New Jersey high schooler accused of violating bullying laws for making anti-Israel tweets
@bendykoval / Twitter
RT | January 7, 2016
A social media storm erupted after administrators at a New Jersey high school accused a student of bullying because of anti-Israel comments that she posted on Twitter. They say that the tweets may have violated the state’s broad anti-bullying laws.
Bethany Koval, a 16-year-old Israeli Jew, said on Wednesday that she was called to the principal’s office at Fair Lawn High School and reprimanded for making tweets criticizing Israel and mentioning that a pro-Israel classmate had unfollowed her on Twitter.
Administrators warned her that she could face legal consequences for her actions, since New Jersey has some of the strictest anti-bullying legislation in the country. Under the New Jersey Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act, which only came into force in 2011, she could be suspended or expelled.
Koval is a prolific Twitter user. She had made over 21,000 tweets and has almost 7,000 followers, many of whom she gained in the last few days. The fiasco that she is the center of has since become a social media sensation.
The outspoken high schooler has been met with both support and opposition online.
When Koval was called down to the principal’s office, she began documenting the situation on Twitter.
“I’m about to be exposed for being anti-Israel. Pray for me,” she tweeted.
A few minutes later, she tweeted that the administrator threatened to “file a bullying case” against her.
“It’s against state law to express unpopular political views on the Internet, now.”
In addition to rebuking her and warning her about legal consequences, the administator searched Koval’s phone to make sure that she had not recorded their conversation. The student could be sued if she had, he told her.
The administrator was correct in their assumption; Koval posted videos of the meeting on Twitter. In one recording, Koval can heard telling the administrator that her tweets may have been controversial, but she didn’t think they were “problematic.”
“Well that’s your interpretation,” the administrator said. “There’s a state law that might interpret it differently.”
In a second clip, the administrator can be heard warning her about legal consequences again.
“You can sit there with your smug attitude right now, but if it’s got to go into a bullying case because you think it shouldn’t be and the state says it is, you’re going to lose,” he said.
Fair Lawn High School Principal James Marcella told The New York Times that the issue has been referred to the school district’s superintendent, Bruce Watson, and that a statement would be released on Thursday afternoon.
Stanley Cohen, a lawyer consulted by Koval’s family, said that he doubted that the complaints over her tweets would end up being a legal matter. He said he hoped school officials would look beyond “the emotion of the moment and say ‘Move on, this is no big deal,’” adding that he believes that young people should be encouraged to express their opinions in an academic environment.
READ MORE: UCLA and Berkeley anti-Semitism resolutions ‘blur lines,’ hurt debate – critics
Saudi leadership defends execution of protestors
Reprieve – January 7, 2015
Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince has used his first major interview since taking office to defend the country’s recent mass execution, claiming that human rights are ‘important’ to his government.
Speaking to the Economist, Mohammed bin Salman – the son of King Salman, and the country’s Defence Minister – sought to justify the execution on Saturday of 47 prisoners, saying they were “sentenced in a court of law.” Those killed included Sheikh Nimr, a prominent critic of the government, and three young political protestors – all four of whom were sentenced to death on charges that included shouting slogans and organizing protests.
Prince Mohammed also claimed, incorrectly, that those executed had had fair trials, saying they “had the right to hire an attorney and they had attorneys present throughout each layer of the proceedings.” He went on to say that “the court doors were also open for any media people and journalists, and all the proceedings and the judicial texts were made public.”
In fact, the protestors’ trials in the secretive Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) took place in largely closed hearings. Lawyers barred from attending hearings and from meeting their clients to take proper instructions, while police investigations were kept secret. The court also relied heavily on ‘confessions’ extracted under torture, in breach of international and Saudi law. Human rights organization Reprieve – which is assisting three juveniles who were sentenced to death in the SCC after attending protests – has repeatedly raised concerns about these trial conditions.
Prince Mohammed also said that Saudi Arabia would “always take criticism from our friends. If we are wrong, we need to hear that we are wrong.” He added that: “We have our values […] It is important to us to have our freedom of expression; it is important to us to have human rights.” He also claimed that “any regime that did not represent its people collapsed in the Arab Spring”– the period that saw widespread protests, and arrests of protestors, in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.
Research by Reprieve in 2015 found that, of those facing execution in Saudi Arabia, the vast majority – 72 per cent – were convicted of non-lethal offenses such as political protest or drug-related crimes, while torture and forced ‘confessions’ were frequently reported. Reprieve has also established that the Saudi authorities executed at least 158 people in 2015 – a marked increase on the previous year.
