STORY: "D.C. Mayor Calls for Warrantless Searches of Ex-Prisoners," published by The Real News on December 14, 2015.
SUB-HEADING: "The most Democratic city in the country is also the site of some of the
harshest and most racialized proposed crime legislation."
GIST: Transcript: THOMAS
HEDGES, TRNN:
AARON GOGGANS: Muriel Bowser's bill is very scary.
HEDGES:
Goggans, a writer and Black Lives Matter DMV activist says Mayor
Bowser's bill strengthens control and surveillance, but not
safety.
GOGGANS:
We think that this is kind of the mayor laying out the groundwork to do
a predictive policing model in DC. In 2013, the city got a contract
with a group out of Colorado Springs to do predictive policing, and to
bring a predictive policing platform to DC. This is as scary as it
sounds. Predictive policing is actually their name, but the idea that
you try and reach out to offenders before they've actually offended.
It's a very Big Brother, 1984 kind of way to do policing. It's very
terrifying. But also is a model trying to be followed by a lot of
states.
HEDGES: When Mayor Bowser introduced the law back in August, she
defended her bill amid the shouts and yelling of protesters.
MURIEL
BOWSER: There have been erroneous reports in the media that we want to
give the police unfettered authority to basically search anyone,
anytime, anywhere. That is blatantly false.
MONICA
HOPKINS-MAXWELL: I think that people should be watching what's going on
here, that this change in rhetoric, and especially in a place that deems
itself as progressive as the District of Columbia.
HEDGES:
Monica Hopkins-Maxwell is the director of the American Civil Liberties
Union in the nation's capital. She's been fighting the crime bill as
well as parallel legislation on the issue of body cameras, which were
introduced last year in Washington, and what she fears may become a tool
for surveillance rather than accountability.
HOPKINS-MAXWELL:
General Provision 3900.4 borders on using body-worn cameras for
surveillance by allowing recording of First Amendment assemblies. The
ACLU finds this highly problematic.The racial disparities
that you see are infinite in the District of Colombia, where you have 91
percent of the people that we incarcerate are black. So the damage to
black communities from this so-called public safety bill is really,
really scary.
HEDGES: Goggans says that unfortunately the mayor's efforts
are, in fact, precise and intentional.
GOGGANS:
The police have a union that is very political and outspoken in trying
to get its own PAC and trying to have political muscle to push this.
There are private prisons and private corporations that profit off of
the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration that are lobbying
for this bill. There are also a lot of provisions in the bill that
would, that came from a--that came from cooperation with the Chamber of
Commerce to get security cameras at local businesses, right.And
so there's a lot of business improvement district money tied into all
of this. And then there's a lot of folks who really just make money off
of traumatizing the black community, right, as black people get more
desperate. And a lot of aspects in our lives, it makes communities more
likely to take low-paying jobs because they don't have better options.
It feeds into this entire system that oppresses black people, which
unfortunately is a big business in America.
HEDGES: But
others say there's another incentive still for the city of DC to enact
draconian measures, and that's the city's campaign to redevelop poor
neighborhoods, and to transform them into areas that attract more
wealth. The crime bill, for example, would disproportionately target
black residents who live in places like H Street, Petworth, and
Anacostia, neighborhoods the city desperately wants to develop.
EUGENE
PURYEAR: DC's class polarization, which is in the top five in the
country in income inequality, some measures the top three, is also
almost explicitly racially based.
HEDGES: Eugene Puryear is a DC activist
and politician who ran for council in 2014 on the Green Party
ticket.
BOWSER: Mr. Puryear, you may not stand there, sir.
HEDGES:
He says that a tradition of apparent and persistent racism in the
nation's capital is punctuated by the gentrification of traditionally
poor neighborhoods like Columbia Heights and H Street, among others. For
example, last year at an unrecorded community meeting between residents
and the police that took place close to H Street, a number of older
black community members said their grandchildren were getting harassed
by the police, sometimes getting stopped up to once every
week.“ Newcomers
to the area are misinterpreting everyday scenarios as crimes,” Chief of
Police Cathy Lanier finally explained in the meeting, “like reporting
drug deals when they see young black men standing on a corner [...] You
have a lot of people here who haven't lived in an urban neighborhood who
are calling police for a lot of new things,” she said.
PURYEAR:
People who are new to the area, read, white, more wealthier people, who
don't have any experience living in urban environments, read, living
around black people, are seeing everyday behaviors and thinking that
they're criminal. So the pressures of gentrification are getting higher
and higher on average everyday people, particularly poor black people,
and the police are responding more and more to the biased misconceptions
of businesses and new residents about what to do about crime, which
frequently involves tougher penalties, and more occupation-style
policing and more harassment, essentially to get people off the
street.
HEDGES:
One of the more frustrating misconceptions for Puryear is that DC is
relaxed when it comes to criminal pursuit and prosecution, due in part
to the fact that it votes overwhelmingly Democrat.
PURYEAR:
What we have to recognize is that on the national level you have the
DNC and endorsing Black Lives Matter, Elizabeth Warren giving speeches,
Bernie Sanders talking about it, Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley. But
on the local level, whether it's Muriel Bowser here in DC, whether it's
Rahm Emanuel, whether it's Jean Quan in Oakland, whether it's even
backsliding by Bill de Blasio in New York, it's in these major
municipalities that are run by Democrats--certainly St. Louis, Ferguson,
governor of Missouri, Jay Nixon, run by Democrats, implementing these
mass incarceration, militarized policing policies.And I
think it's important that we recognize that it's not, you know, just
some right-wing bogeyman or the quote-unquote Republicans. But that
really front line, a lot of times it's Democrats who are doing the most
harmful policies to these communities, and it's not based on any sort of
scientific reality. A lot of it is just based on the same racially
based hysteric politics that got us to mass incarceration in 1994. And I
think it's key to recognize that when you get new populations moving
into cities who feel a certain amount of fear about the old, young, poor
black population, their response is always going to be more police,
because it makes them feel safer. But it's not based on anything, and
certainly it only is going to lead to more of the problems we've seen
from militarized policing and mass incarceration so far.
HEDGES:
On December 1, the DC Council voted to roll back Muriel Bowser's
proposal for limiting access to body camera footage from the public. A
small victory for activists and residents who hope for a similar outcome
when the looming crime bill comes for a vote in the coming weeks. For
the Real News, Thomas Hedges, Washington.
The entire story can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com; Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com; Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
