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Tag Archives: policing
After Tyre Nichols funeral, Biden faces pressure on policing – The Associated Press – en Español
- After Tyre Nichols funeral, Biden faces pressure on policing The Associated Press – en Español
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- Congressional Black Caucus meeting with President Biden to discuss police reform CBS News
- ‘Nonnegotiable’: Advocates push for federal police reform after death of Tyre Nichols Yahoo News
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House moves ahead on policing legislation amid internal Democratic conflict
House Democrats, who have spent months trying to cobble together a package of police funding bills to help combat attacks on the campaign trail, spent Thursday morning struggling to get the votes to pass it, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Several progressive Democrats have threatened to vote against it, and the House went into recess as the leadership tried to sort it out. House Democratic leaders appear to have convinced one progressive Democrat — Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — to vote “present” in order to secure enough votes to pass the long-stalled police funding package that vulnerable members have been demanding, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Several other progressive Democrats plan to vote no, so the vote will be close but it’s expected to pass.
The House cleared a procedural hurdle Thursday afternoon to open debate on the package of bills. The vote was extremely close, however, in a sign of how tight the vote math is for Democrats on the legislation. Pressley voted present on the procedural vote to begin debate on the bills.
It was a tense few moments on the House floor as Democrats were trying to figure out how to get the votes needed to pass the policing bills during the procedural vote.
Progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar, who negotiated the bills, was huddled with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, biting her fingernails by the dais.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to hold up the vote and said there was a member who was three minutes away who could vote. When the bills passed, Democrats on the floor cheered.
How the vote came together
The package’s supporters announced Wednesday they’d reach a deal to pass the package this week following months of negotiations. Hoyer told reporters a vote will be scheduled for Thursday, and Rep. Joyce Beatty, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the move comes after reaching a compromise on language ensuring accountability for police officers and dropping another more contentious bill from the discussions.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington state and Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who serves as whip of the caucus, released a statement applauding the deal Wednesday.
The bill is primarily a messaging bill going into the midterms as moderate Democratic House members have sought to protect themselves against political attacks that they’re anti-police.
CNN reported earlier this week on how dozens of the party’s most vulnerable members have sought to defuse those attacks through a flurry of pro-police campaign ads and local events with law enforcement.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Thursday.
CNN’s Daniella Diaz and Kristin Wilson contributed to this report.
Tommy Lee joins OnlyFans: ‘I’m tired of Instagram policing our bodies’
Mötley Crue drummer Tommy Lee has joined the content sharing subscription platform OnlyFans.
The musician and ex-husband of Pamela Anderson had shared a full-frontal naked selfie to Instagram last month, which was subsequently deleted under Instagram’s content guidelines.
During a Mötley Crüe concert in San Antonio, Texas, later in August, the 59-year-old explained that he had shared the explicit photo after going on a “bender”.
Now, Lee has used Instagram to promote his new page on OnlyFans, a popular content sharing site which is renowned for users selling access to pornographic images and videos.
In a video on his Instagram Stories, Lee wrote: “Yo I’m Tommy Lee. Join me over at OnlyFans because I went the S@#% over there because I’m tired of Instagram policing our bodies.
“So head on over to the wild side on OnlyFans.”
According to the website, a subscription to Lee’s page costs $39.95 a month.
In 1995, a sex tape featuring Lee and Anderson was infamously stolen and sold to the public.
The incident was recently dramatised in the Disney+ series Pam & Tommy, which focused on the relationship between Lee and the Baywatch star.
In the series, Lee was portrayed by Sebastian Stan, while Lily James played Anderson.
China seeks Pacific islands policing, security cooperation -document
SYDNEY, May 25 (Reuters) – China will seek a region-wide deal with almost a dozen Pacific island countries covering policing, security and data communication cooperation when Foreign Minister Wang Yi hosts a meeting in Fiji next week, documents seen by Reuters show.
A draft communique and five-year action plan sent by China to 10 Pacific islands ahead of a meeting of foreign ministers on May 30 has prompted opposition from at least one of the invited nations, which says it showed China’s intent to control the region and “threatens regional stability”.
In a letter to 21 Pacific leaders seen by Reuters, the president of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), David Panuelo, said his country would argue the “pre-determined joint communique” should be rejected, because he feared it could spark a new “Cold War” between China and the West.
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In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States was aware of Wang Yi’s plans and was “concerned that these reported agreements may be negotiated in a rushed, non-transparent process.”
He said recent security agreements reached by China had been conducted with little regional consultation, provoking concern in the United States and across the region.