Among those currently facing execution in Saudi Arabia are the three juveniles – Ali al-Nimr, Dawoud al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher – all of whom were sentenced to death in the SCC for attending protests, after being tortured into signing statements.
Commenting, Maya Foa, head of the death penalty team at Reprieve, said: “Mohammed bin Salman says he wants to hear when the Saudi government is wrong. Well, it’s safe to say that he is dead wrong on this occasion. Contrary to his claims, we know that Sheikh Nimr and three protestors killed on Saturday – as well as the three juveniles now awaiting execution – had catastrophically unfair trials, where the authorities relied on torture and forced ‘confessions’. The defence lawyers were excluded from attending hearings, or even meeting their clients. If the Saudi government wants to endear itself to the international community, it could start by halting its plans to execute juveniles and others who dare to express dissent.”
Saudi Arabia top buyer of UK arms in 5 years: Report
Press TV – January 7, 2016
The UK has licensed the sales of over eight billion dollars of military hardware to Saudi Arabia since British Prime Minister David Cameron took office in May 2010.
According to the latest figures released by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) NGO, since Cameron was elected almost six years ago, Britain has also sold arms to 24 of the 27 states on its own list of “countries of humanitarian concern,” The Independent reported on Wednesday.
Apart from Riyadh’s ongoing purchase of the 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets, which are worth over six billion dollars at completion, major licenses worth over two billion dollars including Hawk fighter jets, bombs, guns and tear gas were sold to Saudi Arabia during the said period.
Based on the figures released by CAAT, the Saudis have access to twice the number of British-made warplanes than the Royal Air force has.
CAAT spokesperson Andrew Smith noted that the amount of arms sales to countries on the list, especially Saudi Arabia, shows that “human rights are playing second fiddle to company profits.”
He went on to say that the income from arms sales “is being put over the rights of people being executed and tortured. It’s completely inconsistent to condemn these regimes while signing off on billion-pound arms deals.”
“Two-thirds of UK arms exports go to the Middle East, and that’s unlikely to change. We know that Saudi Arabia is arming a number of groups in and around Syria, but we’ve no idea what weapons are being sent there. Once a weapon enters a war zone there’s no such thing as arms control,” Smith added.
Cameron has been under pressure to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia which faces massive criticism from the international community for launching an unabated war against impoverished Yemen, its growing number of beheading and other forms of execution, cracking down on political dissidents and the most recent atrocity of the mass execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 other people.
In October last year, during an interview with the UK’s Channel 4, Cameron suggested that London’s “relationship” with the Saudi Arabia supersedes its human rights record.
Are ankle bracelets really an alternative to incarceration, or just another kind of prison?
PrivacySOS | January 4, 2015
Everyone is talking about how to end mass incarceration: the right, the left, presidential candidates, Black Lives Matter activists. But what comes after a prison-centric society? Some, including business interests that would profit from such a shift, think GPS bracelets are a sound alternative to locking people in physical cages. But is electronic monitoring really so different from prison?
Not according to the Center for Media Justice and James Kilgore, respectively publisher and author of a 2015 report: “Electronic Monitoring is Not the Answer: Critical Reflections on a Flawed Alternative.”
Kilgore told the Daily Beast that while wearing an ankle bracelet is better than being in prison, we shouldn’t look to GPS monitoring to solve the problems in our criminal punishment system. “You can be sent back to prison for getting back to your house five minutes late when the bus breaks down,” Kilgore said, naming just one of many strict release conditions that can make ankle bracelets seem like electronic recidivism devices.
Putting people on electronic leashes instead of in jails or prisons is problematic for many reasons. Electronic monitoring shifts the burden of paying for incarceration onto the individual and the family, away from the state. The conditions imposed on people wearing bracelets are often so strict that people soon go back to prison for violations that have nothing to do with whether someone is a danger to the community—or they never leave their homes because they are terrified of committing such a violation, even accidentally. Bracelets act as a sort of scarlet letter, signifying to people in the community that the wearer may not be a trustworthy employee or neighbor.
And because the terms and conditions of electronic monitoring punishments can be so severe, sentencing people to wear ankle bracelets in place of serving prison sentences may actually increase the number of people in prison. That’s because, for example, a judge may sentence someone to electronic monitoring that later, because of impossibly strict conditions, leads to incarceration, when community service would have been a viable alternative sentence in the first place.
