so is Shell's drilling.

Video of sheriff's boat ramming and running over a blockader's kayak

Spectacular drone footage of climbers dangling from the bridge (Vimeo)

by George Joseph, Intercept
In response to The Intercept’s FOIA request, for example, last month the DHS’s Office of Operations Coordination released over 40 pages of documents (archive 1, archive 2) detailing live updates and Google Maps images of Black Lives Matter protestors’ movements during an April 29^th protest in Washington, DC.

An April 29th email from the DHS National Operations Center also mentions planned surveillance of three seemingly innocuous events, two of which were associated with historically black neighborhoods. According to the email, the DHS-funded DC Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency decided to conduct “a limited stand-up… to monitor a larger than expected Funk Parade and two other mass gathering events” in case “any Baltimore-related civil unrest occurs.” It appears that the only Funk Parade in DC occurs in the historically black neighborhood of U Street. The other two events, according to another report, produced by the DHS National Capital Region‘s Information Collection and Coordination Center, were a community parade in Congress Heights, a predominantly black neighborhood, and the Avon 39-Walk to End Breast Cancer. Full article