Update: Since the publication of this article, Facebook removed and blocked Cell 411 from allowing users to post live video to their own walls; the company is now trying to find a work around the Facebook block and still allow users to present live video streams to Facebook friends.

Startup Cell 411 Inc. (getcell411.com) has created a mobile app that makes it virtually impossible for governments, police and criminals to erase video which could serve as evidence of a crime or abuse.  The app, called Cell 411, has been around for a number of months but the newly-released version has features that are unseen in any other mobile apps used by activists, aiming to fight censorship and also criminal activity.

One recent glaring example of police censoring and blocking an abuse victim from streaming live video of police violence is the recent police shooting and death of Korryn Gaines, which was visited by a SWAT team over an unpaid traffic fine. During the standoff, the police ordered that Facebook turn off Gaines’ Facebook and Instagram accounts in an effort to prevent her from streaming live video to her friends. The police shot and killed Gaines and shot her young child who was hospitalized. Without access to social media, the victim had no opportunity to record and stream what transpired in her apartment.

Cell 411 is an emergency management platform and mobile app, which allows users to alert trusted contacts in case of an emergency. Whether it is a medical emergency, a car break-down, police interaction or government abuse, the app can alert trusted contacts in real time with the type and exact location of the emergency, allowing users to avoid interaction with police if possible and only involve individuals they trust. The app has been gaining traction in crime-ridden countries like South Africa and has been used to build neighborhood watch groups and also activist groups throughout the world.

Furthermore, Cell 411 allows users to stream live video and audio to potentially thousands or tens of thousands of users allowing them to download the video streamed by a friend to a local device.  The video can be distributed to large numbers of users in real time, making it impossible to be completely erased from any servers.  To add to this impressive list of features, the latest release will allow users to stream live video to their own Facebook wall, their own YouTube Live channel, and the Cell 411 official TV channels on Facebook and YouTube.  These features increase the distribution footprint for video streams, making it even more difficult for evidence to be removed or erased. The video is also saved on the local device in case a forensic copy needs to be recovered at a later time.

“Shortly after the shooting of Philando Castile, police officers confiscated his fiancee’s smart phone and attempted to erase the footage by accessing her Facebook account and removing the Facebook Live video she recorded,” said Virgil Vaduva, founder of Cell 411, “not to mention the recent example of Korryn Gaines who had her Facebook and Instagram accounts suspended by police shortly before police shot and killed her and shot her five year old son,” said Vaduva.

“While it is illegal to do so, there have been numerous cases of both criminals and government employees attempting to destroy recorded video evidence from devices or social media accounts or prevent users from recording and streaming video of alleged abuse. Our platform allows users to create a wide and decentralized network for distribution of video in real time to a large number of trusted users, making it very difficult if not impossible to destroy,” said Vaduva.

The Cell 411 app allows users to stream video to connected Cell 411 users, save it to the local device if the user’s device lacks an Internet connection, stream it to Facebook, YouTube and other distribution platforms the users choose to engage. The video cannot be erased from the platform once it is streamed and it can be downloaded by any of the trusted contacts chosen by the user.

While Cell 411 has received wide criticism from law enforcement, with Police One claiming that it endangers the lives of police officers, the app has also become extremely popular throughout the world and has been selected by the Victoria & Albert Museum to be featured in the Future of Design Exhibit in London in 2017. The exhibit will feature objects, ideas and designs which are likely to influence the future of mankind in a positive way.

The company denies that the app is aimed solely to law enforcement and points out how it is being widely used by neighborhood watch groups and families to keep each other safe in emergencies.

“We are simply building a platform to make the world a little bit better and safer, and encourage users to interact with each other on a voluntary basis. Good ideas don’t require force in order to be adopted, and users are voluntarily choosing our app because they want a non-violent way to solve conflict and keep each other safe,” said Vaduva.

The company has ambitious plans for growth and is planning to build a world-wide drone fleet and adding features to allow users to dispatch monitoring drones to locations where violence is likely to take place or medical response is necessary.

Users can download Cell 411 from http://getcell411.com

Vigilant Solutions, one of the country’s largest brokers of vehicle surveillance technology, is offering a hell of a deal to law enforcement agencies in Texas: a whole suite of automated license plate reader (ALPR) equipment and access to the company’s massive databases and analytical tools—and it won’t cost the agency a dime.

