Georgia’s “Felony Driving Law” Targets Blacks, Latinos, Undocumented Immigrants. A GEORGIA LAW aimed at keeping unlicensed drivers off the streets is having a disproportionate impact on black and Latino communities in the state, sweeping them into a cycle of debt and criminalization that feeds local counties’ budgets while putting otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation.
Under the law, drivers face felony charges if they are caught driving without a license four times within five years. Violators face up to five years in prison and fines between $2,500 and $5,000. Ostensibly passed to promote public safety, the “felony driving law” has been discriminatively applied to communities of color, leading to remarkably disproportionate arrests of blacks and Latinos in at least three majority white counties in the state, according to a report published today by the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) and Advancement Project, a DC-based civil rights organization. Massive Hack of 70 Million Prisoner Phone Calls Indicates Violations of Attorney-Client Privilege. AN ENORMOUS CACHE of phone records obtained by The Intercept reveals a major breach of security at Securus Technologies, a leading provider of phone services inside the nation’s prisons and jails.
The materials — leaked via SecureDrop by an anonymous hacker who believes that Securus is violating the constitutional rights of inmates — comprise over 70 million records of phone calls, placed by prisoners to at least 37 states, in addition to links to downloadable recordings of the calls. For Offenders Who Can’t Pay, It’s a Pint of Blood or Jail Time. Photo MARION, Ala. — Judge Marvin Wiggins’s courtroom was packed on a September morning.
The docket listed hundreds of offenders who owed fines or fees for a wide variety of crimes — hunting after dark, assault, drug possession and passing bad checks among them. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” began Judge Wiggins, a circuit judge here in rural Alabama since 1999. The Counted: people killed by police in the United States in 2015 – interactive. The disappeared: Chicago police detain Americans at abuse-laden 'black site' I hereby charge Timothy Loehmann and the Cleveland PD with the murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. 1.
The Cleveland Police Department is deeply corrupt. First off, it needs to be noted that the Cleveland Police Department was first cited for corruption and brutality by the Department of Justice 10 YEARS AGO when President Bush was in office, but the department did not enter into a binding agreement to make systemic changes. After the most recent investigation by the Department of Justice into the Cleveland PD, one of the worst reports a police department has ever received was issued by the DOJ in December 2014, detailing case after case of police brutality and violence suffered by the citizens of Cleveland, calling it an "unconstitutional pattern and practice of police brutality.
" The summary letter from the Department of Justice detailing this is below. Ft. Bend Police, Prosecutors Accused of Abuse in SWAT Incident - FOX 26 News. Chad Chadwick has something many citizens can only covet - a spotless record.
"These cops are out of control. They are ruining good people's lives. Why Innocent People Plead Guilty by Jed S. Rakoff. The criminal justice system in the United States today bears little relationship to what the Founding Fathers contemplated, what the movies and television portray, or what the average American believes.
To the Founding Fathers, the critical element in the system was the jury trial, which served not only as a truth-seeking mechanism and a means of achieving fairness, but also as a shield against tyranny. As Thomas Jefferson famously said, “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” The Sixth Amendment guarantees that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.”
The Constitution further guarantees that at the trial, the accused will have the assistance of counsel, who can confront and cross-examine his accusers and present evidence on the accused’s behalf. It was not always so. Charges Dropped Against Man Beaten Unconscious by LAPD - NationofChange. After reviewing the video of LAPD officers viciously beating an apprehended suspect unconscious, prosecutors decided to drop all charges against the man who recently filed a lawsuit alleging civil rights violations.
As the defendant’s attorney announced plans to file a motion to release the footage of his arrest, prosecutors lost confidence in their ability to justify excessive police brutality. Shortly after noon on October 16, Clinton Alford, Jr. was riding his bicycle home in South Los Angeles when a car pulled up behind him and the driver ordered him to stop. Since the man did not identify himself as a police officer, Alford continued pedaling until someone grabbed the back of his bike. Police expert: War on terror has turned our cops into occupying armies — and we’re the enemy. The war on terror has essentially turned police into occupying armies in some American communities, said a police and criminology expert.
Thomas Nolan, an associate professor of criminology at Merrimack College and former senior policy analyst with the Department of Homeland Security, said the focus of police work had shifted greatly since he was a Boston police officer in the 1980s and 1990s. “I remember it being drilled into me as a police officer, as a sergeant and then as a lieutenant: partnership, problem-solving, and prevention – the three Ps,” Nolan said Wednesday during a panel sponsored by the American Constitution Society. He said police were heavily trained to form alliances to help them to better serve and protect communities, and he said those relationships clearly don’t exist in Ferguson, Missouri.
He said this shift toward “homeland security” had quickly destroyed the relationships police had worked nearly two decades to build. Study: Prisons Are Crueler in States With Large Black Communities. With a population of 2.4 million people behind bars, the United States is the incarceration capital of the world.
Commonly referred to as mass incarceration, the oft-discussed phenomenon has largely been driven by state punitive policies, which have grown increasingly strict in recent years, but what is less understood is how prison rates and practices vary so greatly from state to state. More than half of U.S. prisoners are currently held in state facilities, but while Louisiana imprisons 858 people per 100,000 residents and allows for the death penalty, Maine imprisons only 133 and abolished executions in 1887.
So the question is: What makes one state act tougher on crime, and therefore become a greater contributor to mass imprisonment, than another? According to research by Rice University, the answer comes down to race. Sixty percent of the U.S. prison population is black and 1 in 3 face a life sentence, as opposed to just 1 in 17 imprisoned white men. Sleeping 7-year-old girl shot in head during no-knock police raid on wrong home. "They blew my granddaughter's brains out.
