Reid told the police he had “two or three drinks” before slamming into a car that carried two small children last week. One is hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
— NYT: Top Stories
Tag: Police
Tens of thousands took to the streets to show support for the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. The police were out in force and reports of brutality flared.
— NYT: Top Stories
Omer Mas Capitolin poses in Paris, Tuesday Jan.26, 2021. In a first for France, six nongovernmental organizations launched a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the French government for alleged systemic discrimination by police officers carrying out identity checks. Omer Mas Capitolin, the head of Community House for Supportive Development, a grassroots NGO taking part in the legal action, called it a “mechanical reflex” for French police to stop non-whites, a practice he said is damaging to the person being checked and ultimately to relations between officers and the members of the public they are expected to protect. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
PARIS (AP) — In a first for France, six nongovernmental organizations launched a class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the French government for alleged systemic discrimination by police officers carrying out identity checks.
The organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, contend that French police use racial profiling in ID checks, targeting Black people and people of Arab descent.
They were serving Prime Minister Jean Castex and France’s interior and justice ministers with formal legal notice of demands for concrete steps and deep law enforcement reforms to ensure that racial profiling does not determine who gets stopped by police.
The organizations, which also include the Open Society Justice Initiative and three French grassroots groups, plan to spell out the legal initiative at a news conference in Paris.
The issue of racial profiling by French police has been debated for years, including but not only the practice of officers performing identity checks on young people who are often Black or of Arab descent and live in impoverished housing projects.
Serving notice is the obligatory first step in a two-stage lawsuit process. The law gives French authorities four months to talk with the NGOs about meeting their demands. If the parties behind the lawsuit are left unsatisfied after that time, the case will go to court, according to one of the lawyers, Slim Ben Achour.
It’s the first class-action discrimination lawsuit based on color or supposed ethnic origins in France. The NGO’s are employing a little-used 2016 French law that allows associations to take such a legal move.
“It’s revolutionary, because we’re going to speak for hundreds of thousands, even a million people.” Ben Achour told The Associated Press in a phone interview. The NGOs are pursuing the class action on behalf of racial minorities who are mostly second- or third-generation French citizens.
“The group is brown and Black,” Ben Achour said.
The four-month period for reaching a settlement could be prolonged if the talks are making progress, but if not, the NGOs will go to court, he said.
The abuse of identity checks has served for many in France as emblematic of broader alleged racism within police ranks, with critics claiming that misconduct has been left unchecked or whitewashed by authorities.
Video of a recent incident posted online drew a response from President Emmanuel Macron, who called racial profiling “unbearable.” Police representatives say officers themselves feel under attack when they show up in suburban housing projects. During a spate of confrontational incidents, officers became trapped and had fireworks and other objects thrown at them.
The NGOs are seeking reforms rather than monetary damages, especially changes in the law governing identity checks. The organizations argue the law is too broad and allows for no police accountability because the actions of officers involved cannot be traced, while the stopped individuals are left humiliated and sometimes angry.
Among other demands, the organizations want an end to the longstanding practice of gauging police performance by numbers of tickets issued or arrests made, arguing that the benchmarks can encourage baseless identity checks.
The lawsuit features some 50 witnesses, both police officers and people subjected to abusive checks, whose accounts are excerpted in the letters of notice. The NGO’s cite one unnamed person who spoke of undergoing multiple police checks every day for years.
A police officer posted in a tough Paris suburb who is not connected with the case told the AP that he is often subjected to ID checks when he is wearing civilian clothes.
“When I’m not in uniform, I’m a person of color,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous in keeping with police rules and due to the sensitive nature of the topic. Police need a legal basis for their actions, “but 80% of the time they do checks (based on) heads” — meaning how a person looks.
Omer Mas Capitolin, the head of Community House for Supportive Development, a grassroots NGO taking part in the legal action, called it a “mechanical reflex” for French police to stop non-whites, a practice he said is damaging to the person being checked and ultimately to relations between officers and the members of the public they are expected to protect.
“When you’re always checked, it lowers your self-esteem,” and you become a “second-class citizen,” Mas Capitolin said. The “victims are afraid to file complaints in this country even if they know what happened isn’t normal,” he said, because they fear fallout from neighborhood police.
He credited the case of George Floyd, the Black American whose died last year in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, with raising consciences and becoming a catalyst for change in France.
However, the NGOs make clear that they are not accusing individual police of being racist because “they act within a system that allowed these practices to spread and become installed,” the groups said in a joint document.
“It’s so much in the culture. They don’t ever think there’s a problem,” said Ben Achour, the lawyer.
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Follow all AP stories about racial profiling at https://apnews.com/Racialinjustice.
— Associated Press
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, called out the NBA as he read off the name of law enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty in 2020 on Wednesday.
— FOX News: Ryan Gaydos
— Photo by Michelle Dryden
TRENTON, N.J. – A few weeks after the arts festival shooting in Trenton, hundreds of residents continue to come out for events in the City, saying that they will not let that incident stop them from enjoying themselves.
The community has been enjoying similar outdoors and indoor events such as the weekly Levitt AMP Trenton Music Series every Thursday that began June 28 to Aug. 30 at 5 to 8 p.m. in Mill Hill Park.
This 2018 Levitt AMP concert series started a few days after the Arts Festival tragedy in Trenton. It was one of the first major events in the City that would attract a sizeable crowd following that problem.
Since then, “I think every concert we have had, a little more people came out,” said Tom Gilmore executive director of Trenton Downtown Association (TDA).
Gilmore explained that they have increased security measures at the concert events even last year — prior to the recent Arts Festival incident.
“We reviewed our security plan that we had for last year, and last year we even upped it because there were some situations where people where driving cars into public events,” he said.
Nevertheless, the recent tragic event at the Arts Festival also had an impact on security improvements at the music concerts, Gilmore said.
He said that the TDA deliberately makes sure the concerts are early evening events, so people can feel safe.
“I think everybody here feels relaxed,” said Sgt. B. Stokes. “The police presence definitely helps. That other event is not gonna stop the good things from happening in Trenton.”
Another resident said he was being brutally honest when he commented that he believes the Arts Festival issue was “staged.”
“I think it was done on purpose,” said Ron Horton. “There’s never been an issue. It’s a pleasant event. Why would something like that happen on that particular night, at that particular place? It makes no sense.”
However, Horton also said he feels safe at the Levitt AMP music concerts even after that tragedy.
Similarly, there is music, vendors, and art outdoors and inside at First Fridays block parties at Front and Warren streets, and attendees at these events have also been saying they do not want to live in fear.
“I don’t have fear of anything,” said Tim Johnson. “This is a much more mature crowd. I think people need to stop letting fear kinda parlay and take away from them enjoying themselves.”
Folks have been saying that it is important that we do not let the violence win, and that we should still come out to support positive events.
Jeffrey Augustin, who was vending at First Fridays, said business is good, and that “Trenton does not let anything stop us. We still keep on going.”
Among other outdoor events in Trenton this summer, is also Capital City Farmers Market during the days on Thursdays from 11a.m. to 2p.m. until October. This outdoor event also features live music from noon until 2p.m. through August.
A more than 30-hour Standoff in Trenton continues as police and special team surround the area of the house of a shooting suspect whom they attempted to serve a warrant yesterday when he opened fire killing an innocent bystander and wounding three police officers, authorities have reported.