The Philadelphia School District’s (PSD) state-run School Reform Commission voted in March to close 23 public schools, nearly 10 percent of the city’s total, in a move they say is necessary to plug a $304 million budget deficit. Read more
This video shows a remarkable scene of police overkill in a Harlem subway station on the afternoon of May 13. What begins as two cops from the NYPD trying to handcuff a seemingly unthreatening black man quickly spirals into over two dozen officers flooding the station to arrest him.
The video opens with one of the two arresting officers repeatedly shouting, “Put your hands behind your back and stop resisting!” at the suspect, who they have pinned to the ground. The second officer, who looks extremely uncomfortable, gently asks his partner to “relax” several times.
The two officers then force the suspect—or, more accurately, the victim—to his feat and try to handcuff him up against the wall. But the suspect keeps planting his foot and hand on the wall and explains to the officers that he’s afraid they will slam his face into it. They assure him they won’t and they cuff him, at which point all hell breaks loose.
Around the 1:02 mark, two more cops come rushing in and literally grab the victim’s feet from under him, slamming his body to the ground as he screams “I haven’t done anything, I haven’t done anything!”
At the 1:30 mark, the handcuffed man is being held face down on the ground by all four police officers when cop comes storms in asking his fellow officers “You guys alright?” as though they were the ones who had just been brutally attacked. Still, more cops trickle and then flood into the station until the victim is completely submerged under what looks like an angry lynch mob.
The person recording the incident on his cell phone is then forced out of the station, which has been surrounded by a dozen police cars outside.
The video ends with witnesses telling the cameraman that the victim was just “standing there” when he was arrested for “no reason”.
Can you imagine how difficult it would be to live in an environment where this shit goes down on the regular? Make no mistake, the scene in the above video is routine in certain NYC communities where people of color are disproportionately stopped, questioned, frisked and harassed as a matter of policy. And the slightest sign of resistance, like instinctively protecting your face from being slammed into a wall, could land you behind bars for “resisting” or even “assaulting” a police officer, a label that brings on a world of trouble.
“The way St. Louis streets work, we’re afraid out here. We’re afraid of the police. We’re afraid of other youth who may want to pull a gun and fire on you. So, sometimes people have guns just to protect themselves, not with the intentions to do a criminal act with it.”
Those are the words of Carlos Ball, whose 25-year-old brother, Cary Ball Jr., was shot and killed by St. Louis police on April 24, after fleeing from a traffic stop.
Police, who “were on a special ‘hot spot‘ detail near Ninth and Carr streets in the Columbus Square neighborhood”, say they tried to stop Cary’s car twice but he kept driving and eventually crashed into a parked car. Cary exited the vehicle and ran, forcing police to chase after him on foot. Then, according to police, Cary pulled out an automatic handgun and pointed it at the officers, leaving them no choice but to open fire. He was later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Read more
Over the weekend, 79 officers from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)—dressed in full riot police attire—broke up an off-campus University of Southern California (USC) party attended almost exclusively by students of color.
Meanwhile, the mostly white students at the house party across the street were left alone despite being just as loud. Read more
Kiera Wilmot, alleged felon. (Credit: WTSP-TV Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
Updated
Kiera Roslyn Wilmot, a 16-year-old Florida high school student, had everything going for her as a top-notch student at Bartow High School. But all that changed on Monday, April 23, when Wilmot was arrested and charged with two felonies for “possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device.” She has been expelled and will be tried as an adult.
It all sounds pretty scary until you get to the description of this so-called “device”: two household chemicals mixed into an eight-ounce plastic water bottle, which caused the top to pop off and created some smoke. That’s it. No one was hurt, no property was damaged.
Wilmot insisted she was just conducting a science experiment to determine how the two chemicals would react. After the pop, she didn’t run or hide. Her friends and even the principle of her school agree that it was simply a “science project gone bad.” Read more
People rescue garment workers trapped at an eight-story building outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Thursday, April 25.
The death toll from the collapse of an eight-story building housing five garment factories in Bangladesh has surpassed 300 with an estimated 40 people still trapped beneath the rubble. Read more
How racist is the “war on drugs”? Very. And if the nation’s capital is any indication, it’s actually getting worse.
The Washington City Paperreports that from 2005 to 2011, 91 percent of DC marijuana charges were filed against African Americans. Meanwhile, just six percent were filed against the city’s white residents. And it’s not like black people smoke pot more than their white counterparts. Study after study has shown that whites and blacks use marijuana at relatively equal rights. Some studies have even found that whites smoke pot at significantly higher rates than blacks. Read more
Muslims, Arabs and more recently Chechens aren’t the only ones bearing the brunt of collective blame following the Boston Marathon bombing last week.
Since learning that bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev immigrated to the United States as children, anti-immigrant zealots have capitilized on the moment to argue against immigration reform.
Right-wing talk radio host and frequent Fox News contributer Laura Ingraham insisted that the US block Muslim immigrants from entering the country, particularly from the ex-Soviet region of the world where the bombing suspects were born.
“I would submit that people shouldn’t be coming here as tourists from Chechnya after 9/11,” Ingraham said. “Dagistan, Checnya, Kergystan, uh-uh. As George Bush would say, ‘None of them stans.’”
You might be thinking: Who cares what Ingraham says? She’s nothing more than an inflammatory radio host with no power over actual public policy. But Ingraham isn’t alone. Read more
RT @trevortimm: Michael Hastings' last piece on Democrats morphing from surveillance critics into the NSA's "stewards and enhancers" http:/… 3 hours ago
Muslims, Arabs and more recently Chechens aren’t the only ones bearing the brunt of collective blame following the Boston Marathon bombing last week.
