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- On the occasion of the NYPD’s body cam pilot program, VICE’s Matt Taylor has written a piece on cops and cameras, so go read that and then feel as pessimistic as he sounds. They’re not panaceas, that’s for sure.
- Over at theWashington Post, police reporter Radley Balko has a piece on how the poor all over Missouri are sucked dry by legal bureaucracy and fines. It’s essential reading.
- Photography is Not a Crime’s Carlos Miller highlights the arrest of an unnamed YouTuber for filming a 4 AM SWAT operation in Gresham, Oregon. The YouTuber is across the street from the house being raided and seems to be standing on his own property as the would-be paramilitary fellas tell him to get back inside. When he disputes them and says “it’s not past curfew” (great dystopian detail, that) they come over, order him inside, and then arrest him, all the while robotically saying he should stop resisting.
- Finger-printing little kids is based in overwrought fears of child abduction, but it’s not, ostensibly, supposed to prepare them for a life of acquiescing to authority figures. And yet, Cory Doctorow was on the nose when he dubbed Ferguson, Missouri, police’s recent attempts to do this in a community beset by police violence as “a new tone-deaf low.”
- On September 2, Ixel Perez, a Houston tenth-grader was tackled by three school resource officers, detained, and then finally suspended from Sam Houston High School. A few seconds of unclear footage of Perez screaming—she says because an officer pressed his knee on her head, and it does look that way—has made the rounds on social media and some of her classmates have protested her suspension. What did the 4’10” young woman do? She says she refused to turn over her cellphone to her teacher, and then later to the assistant principal. The reaction she apparently provoked for that teenage crime would be bad enough without the rest of the story: Perez’s father had texted her, concerned that her mother who is on dialysis had not gotten back to him. Perez says she simply wanted to make sure her mother was OK before she turned the phone over. Perez’s mother is reportedly planning to find her a new school.
- Speaking of Texas schools: On September 5, Houston television station KHOU reported that ten different school police departments received some military-grade weapons, armor, and ammunition thanks to the generous Pentagon and their 1033 program. This is all supposed to prepare them for some kind of active shooting situation, most of which are long over before a tactical team can enter a school. Spring Branch Police Chief C.A. Brawnerbacked out of an on-camera interview to speak about the weapons (after originally promising to answer questions).
- Last week, 42-year-old Timothy Sturgis fatally shot himself during a standoff that came after a narcotics raid on his home in Ashville, Ohio. Sturgis had $25,000 worth of marijuana plants. Said Dave Posten, the special agent in charge: ”No one likes the violence. We wish it didn’t have to be that way. But when people say, ‘Was this little bit of marijuana worth this man’s life?’ it frustrates me. This isn’t ever about marijuana. It’s about someone’s choices.” It’s about your choices, too, Dave. You didn’t cause the guy to commit suicide, your job just forced him to choose between suicide and prison.
- A Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police officer resigned from his job on Thursday after a friend turned over to the police department racist text messages the cop had sent. Officer Michael Elsbury had expressed a desire to see other cops “pull a Ferguson” and referred to black people as “monkeys” and “niggers.” Some of the context is confusing, but the racism is clear and totally unacceptable. Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie offered none of the usual excuses, saying only he was “sick to my stomach” over the texts and that this was “an isolated incident.”
- Instead of, say, trying to steal his parents’ house over heroin like the Philly PD, two officers in New Jersey saved the life of an overdosing 25-year-old on Thursday, making them our Good Cops of the Week. Wayne Police Officers Rick Hess and Thomas Antonucci got a report of an unconscious man and upon arrival figured out he was ODing, administered the drug Narcan, and took him to the hospital.
