“It could soon be illegal to sit or lie on public sidewalks anywhere in San Francisco, a law Mayor Gavin Newsom says would make city life safer for pedestrians and merchants, but that homeless advocates and others say would amount to profiling against the poor.
Newsom will introduce two separate versions of a sit/lie law today at the Board of Supervisors. One version would prohibit sitting or lying on public sidewalks in about 20 commercial corridors throughout the city and is modeled on a similar law in Seattle that was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals.”
*****
In one of the most expensive cities in the US where homelessness is VERY OBVIOUSLY produced by capitalism, they have decided openly that homelessness is illegal. GO TEAM! Why stop there? Why not make it illegal to be unemployed? or just poor? Don’t get me wrong… I understand that they’re working up to it. And, sometimes its hard to tell the difference between the “creative” trust-funders and Google programmers and the REAL social SCOURGE. I’m sure they’ll figure out the details though.
If they really want to “clean up the streets”, I’ve got a proposal: FANCY NEW CONDOS FOR EVERYONE! FIRST OPTION TO THE POOREST AMONG US!
Also, fuck the Chronicle repeating this “thugs” noise. I don’t pretend to believe that they should be “objective”, but seriously!
“UCPD Chief Mitch Celaya said that the department is preparing to be able to deal with a variety of potential scenarios.
“We’re bringing in additional staffing,” he said. “We’ll have some strategies in place to allow us to respond to picketing or marching or rallies or even possible sit-ins or building takeovers.”
Berkeley police Lt. Andrew Greenwood said the Berkeley Police Department is aware of the scope and potential of the upcoming demonstrations and that “there’s significant planning under way.”"
*****
Can we imagine a scenario where the state spent more time and money figuring out how to respond to inter-personal violence with justice, love, and victims services than suppressing popular revolt? Can we imagine a scenario in which the resources of the state were transformed into instruments of personal and communal creativity and self-fulfillment rather than repressive repressive instruments of violence and control? Can we imagine a scenario in which the systems of state and capitalist violence and oppression became the targets of cops – when the batons cracked the skulls of AIG corporate bosses?
Here’s to the new possibilities that will be opened up on March 4!
“The parents of a schizophrenic man who died after a confrontation at a San Jose hospital during which he struggled with Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies and was stunned with a Taser by a Campbell police officer have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.
The death of 26-year-old Edwin Rodriguez in December 2008 at Valley Medical Center was the result of “excessive, unnecessary and inappropriate force” on someone suffering from paranoid delusions, said the suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose.”
*****
The use of tasers to attack people who are delusional or suffering from a breakdown is insidious and terrible. One more reason why we’re against tasers.
“Oakland police concocted false and “ridiculous” stories in an apparent cover-up of the alleged beating of a drug suspect who died less than a month after his 2000 arrest, a federal judge has ruled.
Department officials, including the sergeant who led the homicide investigation, “stonewalled” the mother of Jerry Amaro when she tried to learn how her 35-year-old son had died after being arrested in a drug sting, U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco said in ruling that her lawsuit against the city could proceed to trial.”
“Admitting a cover-up of shocking breadth, a former New Orleans police supervisor pleaded guilty to a federal obstruction charge on Wednesday, confessing that he participated in a conspiracy to justify the shooting of six unarmed people after Hurricane Katrina that was hatched not long after police stopped firing their weapons.
…
Lohman, who pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to obstruct justice, admits he failed to order the collection of evidence or canvassing of witnesses, helped craft police reports riddled with false information, participated in a plan to plant a gun under the bridge and lied to investigators who questioned police actions.”
*****
It’s about time the people in New Orleans get some justice!
“The San Francisco Police Commission heard a litany of expert testimony Wednesday to support the police chief’s proposal that the department’s officers be equipped with electronic stun guns.
Chief George Gascón has pushed for Tasers, stun guns that disrupt a target’s muscle control, and ordered a study of officer-involved shootings shortly after coming on the job in late July. That study, released earlier this year, concluded that one-third of 15 officer-involved shootings over a five-year period might have been avoided had officers had the devices.”
“Sobriety checkpoints in California are increasingly turning into profitable operations for local police departments—operations that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed motorists than catch drunk drivers. An investigation by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley with California Watch has found that impounds at checkpoints in 2009 generated an estimated $40 million in towing fees and police fines—revenue that cities divide with towing firms. In addition, police officers received about $30 million in overtime pay for the DUI crackdowns, funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety.
…
Sobriety checkpoints frequently screen traffic within, or near, Hispanic neighborhoods. Cities where Hispanics are a majority of the population are seizing cars at three times the rate of cities with small minority populations. In South Gate, a Los Angeles County city where Hispanics make up 92 percent of the population, police confiscated an average of 86 vehicles per operation last fiscal year.”
*****
These things are specifically designed to steal people’s (specifically immigrants’) cars and to channel cash into the pockets of tow companies and cops. More interesting: people at the UC can stop it!
“J. Hadley Louden says he was marching down Telegraph Avenue during the 2009 Mardi Gras parade, “wearing a large set of drums and cymbals on a harness around his upper body and strapped over his shoulders and around his waist; and he was smoking a hand-rolled marijuana cigarette, for which he had a doctor’s prescription.”
…
He claims a Berkeley cop, “Kelley,” “approached him and demanded the cigarette. Plaintiff bridled, explaining that his possession was legal and turned away,” according to the complaint in Alameda County Court.”
This is a piece from the Center for International Policy at the America’s Program. It focuses primarily on listing the major players and spelling out strategies for ending private contracting in prisons:
“Elements of our criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems are spinning dangerously out of public control. Increasingly, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are outsourcing their imprisonment and detention responsibilities to hundreds of contractors and subcontractors—with scant oversight, little transparency, and often tragic consequences. As a result, human rights abuses, squandering of public revenues, and unscrupulous profiteering pervade and pervert the U.S. system of crime and punishment.
A shadow prison industry has spread to all parts of the federal detention and prison system. It is, with a few exceptions, in complete charge of all immigrant imprisonment and detention at both DOJ and DHS. Because the shadow industry has evolved without a plan or strategy, it has become a bizarre, labyrinthine complex of public and private players that is little understood and frighteningly out of control.”