Electronic monitoring also produces huge quantities of sensitive information about people required to wear the devices everywhere they go, and the market that governs the technology companies is nearly entirely unregulated. As the Intercept reported in late 2015, companies that profit off of the prison industrial complex are historically not the best at securing sensitive information about the incarcerated people who are required to use their services. We should not trust that the huge quantities of sensitive information generated about people subjected to state control will remain secure or won’t be abused.
Thinking of ankle bracelets or other electronic monitoring as “alternatives” to prison is dangerous because these methods are cheaper than caging people, meaning the government could very easily place many more people under these systems of control without feeling the fiscal pinch.
So what should we do?
Instead of creating virtual prisons, we must rethink our entire justice system—including what constitutes a crime, and whether we want to enact vengeance or seek rehabilitation for people who commit crimes. Ending the drug war is a great start. We can and must also end mandatory minimums, radically restructure our sentencing guidelines, and take a hard look at our criminal statutes.
Ultimately, we must decrease the number of people under carceral control in the United States. If that’s the goal, electronic surveillance schemes aren’t only false alternatives—they may very well create an entirely new problem that will grind on for decades until the country finally wakes up to realize its mistake. By that point, because GPS bracelets are so much cheaper for the state than prisons, we may all be wearing them.
DHS releases best practices for government drone use, says nothing about warrants
PrivacySOS | January 4, 2015
In late December 2015, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its “Privacy, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Unmanned Aircraft Systems Working Group” best practices recommendations for government drone use. The 11 page document does not contain the word “warrant,” nor any recommendations to federal, state, or local law enforcement about getting judicial approval to use drones to monitor people.
The best practices DHS offers mostly concern basic data security issues, including recommendations to delete data when it’s not needed, to limit collection where possible, to be (a little—not too) transparent with the public about drone acquisitions and operations, to avoid mission creep, and to refrain from spying on people based on their political views or protected class alone.
Those are all good things, but these recommendations are just that—suggestions. The document isn’t legally binding. And it completely avoids tackling a very important issue: judicial oversight and approval of police drone use. There’s little chance that congress will pass legislation mandating that police get warrants to use drones any time soon, so the responsibility for filling in the gap falls to state legislatures and courts.
While at least 20 states have passed laws to regulate drones, many of them don’t put any restrictions on law enforcement. Maine and Virginia require police to acquire warrants before deploying drones in most circumstances. The Drone Privacy Act in Massachusetts would require that police get a warrant before spying on us with drones, and ban the use of weaponized drones among state and local law enforcement.
UK Foreign Office minister refuses to publish Saudi agreements or condemn executions
Reprieve – January 5, 2015
A UK Government minister was this evening repeatedly asked by Members of Parliament to condemn the execution of protesters last weekend in Saudi Arabia, and to publish secret agreements signed between the UK and Saudi governments, but refused to do either.
Foreign Office (FCO) minister Tobias Ellwood was taking questions from MPs on British relations with the Kingdom in the wake of last weekend’s mass execution of 47 people, including at least four sentenced to death over their involvement in protests calling for reform in 2012.
Hilary Benn, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Lib Dem Leader Tim Farron both asked Mr Ellwood whether the Government would publish Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) between the UK’s Home Office (HO) and Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and their Saudi counterparts, concerning cooperation in their respective areas. However, Mr Ellwood failed to answer to either of their questions.
While Mr Ellwood expressed “concern” over the executions, he also refused requests from several MPs – including Mr Farron and the Greens’ Caroline Lucas – to condemn them.
MPs – including the Conservatives’ Mike Wood and the SNP’s Margaret Ferrier – raised specific concerns over the cases of three juveniles sentenced to death as children over their involvement in protests: Ali al Nimr, Dawoud al Marhoon, and Abdullah al Zaher – who continue to be at risk of execution at any time. Mr Ellwood responded that the UK had raised their cases with the Saudi authorities and did not expect them to be executed.
Commenting, Maya Foa, Director of the death penalty team at international human rights organisation Reprieve said: “The UK Government’s continuing secrecy over its dealings with Saudi Arabia is unacceptable. If the Home Office or Ministry of Justice are using public resources to support a state which is carrying out appalling human rights abuses, the British public deserves to know. It is also disturbing that the Government is continuing to refuse to condemn the execution by the Saudi Government of protesters calling for political reform. The Minister claims that ‘foghorn diplomacy’ doesn’t work, but given the bloodbath last weekend it is hard to see how the UK’s softly-softly approach is doing any good.”