They killed her right before my eyes. I watched the light go out of her eyes. " Aiyana Stanley-Jones surrounded by the Disney princesses that she adored.
Police Militarization In Ferguson. A Night in Ferguson: Rubber Bullets, Tear Gas, and a Jail Cell. The author, detained by a St. Louis County Police Department tactical team Tuesday morning, explains to an officer how to turn off his digital recorder. Photo: David Carson/St Louis Post Dispatch/Polaris Late Monday evening, after many of the major media outlets covering the protests in Ferguson, Mo., had left the streets to broadcast from their set-ups near the police command center, heavily armed officers raced through suburban streets in armored vehicles, chasing demonstrators, launching tear gas on otherwise quiet residential lanes, and shooting at journalists. Their efforts resulted in one of the largest nightly arrest totals since protests began 10 days ago over the killing of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. At approximately 2 a.m. local time, Missouri Highway Patrol Capt.
Here’s what happened. At roughly midnight, protesters and journalists were gathered on W. Crossing W. The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson. Photo credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images The intensive militarization of America’s police forces is a serious menace about which a small number of people have been loudly warning for years, with little attention or traction. In a 2007 paper on “the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement,” the criminal justice professor Peter Kraska defined “police militarization” as “the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model.”
At Last, US Border Agency Releases Critical Report of Deadly Force Practices. Share Under pressure from media organizations, federal lawmakers and human rights groups, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Friday released a highly critical review of its own use-of-force policies, which the agency had kept under wraps for more than a year. The review, commissioned by agency officials to the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), examined sixty-seven cases involving the use deadly force by US Border Patrol agents.
The report’s authors identified a number of questionable practices, finding that some agents had intentionally stepped in front of moving vehicles to justify shooting at them. FBI.
States subjecting death row inmates to longer deaths amid scramble for drugs. US death penalty states face a deepening crisis in their struggle to procure medical drugs for use in lethal injections, with new evidence that the increasingly random methods being used are subjecting condemned prisoners to prolonged and possibly excruciating deaths. A Guardian survey of death sentences carried out over the past three years by Texas – the most prolific of all execution states – has found that the procedure now takes on average twice as long as under previous protocols. A study of Texas department of criminal justice records and eyewitness media reports mainly from the Associated Press shows a notable lengthening of the death process following the switch in July 2012 from the conventional three-drug cocktail to a single drug, pentobarbital.
Ten executions prior to the change took on average 10 minutes to complete, ranging from nine to 11 minutes between the administration of the lethal injection and the declaration of death. Secret America: how states hide the source of their lethal injection drugs. Missouri executes Herbert Smulls as appeals fail. Tulsa pharmacy faces questions over lethal drug to be used in execution. These Nonviolent Female Prisoners Have Been Rotting in Prison for the Last Decade.
Cory Maples case: Can a man be executed even if he has no lawyer? Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit. The black/white marijuana arrest gap, in nine charts. For the Defense, a Master of Delay. After a Killing in the Bronx, a Sentence to Wait. Justice Denied - Bronx Court System Mired in Delays. Criminal Injustice: The Best Reporting on Wrongful Convictions (#MuckReads) Freed prisoners lose their innocence. The Exonerated. Larry Peterson: Beyond Exoneration. House of Screams. In Chicago police documents, February 9, 1982, is recalled as cold and overcast. Part 1: Death Row justice derailed. Convicted defendants left uninformed of forensic flaws found by Justice Dept. Are Memphis Prosecutors Trying to Send an Innocent Man Back to Death Row? Just Freed, Cleared Man Has a Heart Attack. Brooklyn Prosecutor to Seek Freedom of Man Convicted in 1990 Killing of Rabbi. The Innocent Man, Part One. The Innocent Man, Part Two. 18 Dallas County cases overturned by DNA relied on heavily eyewitness testimony.
Louisiana death-row inmate Damon Thibodeaux exonerated with DNA evidence. Beth Schwartzapfel: Who Shot Valerie Finley? Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty. The Hardest Cases: When Children Die, Justice Can Be Elusive. Investigative reporters help free wrongfully convicted Missouri man. Floyd v. New York City Trial Updates. In Lawsuit, GOP Senators Want to Help Obama Administration Preserve Military Indefinite Detention Powers. Federal Jury Finds City of Chicago Responsible for "Code of Silence" in Chicago Police Department. DEA Agent Says He Was Told Not To Enforce Drug Laws In White Areas - COLORLINES.
The Best Little Checkpoint in Texas. How Mandatory Minimums Forced Me to Send More Than 1,000 Nonviolent Drug Offenders to Federal Prison. Obama plans clemency for hundreds of drug offenders. Why Firing a Bad Cop Is Damn Near Impossible. Why Police Officers Lie Under Oath. Who Will Mourn George Whitmore? Exposed: Undercover Agents at Occupy Austin Entrapped Protesters, Endangered Activists. Law and Disorder. Video shows officers beating motorist in diabetic shock. In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims. One of The Worst Cases of Police Brutality Ever.. Interview with Larry Hohol. Police Brutality Worse than Rodney King - The Robert Leone Story. Police pepper-spraying, arresting students at UC Davis. Spray Anything: Marketing Crowd Control to Cops. The Silent Treatment. America Edges to Brink of Armed Police Drones. Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front - latimes.com. The Sentencing Project Publications - Sentencing Reform: Amid Mass Incarcerations, Guarded Optimism.