Even though the technology is marketed as budget neutral, that doesn’t mean no one has to pay. Instead, Texas police fund it by gouging people who have outstanding court fines and handing Vigilant all of the data they gather on drivers for nearly unlimited commercial use.

ALPR refers to high-speed camera networks that capture license plate images, convert the plate numbers into machine-readable text, geotag and time-stamp the information, and store it all in database systems. EFF has long been concerned with this technology, because ALPRs typically capture sensitive location information on all drivers—not just criminal suspects—and, in aggregate, the information can reveal personal information, such as where you go to church, what doctors you visit, and where you sleep at night.

Vigilant is leveraging H.B. 121, a new Texas law passed in 2015 that allows officers to install credit and debit card readers in their patrol vehicles to take payment on the spot for unpaid court fines, also known as capias warrants. When the law passed, Texas legislators argued that not only would it help local government with their budgets, it would also benefit the public and police. As the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Allen Fletcher, wrote in his official statement of intent:

[T]he option of making such a payment at the time of arrest could avoid contributing to already crowded jails, save time for arresting officers, and relieve minor offenders suddenly informed of an uncollected payment when pulled over for a routine moving violation from the burden of dealing with an impounded vehicle and the potential inconvenience of finding someone to supervise a child because of an unexpected arrest.

The bill was supported by criminal justice reform groups such as the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, but it also raised concerns by respected criminal justice blogger Scott Henson ofGrits For Breakfast, who theorized that the law, combined with ALPR technology, could allow police officers to “cherry pick drivers with outstanding warrants instead of looking for current, real-time traffic violations.”

He further asked:

Are there enough departments deploying license plate readers to cause concern? Will they use them in such a fashion? How will anyone know? Is it possible to monitor—or better, measure—any shift in on-the-ground police priorities resulting from the new economic incentives created by the bill?

As it turns out, contracts between between Vigilant and Guadalupe County and the City of Kylein Texas reveal that Henson was right to worry.

The “warrant redemption” program works like this. The agency is given no-cost license plate readers as well as free access to LEARN-NVLS, the ALPR data system Vigilant says contains more than 2.8-billion plate scans and is growing by more than 70-million scans a month. This also includes a wide variety of analytical and predictive software tools. Also, the agency is merely licensing the technology; Vigilant can take it back at any time.

The government agency in turn gives Vigilant access to information about all its outstanding court fees, which the company then turns into a hot list to feed into the free ALPR systems. As police cars patrol the city, they ping on license plates associated with the fees. The officer then pulls the driver over and offers them a devil’s bargain: get arrested, or pay the original fine with an extra 25% processing fee tacked on, all of which goes to Vigilant.1 In other words, the driver is paying Vigilant to provide the local police with the technology used to identify and then detain the driver. If the ALPR pings on a parked car, the officer can get out and leave a note to visit Vigilant’s payment website.

But Vigilant isn’t just compensated with motorists’ cash. The law enforcement agencies are also using the privacy of everyday drivers as currency.

From Vigilant Solutions contract with City of Kyle

Buried in the fine print of the contract with Vigilant is a clause that says the company also get to keep a copy of all the license-plate data collected by the agency, even after the contract ends. According the company’s usage and privacy policy, Vigilant “retains LPR data as long as it has commercial value.” Vigilant can sell or license that information to other law enforcement bodies and potentially to private companies such as insurance firms and repossession agencies.

In early December 2015, Vigilant issued a press release bragging that Guadalupe County had used the systems to collect on more than 4,500 warrants between April and December 2015. In January 2016, the City of Kyle signed an identical deal with Vigilant. Soon after, Guadalupe County upgraded the contract to allow Vigilant to dispatch its own contractors to collect on capias warrants.

Update: Buzzfeed has published an in-depth report on how police in Port Arthur, Texas also use Vigilant Solutions ALPR technology to collect fines. 

Alarmingly, in December, Vigilant also quietly issued an apology on its website for a major error:

During the second week of December, as part of its Warrant Redemption Program, Vigilant Solutions sent several warrant notices – on behalf of our law enforcement partners – in error to citizens across the state of Texas. A technical error caused us to send warrant notices to the wrong recipients.