Journalist sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in Egypt
Mada Masr | January 3, 2015
Journalist Mohamed Abdel Moneim was sentenced to three years imprisonment on Sunday, after a court found him guilty of partaking in an unauthorized protest dating back to April 24, 2015. However, Abdel Moneim’s coworkers at the Tahya Masr news portal insist he was arrested while covering this protest, not participating in it.
Convening at the Police Academy, Cairo Criminal Court ruled that Abdel Moneim had breached the Protest Law by taking part in an unauthorized street protest. The court also ruled that the 22-year-old journalist was guilty of possessing weapons, Molotov cocktails, obstructing traffic, endangering the lives of civilians, as well as damaging both public and private properties.
The privately owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reported that the court had issued an identical sentence against two other defendants on Sunday: a 19-year-old student Essam Abdel Hakim, and 15-year-old student Abdel Rahman Sayyed.
The three-year sentence against the journalist was issued despite the in-court testimony of Tahya Masr’s administrative chief who, according to Al-Shorouk, confirmed that Abdel Moneim was his employee, and had been covering the street protest in question. Abdel Moneim’s boss added that the young journalist was objective in his coverage of protests, siding neither with the current administration, nor with the ousted regime of the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to state-owned Al-Ahram, the court did not recognize that Abdel Moneim was a journalist, as he is not an officially registered member of the Journalists’ Syndicate. However, there are several thousand journalists said to be operating in Egypt who are unable to enter this syndicate due its restrictive preconditions for membership.
As of last month, the Liberties Committee of the Journalists’ Syndicate announced that there are at least 32 journalists in detention across Egypt, from which at least 18 were arrested while reporting in public spaces.
The Liberties Committee has organized several petitions calling for the release of detained journalists and media staffers, along with several legal appeals, protests, and marches along with campaigns for improved treatment of jailed journalists.
According to the chief of the Liberties Committee, Khaled al-Balshy, at least 350 cases of assaults against journalists have been documented over the past two years.
Mexico: Almost 100 Mayors Targeted for Assassination Since 2006
teleSUR – January 5, 2016
Nearly 100 mayors and over 1,000 municipal officials in Mexico were targets of assassination attempts over the past decade, according to an association that represents local governments.
The group, the Association of Local Authorities of Mexico, demanded an end to the impunity of the criminal organizations which it said have not been held accountable for any of the assassination attempts.
The association reported its findings following the murder on Saturday of the mayor of Temixco, one of the most violent municipalities in Morelos, just south of Mexico City. Gisela Raquel Mota was in office for just one day before the shooting.
Police arrested three suspects—including a minor and a 32-year-old woman—and two others were killed in a shootout with law enforcement. The purported assassins were allegedly paid US$30,000 and were reported by El Universal to belong to the Los Rojos cartel.
Mota, 33, was part of the center-left Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD) and had earlier announced she would ratify the Mando Unico, or single command, allowing state police into the municipality.
Half of the 33 municipalities in Morelos oppose the police command, fearing retribution like assassination of Mota, but the state governor Graco Ramirez said in a press conference on Sunday that all would be subject to the security protocol.
According to the local government association, mayors are by far the most targeted local officials: even if they choose to cooperate with a criminal gang, they invite revenge from a rival group. Even lower officials are affected, with AFP reporting that over 100,000 local council members killed since 2006 amid a militarized crackdown on narcotrafficking.
Bahrain detains Shia cleric for protesting Nimr killing
Press TV – January 4, 2016
Bahraini forces have reportedly detained another Shia cleric following protests in the tiny Persian Gulf Arab country against Saudi Arabia’s recent execution of prominent Shia clergyman Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
According to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Sheikh Ahmad al-Jidhafsi was arrested on Sunday after he attended protest rallies against Nimr’s execution.
Bahraini opposition group ‘February 14 Revolution Youth Coalition’ has slammed the cleric’s arrest as heinous, saying Manama is after sparking sectarianism and a religious conflict.
In December 2014, the Bahraini regime also took into custody prominent Shia cleric and opposition leader, Sheikh Ali Salman.
Sheikh Salman, the head of al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, was arrested shortly after he called for serious political reforms in Bahrain following his re-election as the secretary general of al-Wefaq, Bahrain’s main opposition bloc.
The charges brought against him include “incitement to promote the change of the political system by force, threats and other illegal means,” among others. However, the 49-year-old has strongly denied the charges, emphasizing that he has been seeking reforms in the kingdom through peaceful means.