“We don’t believe that importing security forces from the PRC and their methods will help any Pacific Island country,” he said. “Doing so can only seek to fuel regional and international tension and increase concerns over Beijing’s expansion of its internal apparatus to the Pacific.”
Wang will visit eight Pacific island nations that China has diplomatic ties with between May 26 and June 4.
He arrives on Thursday in the Solomon Islands, which recently signed a security pact with China despite objections from Australia, the United States, Japan and New Zealand, all of which fear it could upset regional security and give China a military foothold in the Pacific.
China rejects this, saying the pact is focused on domestic policing and criticism by Western countries was interference in the Solomon Island’s sovereign decision-making. read more
Asked to respond to the letter, first reported by Reuters, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular media briefing in Beijing that he was unaware of it, adding that China and South Pacific countries “are good friends and partners in mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit and common development”.
“I do not agree at all with the argument that cooperation between China and the South Pacific island countries will trigger a new Cold War,” he added.
Wang’s visit would “consolidate mutual political trust, expand practical cooperation, deepen people-to-people ties and jointly build a closer community of destiny among China’s Pacific island countries”.
The FSM government, which has a defence agreement with the United States as well as an economic cooperation agreement with China, declined to comment to Reuters on the letter.
Price, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said Washington respected the ability of regional countries to make sovereign decisions in the best interests of their people, while adding, referring to China:
“It’s worth noting that PRC has a pattern of offering shadowy, vague deals with little transparency or regional consultation in areas related to fishing, related to resource management, development assistance and more recently, even security practices.”
NEW VISION
A region-wide agreement covering security and trade between China and Pacific islands would represent a shift in Beijing’s focus from bilateral relations to dealing with the Pacific on a multilateral basis.
China circulated the China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision draft document, as well as a five-year action plan, ahead of the Fiji meeting.
It states China and the Pacific islands will “strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the fields of traditional and non traditional security”.
“China will hold intermediate and high-level police training for Pacific Island Countries through bilateral and multilateral means,” the document says.
The action plan outlines a ministerial dialogue on law enforcement capacity and police cooperation in 2022, and China providing forensic laboratories.
The draft communique also pledges cooperation on data networks, cyber security, smart customs systems, and for Pacific islands to “take a balanced approach” on technological progress, economic development and national security.
Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, which is barred from 5G networks run by several U.S allies, has been repeatedly thwarted in attempts to build submarine cables or run mobile networks in the Pacific by Australia and the United States, which have offered rival bids for the sensitive infrastructure, citing national security.
The communique also proposes a China-Pacific Islands Free Trade Area, and support for action on climate change and health.
In his letter to other leaders, Panuelo said the communique would draw Pacific islands that have diplomatic relations with China “very close into Beijing’s orbit, intrinsically tying the whole of our economies and societies to them”.
He highlighted the risk of being caught in conflict as tensions rise between the United States and China over Taiwan. read more
“The practical impacts, however, of Chinese control over our communications infrastructure, our ocean territory and the resources within them, and our security space, aside from impacts on our sovereignty, is that it increases the chances of China getting into conflict with Australia, Japan, the United States and New Zealand,” he said.
China’s provision of customs systems would lead to “biodata collection and mass surveillance of those residing in, entering and leaving our islands”, he added.
He was also critical of Australia’s lack of action on climate change.
New Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged this week to increase climate financing to Pacific islands, saying climate change was their main economic and security challenge. read more
“China has made its intentions clear,” Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, said when asked about the Reuters report.
“So too are the intentions of the new Australian government. We want to help build a stronger Pacific family. We want to bring new energy and more resources to the Pacific.”
Wong, who travels to Fiji on Thursday, has pledged to increase opportunities for Pacific island citizens to work and migrate to Australia.
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Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Additional reporting by Martin Pollard in Beijing and Daphne Psaledakis, Simon Lewis and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Bernard Orr
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Biden to issue policing order Wednesday, anniversary of Floyd’s death
The executive order also will instruct federal law enforcement agencies to update their use-of-force policies. Advocates have been urging the White House to take such action since a sweeping police-reform bill failed in Congress last year. The bill was named for Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer who was subsequently fired and convicted of murder.
“If you had asked me six months ago, I would have said it’s not time for an executive order yet because we should be focused on federal legislation, the George Floyd bill in particular,” said Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “But once that effort was sabotaged, the administration has stepped up as much as it could via executive action.”
Biden’s executive order will authorize the Justice Department to use federal grant funding to encourage local police to tighten restrictions on the use of choke holds and no-knock warrants — steps that federal law enforcement agencies have already taken. It also will set new restrictions on the sale of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, said the people familiar with the document, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the order had not yet been issued.