These types of mistakes are not acceptable and we deeply apologize to those who received the warrant correspondence in error and to our law enforcement customers.

Vigilant is right: this is not acceptable. Yet, the company has not disclosed the extent of the error, how many people were affected, how much money was collected that shouldn’t have been, and what it’s doing to inform and make it up to the people affected. Instead, the company simply stated that it had “conducted a thorough review of the incident and have implemented several internal policies.”

We’re unlikely to get answers from the government agencies who signed these contracts. To access Vigilant’s powerful online data systems, agencies agree not to disparage the company or even to talk to the press without the company’s permission:

From Vigilant Solutions LEARN-NVLS User Agreement

You shall not create, publish, distribute, or permit any written, electronically transmitted or other form of publicity material that makes reference to the LEARN LPR Database Server or this Agreement without first submitting the material to Vigilant and receiving written consent from Vigilant thereto…

You agree not to use proprietary materials or information in any manner that is disparaging. This prohibition is specifically intended to preclude you from cooperating or otherwise agreeing to allow photographs or screenshots to be taken by any member of the media without the express consent of LEARN-NVLS. You also agree not to voluntarily provide ANY information, including interviews, related to LEARN products or its services to any member of the media without the express written consent of LEARN-NVLS.

You might very well ask at this point about the legality of this scheme. Vigilant anticipated that and provided the City of Kyle with a slide titled “Can I Really Do This?” which cited a law that they believe allows for the 25% surcharge.

The law states that a county or municipality “may only charge a fee for the access or service if the fee is designed to recover the costs directly and reasonably incurred in providing the access or service.”

We believe that a 25% fee is not reasonable and doesn’t recover just the direct costs, since the fee is actually paying for the whole ALPR system, including surveillance capabilities unrelated to warrant redemption, such as access to the giant LEARN-NVLS database and software suite.

Beyond that, the system raises a whole host of problems:

• It turns police into debt collectors, who have to keep swiping credit cards to keep the free equipment.
• It turns police into data miners, who use the privacy of local drivers as currency.
• It not-so-subtly shifts police priorities from responding to calls and traffic violations to responding to a computer’s instructions.
• Policy makers and the public are unable to effectively evaluate the technology since the contract prohibits police from speaking honestly and openly about the program.
• The model relies on debt: there’s no incentive for criminal justice leaders to work with the community to reduce the number of capias warrants, since that could result in losing the equipment.
• People who have committed no crimes whatsoever have their driving patterns uploaded into a private system and no opportunity to control or watchdog how that data is disseminated.

There was a time where companies like Vigilant marketed ALPR technology as a way to save kidnapped children, recover stolen cars, and catch violent criminals. But as we’ve long warned, ALPRs in fact are being deployed for far more questionable practices.

The Texas public should be outraged at the terrible deals their representatives are signing with this particular surveillance contractor, and the legislature should reexamine the unintended consequences of the law they passed last year.

• 1.The contracts are inconsistent on how this fee breaks down. For example, the City of Kyle contract lists 5% of “credit card processing,” 5% for “credit card handling,” and 15% for a “vendor transaction fee.”

Published by https://www.eff.org/

“Black people have been killed by the police at a tragically disproportionate rate, beyond the bounds of anything that would justify it.”

That sounds like a quote from a contemporary Black Lives Matter activist. But those words were written back in 1974 by American criminologist Paul Takagi. Takagi, an expert in police use of force and community policing, proposed an idea that still seems radical more than 40 years later. “Perhaps,” he said, “the only immediate solution at this time is to disarm the police.”

There’s a broad consensus in the US today that local police forces need to be demilitarized. In the summer of 2014, the country watched as citizens protesting the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, were confronted by local law enforcement SWAT teams bearing body armor, military grade rifles, and armored vehicles. The spectacle helped prompt president Barack Obama’s administration torestrict transfers of military weaponry to local police departments.

Ending police access to armored vehicles is one thing. Taking guns out of the hands of the police is another issue altogether. In fact, Obama’s restrictions on military equipment aside, most of the official responses to police brutality and violence today have involved providing police with new kinds of equipment, from Tasers to body cameras. The conversation always seems to be about how to give police more gear, not less.

An uphill battle

The idea of taking guns away from police is likely to receive a highly skeptical response, even from people concerned about the problem of excessive force. In a nation with so many millions of guns on it streets—both legally and illegally–asking police officers to give up their own weapons presents a logistical and practical quandary.