Meanwhile, the Bahrain Interior Ministry said in a Sunday statement that the country’s security forces detained an unspecified number of people protesting Sheikh Nimr’s execution over social media posts.
The regime in Bahrain has warned of criminal prosecution against those protesting the execution of Sheik Nimr.
On Saturday, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced that Sheikh Nimr had been put to death along with 46 others who were convicted of being involved in “terrorism.”
UN: Mexican Authorities Must Compensate Jailed Mayan Journalist
A drawing of Mayan journalist Pedro Canche Herrera, jailed in 2014 in the state of Quintana Roo for taking photos of a protest. | Photo: Twitter
teleSUR – January 3, 2016
The United Nations has urged Mexican officials in the south-eastern state of Quintana Roo to compensate a Mayan journalist who was jailed for more than nine months for taking photos of a protest, local media reported on Sunday.
Accused of the felony of sabotage against the government of Quintana Roo, Mayan journalist Pedro Canche Herrera was arrested on Aug. 30, 2014, and spent more than nine months in prison without bail or the right to request legal protections, the Mexican daily La Jornada reported.
Canche’s case will be submitted this week to Mexico’s Executive Commission for Victim’s Care under the Istanbul Protocol, the international U.N. guidelines regarding the documentation of torture, to rule on whether the journalist was subjected cruel and inhumane treatment.
The U.N. called on Quintana Roo Governor Roberto Borge Angulo to apologize to Canche and pay him reparations.
Canche was released from prison on May 30, 2015 after Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission and the U.N. working group on arbitrary detentions both urged Quintana Roo authorities to stop all harassment and threats aimed at the journalist and let him go free, according to El Universal.
Mexico has the highest murder rate of journalists and media workers in Latin America and the Caribbean region.
One in every three murders of media and communication workers in Latin America happens in Mexico, making the country one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Canche has worked as an independent journalist for over two decades, focusing on communicating the demands on Mayan communities.
According to Mexico’s El Universal, Canche hopes his case can set a precedent so that other Mexican journalist and human rights defenders are not persecuted in the same way.
WE SUBSIDIZE OCCUPATION FORCE POLICING!
By Wendell Griffen | Justice Is A Verb! | December 31, 2015
Did you know that police tactics in the United States are being modeled after the tactics used by Israeli security operatives, the Israeli Defense Force, and Israeli police involved in the illegal occupation of Palestine and abuse of Palestinians? Consider the following information about the Israeli National Counter-Terrorism Seminar that one can find on the website of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
“Every year, American law enforcement executives travel to Israel with ADL to study first hand Israel’s tactics and strategies to combat terrorism. The National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS) is an intensive week long course led by senior commanders in the Israel National Police, experts from Israel’s intelligence and security services, and the Israel Defense Forces. More than 175 law enforcement executives have participated in 12 NCTS sessions since 2004, taking the lessons they learned in Israel back to the United States.”
Do you remember seeing tear gas deployed against peaceful protestors in Ferguson, Missouri one night shortly after Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, Jr.? Do you remember the way peaceful protestors with the Occupy movement were violently treated in several places around the United States? Do you remember how the killers of Michael Brown, Jr., Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Dillon Taylor, Monroe Isadore, Eugene Ellison, and countless other victims of police homicides were exonerated, and treated by some in the media as being protectors of society?
I twice saw Israeli Defense Force (IDF) units deploy tear gas against Palestinian youth during my recent visit to Israel and Palestine. I smelled the tear gas. I felt the eye and nasal discomfort. What were the Palestinian youth doing? They were congregating on streets in their own neighborhoods protesting Israeli occupation of Palestine, just as neighbors of Michael Brown, Jr. protested that he was shot and killed, and just as they were attacked by armored police units, snipers, and tear gas while in their own neighborhood.
I met and spoke with an IDF veteran and member of the Breaking the Silence veterans movement during my trip to Israel earlier this month. The man told our group how IDF units treat Palestinians as likely terrorists even when Palestinians are minding their own business and tending their own olive groves. IDF personnel who abuse or kill Palestinians are not punished; they are protected and held up as heroic figures.
Our group immediately recognized that poor and communities of color in the United States are treated by the police the way Palestinians are treated by Israeli police and security forces—as if we are an occupied people. And we recognized that police in the U.S. operate as if the laws that govern the use of force, including deadly force, for the rest of society do not apply to them. Police in the United States behave the way I saw IDF personnel behave toward Palestinians, like an occupation force.