“We feel that this executive order should lay the groundwork for moving forward in a manner which will standardize training and procedures and hopefully standardize police across the country,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, who was involved in negotiations with the White House and was briefed on the contents of the order. “And we hope it will be an element in healing the rifts that exist in some places between police officers and the communities they serve.”
The White House declined to comment.
Biden, who was en route to Washington on Tuesday after a trip to Asia, will issue the order amid a rise in violent crime and concern among civil rights groups that the White House has lost a sense of urgency around police reform.
He announced he would take executive action on police reform through executive authority last September after the collapse of the federal legislation, which would have banned choke holds and no-knock warrants, prohibited racial profiling and eliminated qualified immunity for police officers.
But in a nation polarized over discussions of race and criminal justice, negotiations over the order were fraught. Police groups denounced a leaked draft in January that stated there was “systemic racism” in the criminal justice system.
Pasco said the final version of the order includes “allusions to racism. But it’s all in the manner in which it was presented. Significant changes have been made in the phrasing, in the policy statement.”
The White House does not have the power to make some changes long demanded by advocates, like getting rid of qualified immunity, which protects police officers from being sued individually for misconduct. Dozens of statehouse bills that would eliminate such immunity have also been defeated. Other changes, like banning choke holds or adopting stricter policies about when police can use force, also require action on the state or local level.
But Marc Morial, a former New Orleans mayor who is now president and chief executive of the National Urban League, called the order “a very important step.”
“We recognize that this process is not going to be easy,” Morial said. “This is a long fight. I’m going to accept this first important step by the president because it’s a powerful statement, and it reflects what he can do with his own executive power.”
Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said the order will have the most direct impact on the nation’s 100,000 federal officers, given that Biden’s ability to act unilaterally on policies for local and state police is limited.
But Cosme said the document could serve as a “national role model for all law enforcement around the country. We’ve engaged in hundreds of hours of discussions, and this can inspire people in the state and local departments to say: ‘This is what we need to do.’”
He emphasized that the order will include sections aimed at providing more support for officer wellness, including mental health, and officer recruitment and retention at a time when many departments are facing low morale and staffing shortages.
“No officer wants anyone, not the suspect or the victim, to lose their life,” Cosme said. “We want the maximum safety for everyone in the country.”
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
‘That was my beloved son’: family of Patrick Lyoya say police killed their son in an ‘execution’ | US policing
The grief-stricken parents of the Black man shot in the back of the head by a white Michigan police officer have described their son’s death as an “execution”.
Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old Congolese refugee, was killed after a traffic stop in Grand Rapids on 4 April.
“I didn’t believe that … there’s a genocide in this country,” said his father, Peter Lyoya, on Thursday through an interpreter. “I didn’t know that here in America, there can be execution-style … to be killed by the police officer.”
The Lyoya family came to the US fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014. Patrick, a factory worker, was the eldest of six children and had two young daughters.
Video footage released by the Grand Rapids police chief on Wednesday shows a short foot chase on a residential street after Lyoya ran from the officer who stopped him for driving with a license plate that didn’t belong to the vehicle. They are shown briefly struggling over the officer’s Taser, before he apparently shoots Lyoya in the back of the head while kneeling on his back.
“[It] made me cry to see my son killed by a police officer for a small mistake,” said Peter Lyoya. “My heart was really broken … My life was Patrick, my son. I was thinking Patrick will take my place. And to see that my son was killed like an animal by this police officer.”
Lawyers for the family said the officer should be prosecuted, fired and named. Patrick’s brothers and sisters want to know who killed him and would like to see his picture so they can know “this is the person that took our beloved one”, Peter said.
The officer has been placed on paid leave with his police powers suspended while Michigan state police conduct a criminal investigation. Police bosses have said he will not be identified publicly unless there are criminal charges.
A rally will take place in Grand Rapids on Friday as protests supporting the family’s call for justice have grown since the video footage was released. But prosecutor Chris Becker, who will decide whether any charges are brought against the seven-year-veteran officer and had objected to the footage being released, said not to expect a quick decision.
Grand Rapids is a small city of about 200,000 people located about 150 miles (240 kilometres) northwest of Detroit, where like many places in the US the police have faced criticism over the use of excessive force, particularly against Black people, who make up 18% of the population.
At the news conference inside Renaissance Church of God in Christ in Grand Rapids on Thursday, Lyoya’s parents explained that they’d sought asylum in the US looking for safety after years of civil unrest and violence at home in eastern Congo.
“They told us that in America, there’s peace, there’s safety, you’re not going to see killing any more, that it was basically a safe haven,” his mother, Dorcas Lyoya, told the Free Press through a translator. “What is so surprising … [the man] supposed to be protecting us is the one who shot my son.