“There is simply too much violence being committed by criminals with firearms to even consider an unarmed police force in the United States,” Louis Hayes, a working police officer who also trains fellow officers as part of the Chicago-based Virtus Group, tells Quartz. “I doubt there is a community, a city, a local government, or a police union in the entire nation that would seriously consider disarming its protectors.”

Yet there is some evidence that disarming the police might be less dangerous that it sounds. According to statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of the 27 law enforcement officers murdered in 2013 in the line of duty, only 6 were able to fire their weapons at assailants. Another two were killed after their firearms were stolen and used against them. (Note: several dozen other officers diedwhile on duty during this time, the majority from car accidents.) In many cases, it seems arming officers isn’t a black and white issue of officer safety. Especially since the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report reportsthat 461 people were shot and killed by police in 2013.

International precedents

Then there is the global precedent. Other nations have had success in disarming police. In England and Wales, where officers generally do not carry firearms, police didn’t kill anyone between March 2012 and March 2014. In comparison, New York City police shot and killed 16 people in 2012 alone. It’s worth noting that London armed more police officers in the aftermath of November’s Paris attacks—but 92% of the city’s 31,000 officers still won’t carry guns. The goal, according to a statement by police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, is to “make sure that our firearms response continues to come from a group of highly specialist and highly skilled officers.”

The UK has much tighter gun control laws than the US, which means that police in the US are more likely to confront situations involving citizens bearing firearms. But Iceland is a different matter. According toGunPolicy.org, an international database hosted by the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, an estimated one-third of Iceland residents own guns, making the country 15th worldwide in gun ownership per capita. Nonetheless, police in Iceland routinely patrol unarmed. There is only one recorded incident of a suspect shot and killed by police in the country’s entire history.

“This practice is rooted in the belief that arming the police with guns engenders more gun violence than it prevents,” Oddson says. “Currently, police officers are only armed with extendable batons and pepper spray on their person [. . .] Arming police officers with guns runs the risk of striking fear in the hearts of the public and undermining the great public support the Icelandic police has enjoyed thus far.” Oddson noted that public trust in police is about 80% in polls, although it did drop slightly recently following news that some police departments had secretly acquired firearms from Norway. (The guns have since been returned.)

According to Oddson, police in Iceland operate “by consent, rather than through the explicit threat or use of force. The effectiveness of any police force to protect and serve the public depends to a great extent on having the consent of the people. And having police officers that are not armed with guns helps remove barriers between the police and the public and builds trust on both sides.” Given the low rates of gun crime and violent crime in Iceland, and virtually nonexistent police shootings, Oddson concludes, “the practice of not arming police officers with guns in Iceland has worked remarkably well.”

Respecting the officer, not the holster

Of course, Iceland is a small, homogeneous country that’s very different from the US. But its success in reducing violence through disarmament still seems worth considering. Gregory Smithsimon, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, argued in a recent article at metro politicsthat arming police tends to feed violent interactions in marginalized communities. “Police demand respect, civilians resent disrespect, and interactions become confrontations that escalate into mistreatment, abuse, and violence,” Smithsimon writes. Pointing to the example of St. Louis police officer Darren Wilson, Smithsimon notes that the addition of weaponry can accelerate confrontation. “Wilson could have continued on his way,” he says. “But the gun on his hip gave him the possibility to escalate with Michael Brown.”

Guns enable a policing philosophy built on violence and forced compliance. Guns aren’t just a danger in and of themselves. They enable a policing philosophy built on violence and forced compliance, rather than one founded on respect, trust and consent. That philosophy affects every police interaction, even those that don’t involve actual shooting.

“Even if disarming the police only reduced police shootings and not other police homicides, it would be a historic improvement,” Smithsimon tells Quartz. “But I suspect that taking guns out of the equation in police officers’ everyday interactions would improve police-civilian relations, like the kind that Eric Garner experienced repeatedly.” Garner sold loose cigarettes on the street in New York and was frequently hassled by police. In July 2014, he was killed when officers put him in a choke hold.