Then I remembered a case from years ago, when I was a judge on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, involving a partially disabled black man who was attacked and beaten by police while standing outside the house of relatives waiting on a taxi in a neighborhood one prosecutor termed “a high crime area.” The attacked and beaten man was then charged with disorderly conduct and terroristic threatening because he cursed the police and accused them of harassment. The police were not punished for attacking and beating him.
Members of an occupation force are not punished for oppressing (and even killing) indigenous people and dissenters. Oppression tactics, use of excessive force, deploying tear gas against people who are merely expressing opposition to mistreatment, and condoning those and other abusive practices go hand-in-hand with occupation force government, otherwise known as tyranny or fascism.
Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Monroe Isadore, Dillon Taylor, Eugene Ellison, Sandra Bland, and numerous other victims killed by police or while in police custody were treated like suspected terrorists. Their killers did not behave like community police in a neighborhood. They behaved like members of an occupation force in militarily occupied territory.
We are sending law enforcement leaders from communities across the United States to learn occupation force tactics and strategies from security operatives affiliated with the illegal occupation of Palestine. U.S. tax dollars have financed and supplied the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine since 1967. U.S. tax dollars provide diplomatic cover for it in the United Nations. U.S. tax dollars are spent sending state and local law enforcement leaders to Israel where they learn to unjustly treat us like suspected terrorists, the same way Israeli security personnel are trained to unjustly treat Palestinian men, women, and youth.
We are subsidizing tyranny and fascism by Israel against Palestinians. We are sending U.S. state and local law enforcement leaders to Israel where they learn to use occupation force methods and tactics of tyranny and fascism against poor and communities of color in the United States.
Politely speaking, that is “messed up.”
©Wendell Griffen, 2015
Almost 1200 people, mostly minorities, killed by US cops in 2015
RT | January 2, 2016
US law enforcement officers killed up to 1,199 people last year, the majority of whom were ‘people of color’.
Black men between the ages of 15 and 34 were 15 percent of those killed by police in 2015.
Despite making up just 2 percent of the US population, that’s five times more than white men the same age, according to The Counted, a project launched in 2015 by journalists from the Guardian.
Its final tally of killings at the hands, weapons, or vehicles of US police officers last year was 1,134, while the open-source reporting project Killed by Police, which tracks “corporate media” reports of anyone killed by police, recorded 1,199 deaths.
The two figures vary because the projects use slightly different definitions of what constitutes a police killing.
Killed By Police was launched in 2013 and The Counted last year in response to the lack of comprehensive US government data on these type of fatalities, similar to the website Iraq Body Count.
The Counted’s database includes any deaths arising from direct encounters with police.
“Self-inflicted deaths” during police encounters, such as a person killed in a car crash while fleeing police during a car chase, and mass shootouts, in which police failed to identify who was killed by police and who was killed by civilians, are not counted by the Guardian project, but are included by Killed By Police.
Notable statistics:
- One in five killed were unarmed.
- At least six innocent bystanders were killed by officers during violent incidents.
- Fourteen percent of killings followed an attempted traffic or street stop.
- Seven percent after a non-violent crime.
- The youngest victim was autistic six-year-old Jeremy Mardis.
- The oldest victim was 87-year-old Louis Becker who died after his vehicle collided with a state trooper’s SUV in New York.
- One transgendered person, Mya Hall, was killed in 2015… by National Security Agency (NSA) police.
- Forty-three children under the age of 18 were killed by police.
- California had more police killings relative to the size of its population than anywhere else in the country.
- Rhode Island and Vermont were the only states where just one person was killed in 2015. Vermont’s killing happened the last week of the year when 56-year-old Kenneth Stephens was shot at 13 times after police say he pointed a rifle at them during a warranted search of his property.
- A total of 89 percent of deaths by police were caused by gunshot, 4 percent were taser-related, 4 percent died in custody following physical confrontations, and 3 percent were struck by police officers driving vehicles.
- Critically, The Counted found that only 255 of the killings, less than 25 percent, were considered “justified” by authorities.
Until now, no publicly-available data was gathered by the US government, but a new open-source system is being tested to track America’s growing “death by cop” epidemic.
Local police, medical, and investigative records will be used along with media reports. Previous government data relied solely on voluntary reporting by local law enforcement.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced the new government program in the wake of Ferguson protests and the US outcry over cop killings.
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USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
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