March 30, 2013
Police Chief Greg Suhr and the SF Police Commission finally scheduled and held the required community forums, where Suhr and Comdrs. Richard Corriea and Mikail Ali described the Electronic Control Weapon (ECW) proposal and invited community input. This updated story includes a report on the Tenderloin community forum, organized by residents. All testimony was anti-taser.
February 11, 2013
President Obama, who has organized, taught and represented this city, knows the situation well. He knows the guns are not made here. He knows Chicago’s tough gun laws are undermined by lax enforcement and lower standards outside the city. He knows that as the guns and drugs are flowing in, the jobs are flowing out.
January 22, 2013
Hundreds turned out for Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee meeting on Jan. 15, 2013, to oppose paying $250,000 to bring “supercop” William Bratton and his “stop and frisk” and other zero tolerance police policies to Oakland. The bid for Bratton’s consult seems to be simply Oakland throwing good money after bad.
December 11, 2012
A horrific shooting on Nov. 29 resulted in the death of two unarmed African Americans, Malissa Williams, 30, and Timothy Russell, 43. This may be the worst example of excessive use of deadly force in the history of the United States. The fact that 12 of the 13 Cleveland police officers were white and the victims were Black in a city which has an almost 70 percent minority population is a crisis. We all know that 12 Black police officers would never have fired 137 shots at Black or white citizens.
November 4, 2011
Revealing evidence of a fabricated police report, excessive force against a blameless merchant and police theft, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi called Thursday on the SFPD to: 1) launch an immediate investigation into new reports of police misconduct, and 2) to institute a zero tolerance policy for officers who steal or who lie in police reports.
March 31, 2009
A time bomb is ticking, waiting to explode in communities of color across the nation. Law enforcement officers have become an occupation force. If we are to have peace, we first must place economic justice at the top of our agenda. The day Lovelle Mixon died, those close to him mentioned two explanations: He dreaded being sent back to prison yet he couldn’t find a job.
March 3, 2009
Seattle teen Malika Calhoun, 15, tells what led up to the vicious attack on her, caught on video, by police Deputy Paul Schene, how it felt and what she would like to see happen.
January 14, 2009
Political remedies to hold police more accountable for outrageous acts such as the shooting death of an African-American youth here on New Year’s Day have been blocked by even supposedly “sympathetic” Democratic Party politicians.