Mutual de-escalation

Policing in the US needs to change. But even if mass disarmament is a political and legal impossibility right now, there are other options. As a first step toward changing law enforcement philosophy, Smithsimon that suggests police departments consider disarming officers when they are not working. Studies have shown that much police misconduct occurs while police are off duty. There are plenty of incidents in which off-duty police recklessly fire weapons, sometimes with deadly consequences.

“US police wearing their gun all the time has an important ideological effect,” Smithsimon tells Quartz. “It makes police feel like they are never civilians, never normal people, that they’re always cops, and that they’re never safe without a gun. I don’t think that’s the most productive frame of mind for civilians who are charged with keeping our cities safe and calm.”

Hayes, the police officer from Chicago, suggests that another possible step could be for some jurisdictions to introduce “unarmed non-sworn positions, commonly called Community Service Officers.” Hayes tells Quartz that these types of officers could handle “many of the lower risk, non-emergent calls that burden so many police force.” Such a solution would require substantial changes in staffing and training—but with such a radically broken system, radical solutions may be necessary to reduce the risk of unnecessary police shootings.

“America is moving more and more rapidly toward a garrison state, and soon we will not find solace by repeating to ourselves: ‘Ours is a democratic society,’” Paul Tagaki wrote in 1974. These words have proved prophetic: In many respects, the US has transformed itself into a garrison state. Undoing that transformation will be difficult. But we can start by taking steps to re-train, and in some cases even disarm, our vast police force.

You can follow Noah on Twitter at @hoodedu. We welcome your comments at [email protected].

Protesters demand police accountability during a march on Chicago Police headquarters on Sept. 16, 1999.

(In March 1999, The Chicago Reporter published a story about the record-number of police shootings of civilians in 1998. Chicago Police officers shot 71 people that year; 15 died.  In comparison, police shot 50 people in 2014; 18 died, according to the Independent Police Review Authority. We are republishing this story because the number of officer-involved shootings in 1998 and the Chicago Police Department’s response resonate today in the wake of new concerns about police violence against civilians. — Susan Smith Richardson, editor and publisher)

Chicago police officers shot 71 people in 1998, the highest annual total in the decade, according to data from the Office of Professional Standards, the civilian arm of the Chicago Police Department that investigates police misconduct allegations. Fifteen of those people died from their wounds.

Between 1990 and 1998, police recorded 505 shootings, including 139 deaths, OPS records show. The largest number of fatalities — 21 — occurred in 1994.

Of the 139 fatalities, 115 occurred when police shot other people, including 82 black victims, 16 Latinos, 12 whites and two Asians. Police died from self-inflicted wounds in 24 cases — 16 involving suicide by white male officers.

“The greatest majority of shootings occur when an officer is put in a defensive position, defending himself or another individual,” said Patrick Camden, deputy director of news affairs for the police department. “The question should be, ‘Why has the number of citizens who decide to pull guns gone up?’”

But some shootings raise doubts, particularly about relations between blacks and police. The Feb. 4 shooting of 22-year-old Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant, received national attention. New York City police shot at the man 41 times; no weapon was found at the scene.

“Police are out of control in the African- American communities,” said Standish E. Willis, a Chicago civil rights lawyer who represents four families involved in fatal police shootings. He recommends that an independent, community-based board review police misconduct, discipline officers and make recommendations.

“The community is inflamed by this issue,” said Nehemiah Russell, an activist against police brutality and principal of Cabrini-Green Middle College, a Near North Side alternative school at 880 N. Hudson Ave. “If these matters are not addressed in our communities, it could lead to a race riot.”

Last month, U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Chicago) asked President Bill Clinton to appoint a federal task force to investigate incidents of police brutality and misconduct. “Progress has come like an old man’s teeth — few and far between,” Davis said.

In April alone, six Chicagoans were killed by police, including four blacks in one week, according to reporters from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office:

• April 1: Gregory Beck, 17, was shot in the 5100 block of North Long Street after an officer said he fired at him.
• April 2: Ernest Hopkins, 27, was shot during a failed drugs-for-weapons police sting operation in a McDonald’s parking lot 1t 7832 S. Western Ave.
• April 3: Tyrus Ellis, 33, died after being shot by police during a car chase in which he allegedly tried to run over an officers.
• April 5: Michael Russell Hamilton, 21, was killed by police at 500 W. Oak St. Police said he refused to lay down his weapon.

Police could not provide information on the status of OPS investigations into these cases.

