17 September 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

After Ferguson, new focus on race and policing

source: Voice of America
published: 15 September 2014

Last month’s fatal shooting of an unarmed African American teen by a white police officer after a street confrontation in Ferguson, Missouri, has drawn a new focus on other such cases throughout the U.S., amid protests and demands by civil rights leaders for investigation of racial bias in aggressive policing.

Barely a week after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, police in nearby St. Louis shot and killed Kajieme Powell, a mentally disturbed 25-year-old black man who held a small steak knife. Two police officers fired within 15 seconds of arriving at the scene where Powell was walking around, seemingly aimlessly, with his hands at his side.

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31 August 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

‘Police were spying rather than looking for killers’

source: The Guardian
published: 27 August 2014

Sukhdev Reel puts her hand to her chest and pulls her blouse tight around her. “I don’t want to use the word naked, but I just sort of feel …” Across the desk, her daughter Tish watches her carefully. “Stripped of your dignity a bit?” she suggests. Sukhdev nods. “Who was watching me? All I can see is eyes. I can’t get rid of them,” she says, her voice rising to a high, shaky hiccup.

It’s been that way since last month, when the Reel family were summoned to a meeting with Derbyshire police officers working on Operation Herne, the internal inquiry set up to investigate allegations surrounding the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), the now disbanded Scotland Yard undercover unit.

19 July 201420 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Eric Garner and the plague of US police brutality against black men

source: VICE United States
published: Jul 18 2014

If you haven’t heard about Eric Garner yet, let me fill you in. He was a 43-year-old father of six who lived in Staten Island, and he died in the street on Thursday after as many as four New York police officers choked him and slammed his head on the ground.

The NYPD told the Associated Press that they stopped Garner because he was selling untaxed cigarettes, something he’d been arrested for before. However, witnesses who spoke with local news website Staten Island Live have basically said that’s bullshit.