“That was my beloved son. You know how you love your firstborn son,” she said.
The family were accompanied by their attorneys and the mother of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman and native of Grand Rapids shot dead inside her home by police in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020.
“The video shows us that this is as his mother and father have said – an execution. And there is no way to spin it or justify,” said Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights lawyer who has represented several victims of police violence, as Patrick’s parents wept. “It is an unjustifiable use of deadly force because the police escalated a traffic stop into an execution.”
Crump said the officer could have waited for backup when Lyoya ran but instead got “violent”.
He accused the unidentified officer of breaking protocol by using the Taser while close to Lyoya, adding that it was “natural instinct” for Lyoya to try to avoid being stunned. “There was no reason for [the officer] to have any intimate fear of the Taser being used against him,” said Crump.
The Lyoya family first escaped from DRC to Malawi, where they were granted asylum to live in the US. In recent years, Congolese people have become the largest group settled in Michigan, overtaking refugees from the Middle East after Donald Trump made it virtually impossible for Arab and Muslim people to gain asylum in the US.
The family lawyers pointed to the language barriers Congolese and others face when dealing with police.
“We are condemning Russian soldiers for shooting civilians in Ukraine in the back of the head,” Crump said. “Why aren’t we condemning police officers here in the United States of America shooting Black civilians in the back of the head? If it’s wrong in Ukraine … it’s wrong in Grand Rapids, Michigan.”
Dorcas described her eldest son as the type of person “you would want to be around”, and said he would often make her laugh.
Details of the funeral are expected soon. “As a parent, I was thinking that maybe it was my son who was going to bury me, assist me at my funeral,” said Dorcas. “But it is astonishing, I am the one burying my son.”
Minneapolis voters reject policing overhaul ballot measure prompted by George Floyd’s murder
The status quo-affirming result is a setback to both citywide and national efforts to fundamentally reduce or eliminate the role of police in America.
Talk of curbing police departments by cutting or limiting their resources has run into a countervailing wall of concern over public safety and waning support from early allies — including leading Democrats who largely view “defund the police” messaging as political poison.
The vote marked a significant setback for activists dedicated to defunding or dismantling a police department that had for years been confronted with accusations of racism and the use of excessive force. Tuesday night was the first time voters in Minneapolis had the chance to weigh in on a concrete proposal to overhaul policing, and they rejected it by a 13% margin.
Voters on both sides of the public safety measure agreed that the way Minneapolis police operate now is not acceptable. The question on the ballot posed one way of changing that, and voters found the plan to give control of public safety related departments to the city council and eliminate the requirement to employ police officers unacceptable.
Proponents of (the ballot measure), the burden was on them to demonstrate to voters they had an implementable vision that addressed aspects of policing and public safety important to Minneopolitans,” said Leili Fatehi, spokeswoman for the campaign opposed to the measure. “They did not do that. They did not present and amendment that changed the way police are recruited, changed the way they’re disciplined, changed the way they’re held accountable. It didn’t do any of those things. That’s ultimately why people rejected a vague hope for restructuring without specificity.”
City council candidates who opposed the public safety measure appeared to retain their seats, while two challengers who opposed it unseated incumbent councilors who supported the measure.
Minneapolis City Councilmember Phillipe Cunningham, who spearheaded a similar ballot initiative, called the results “really unfortunate.” He lost his seat to a challenger Tuesday.
“We have just seen a clear backlash to progress in our city,” said Cunningham.
Floyd’s murder on Memorial Day in 2020, captured on video by a bystander and the video went viral on social media, set off a tinderbox. In response to protests that drew national attention, Minneapolis city councilors gathered in a city park and pledged to dismantle the police department.
Mayor Jacob Frey was confronted outside his home in June 2020, shortly after Floyd’s murder, and jeered when he refused to commit to abolishing the police department — a much more ambitious step than was proposed in the ballot initiative on Tuesday. A day after Frey’s confrontation with protesters, nine members of the city council announced plans to begin “the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.”
“We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,” Council President Lisa Bender told CNN at the time.
Weeks later, the council voted unanimously to begin a process that would dismantle the police department and replace it with a “department of community safety and violence prevention.”
The move was greeted by activists who, as surges of anger pulsed through cities (and even some suburbs), saw an opportunity to realize reforms that had previously been viewed as impossible. What followed was almost 18 months of litigation and other fights through city bureaucracy about the scope of possible change, largely because of a constitution-like document governing the city’s structure and the police department’s role that is not easy to change.
Despite the measure’s failure, proponents hope city officials will take into consideration the thousands of voters who signed a petition to get the measure on the ballot and who voted for its passage.