Illinois law permits officers to use deadly force in self-defense or to protect lives. In 1996, 15 of the 17 shooting deaths were ruled justifiable, according to the most recent data available from the FBI, which tracks crime nationwide. Ten of the 15 involved black victims, and 13 involved white police officers.

The circumstances surrounding some shootings, however, remain contentious — and fraught with political overtones. Police say 18-year-old Chad Edwards was shot by Officer Raymond Wilkes on Feb. 17, 1998, and died Feb. 21. Police say they were responding to a call of a possible burglary when Edwards, an African- American living at 6110 S. Washtenaw Ave., burst out of a closet in a neighbor’s home holding a pair of pliers. He was shot in the head.

While he was hospitalized in critical condition, police charged him with criminal trespassing and aggravated assault, court records show. OPS ruled the shooting justifiable.

But according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by his mother, Tanya Edwards, her son and his girlfriend were visiting the neighbor’s house with permission when police entered unannounced. Edwards was shot when he went to the doorway to investigate the noise — unarmed and wearing no pants.

Last month, the family of Brennan King, a 21-year-old father of three who was shot by police on Nov. 27, filed a $5 million civil rights lawsuit against the city. King, a Cabrini-Green resident, had a record including aggravated assault against a police officer, mob action and drug possession, court records show.

Officer Peter Kelly shot King after chasing him into a stairwell of a Cabrini high-rise at 660 W. Division St. King “turned around with a box cutter and cut Officer Kelly multiple times,” according to the police account provided to the medical examiner.

Investigators found six used shell cartridges from Kelly’s gun near the stairwell. Willis, representing King’s family, said the box cutter explanation was fabricated and that a witness heard King begging for his life.

OPS is still investigating the case; Kelly remains on duty, Camden said.

“Brennan is really missed. He was my namesake,” said his aunt, Brenda King. “He was changing a lot. He had lost his mother, brother and was taking care of two cousins.”

By Danielle Gordon for The Chicago Reporter

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, known for keeping vise-like control over Chicago and his own political image, finds himself in the weakest position of his long public career as he struggles to respond to a police scandal, claims of cover-ups at City Hall and calls for his resignation.

But the former White House chief of staff has said repeatedly that he will not step down. The nation’s third-largest city has no process for a mayor to be recalled. And most of the cries for Emanuel to resign have come from grassroots activists and residents, not from the city’s political powerbrokers. The next election — should he seek another term — isn’t until 2019.

On Wednesday, the mayor used a special meeting of the Chicago City Council to try to calm the firestorm, apologizing for the fatal shooting of a black teen by a white officer and promising “complete and total” reform.

“I take responsibility for what happened because it happened on my watch. And if we’re going to fix it, I want you to understand it’s my responsibility with you,” Emanuel said during a sometimes-emotional speech that lasted nearly 45 minutes. “But if we’re also going to begin the healing process, the first step in that journey is my step.

“And I’m sorry.”

The remarks were Emanuel’s lengthiest and seemingly most heartfelt since the public got its first look last month at the squad car video that showed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald veering away from officer Jason Van Dyke before he began shooting, hitting McDonald 16 times. Van Dyke is charged with first-degree murder.

Critics have repeatedly accused him of keeping the footage under wraps until after he won a tougher-than-expected spring election for a second term. The mayor has denied the claim and acknowledged Wednesday that he should have pressed for prosecutors to wrap up their investigation sooner so the video could be made public.

But his contrition did little to ease the anger in the streets. Hours after the speech, protesters overflowed an intersection in front of City Hall, then marched through the financial district and blocked a major intersection for a short time as police directed traffic around them. Officers guarded the doors to the Chicago Board of Trade as demonstrators approached.

Outside City Hall, retired schoolteacher Audrey Davis carried a sign reading, “Mayor Emanuel is morally corrupt!”

Calling the speech “politically expedient,” Davis said, “I don’t want to hear anything from him except, ‘I tender my resignation.'”

Davis, who is black, said she fears for her 25-year-old grandson when he comes home from college.

“Each time he comes home, my heart is in my throat in case he meets up with a racist cop,” Davis said. “We shouldn’t have to live like this.”