“We didn’t lose the campaign because our vision for expanded public safety was radical, we lost because (opponents) repeated the same vision and told people they could deliver it without structural change,” said JaNaé Bates, spokeswoman for the “Yes” campaign. “Attaching to that lie and selling it to folks is frustrating, but it does make me proud to know we have expanded the conversation in Minneapolis, that policing and public safety are not synonymous.”
The question on the ballot Tuesday, of whether to do away with the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a Department of Public Safety, resulted from a petition drive following Floyd’s murder.
More people cast their ballots early this year than any other Minneapolis election in 45 years. Early voting was up 143% compared to the 2017 municipal election, and up 488% compared to the 2013 municipal election. By about five hours into Election Day, about 30% of registered voters had cast a ballot early, by mail, or in person.
School board group asks US for help policing threats
A group representing school board members around the country asked President Joe Biden on Thursday for federal assistance to investigate and stop threats made over policies including mask mandates, likening the vitriol to a form of domestic terrorism.
The request by the National School Boards Association demonstrates the level of unruliness that has engulfed local education meetings across the country during the pandemic, with board members regularly confronted and threatened by angry protesters.
School board members are largely unpaid volunteers, parents and former educators who step forward to shape school policy, choose a superintendent and review the budget, but they have been frightened at how their jobs have suddenly become a culture war battleground. The climate has led a growing number to resign or decide against seeking reelection.
“Whatever you feel about masks, it should not reach this level of rhetoric,” NSBA Interim Executive Director Chip Slaven told The Associated Press by phone.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said responsibility for protecting school boards falls largely to local law enforcement but “we’re continuing to explore if more can be done from across the administration.”
“Obviously these threats to school board members is horrible. They’re doing their jobs,” she said during a press briefing.
The association asked for the federal government to get involved to investigate cases where threats or violence could be handled as violations of federal laws protecting civil rights. It also asked for the Justice Department, FBI, Homeland Security and Secret Service to help monitor threat levels and assess risks to students, educators, board members and school buildings.
“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the association wrote.
The association represents more than 90,000 school board members in 14,000 public school districts.
The letter documents more than 20 instances of threats, harassment, disruption, and acts of intimidation in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states. It cites the September arrest of an Illinois man for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct for allegedly striking a school official at a meeting. In Michigan, a meeting was disrupted when a man performed a Nazi salute to protest masking.
“We are coming after you,” a letter mailed to an Ohio school board member said, according to the group. “You are forcing them to wear mask—for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly.”
It called the member “a filthy traitor.”
Last week, a crowd of up to 200 protesters who banged on doors and shouted at police shut down a school board meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where members planned to consider a temporary COVID-19 mask mandate.
At a U.S. Senate committee hearing on Thursday, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona decried the hostility against school board members and praised their “unwavering support” to reopen schools safely. He said the lack of civility in some meetings is disappointing and, in some places, it has been “very dangerous.”
He made the comments in response to questions from Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., a former school board member who said contentious meetings are a part of civic engagement.
The threats have gone beyond board meetings.
The father of an Arizona elementary school student was arrested after he and two other men brought zip ties to the campus, threatening to make a “citizen’s arrest” on the school principal over a COVID-19 quarantine. In California, a parent barged into his daughter’s elementary school and punched a teacher in the face over mask rule.
___
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Collin Binkley in Boston contributed to this report.
After Anti-Asian Violence, Volunteers Take to Streets to Form Patrols
FLUSHING, N.Y.—Before sunset Monday, a few dozen Asian-Americans outfitted in neon vests and jackets combed the streets of this New York City neighborhood.
They weren’t police officers. They were students, retail workers and retirees equipped with little more than a cellphone in the event they came across someone being harassed or attacked. Their mission: to stop would-be attackers from hurting other Asians, whether it be by calling the police for help or stepping in themselves.
“It’s made me feel sick,” said volunteer Wan Chen, 37, of the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes around the country. “So this is the time we need to speak up and try our best to help. If anyone tries to do anything, maybe they’ll think twice.”
Volunteer groups such as this one have sprung up around the U.S., patrolling the streets of Asian communities from New York City to Oakland, Calif. They have multiple goals: to escort individuals worried about their safety where they need to go, check in on community members, and if needed, intervene if they see someone being harassed.
Cities around the country have seen upticks in hate crimes against Asians since the start of the pandemic. One analysis conducted by researchers at California State University, San Bernardino, found hate crimes targeting Asians in 16 of the largest U.S. cities increased 149% between 2019 and 2020. Over the same period, overall reports of hate crimes declined by 7%, the researchers found.