Since the video emerged, Emanuel has scrambled to contain the crisis. He fired his police superintendent after days of insisting the chief had his support. He also reversed course on whether the Justice Department should launch a civil-rights investigation, saying he would welcome it only after presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats endorsed the idea.

In news conferences, he has appeared worn down, fumbling answers to reporters’ questions or avoiding them entirely by walking away, with cameras rolling.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him grapple with anything quite like this,” said longtime ally and adviser David Axelrod, who also served with Emanuel in the Obama White House.

Axelrod said Emanuel worked on the speech all weekend, with input from him and others. But he said the speech alone isn’t what matters.

“You don’t earn trust back with one speech,” Axelrod said. “You earn trust back with actions.”

The most likely effect of the crisis will come in the form of pushback from aldermen, who have long been considered a rubber stamp for the mayor’s initiatives, said political consultant Delmarie Cobb. She said the black community “has been awakened,” and Emanuel can expect a tougher re-election if he tries again.

“He definitely won’t run unopposed, and it will be a viable candidate,” said Cobb, who is black.

The mayor won re-election in April by a healthy margin, but only after suffering the embarrassment of not getting a majority in a five-candidate February election, forcing the first mayoral runoff in decades.

At the time, he pledged to listen more and to “bridge the gaps between the things that divide us.”

In the months that followed, his public schools CEO, who oversaw closings of about 50 schools that angered many residents, was indicted on corruption charges. Emanuel also pushed through the largest tax increase in city history to deal with a budget crisis.

His administration has warned of massive mid-year layoffs in the public schools and is in the midst of rocky contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. This week, union members are voting on whether to authorize a strike. They could hit the picket lines as early as March.

After the video was made public, other flashpoints kept coming. Footage was released of another police shooting — this one deemed justified by prosecutors — and of another man who died in police custody. A review by the city’s quasi-independent police watchdog agency showed that of 409 shootings involving police since 2007, the agency found only two with credible allegations against an officer.

Police reports from the McDonald shooting included officer accounts that differed dramatically from the video.

In his speech, Emanuel noted the problems are ones that have plagued Chicago for decades, and that there are no simple solutions.

“We have to be honest with ourselves about this issue. Each time when we confronted it in the past, Chicago only went far enough to clear our consciences so we could move on,” he said. “This time will and must be different.”

South Park is continuing to up the ante on their take of PC culture this season, for their upcoming episode will imagine what things could be like when the cartoon town decides it doesn’t need a police force anymore.

Comedy Central released a clip and first details of Wednesday’s episode, saying that Officer Barbradywould be the next casualty of the town’s move to become a wonderland of political correctness. From the details of their press statement, it appears it will be a nod to the various stories from recent monthswhere cops have been accused of discriminatory practices and being quick to resort to force:

The ever more PC citizens of South Park decide that they no longer need a police force. As the first American town to get rid of their cops, they plan to celebrate their advanced sensibilities with a PC Carnival.

In a separate story line, Kenny will be living up to the episode’s name Naughty Ninjas, when his game of “Ninja Warriors” attracts the interest of a foreign terrorist group.

You can watch the clip in the video above, via Comedy Central.

You may not know it, but your odds of getting in trouble skyrocket in Tampa.

No valid license? You’re twice as likely to get a ticket than in the rest of Florida.

No proof of insurance? Also double the chance.

Tampa police wrote more tickets last year than sheriff’s offices in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties combined; more per capita than cops in Jacksonville, Miami, St. Petersburg and Orlando, the state’s four other largest cities.

And no other law enforcement agency in the state arrests more people than the Tampa Police Department.

Once you understand how the department measures officer productivity, it’s easy to see why.

Each arrest, each ticket, feeds into a formula that calculates an officer’s “productivity ratio” — number of hours worked divided by the number of tickets and arrests.

The more officers do, the better they score.

But the formula doesn’t discriminate between a murder arrest and a jaywalking ticket; they carry the same weight.

For years, the policy has put pressure on officers to crank out arrests and tickets, leading to allegations of harassment, racial profiling and over-policing.

Case in point: this year’s Tampa Bay Times investigation revealing how Tampa police wrote more tickets for bicycle offenses than any other law enforcement agency in the state, and that eight out of 10 of the cyclists were black.

In a series of community forums and public hearings that followed, complaints circled back to the idea that residents of high-crime neighborhoods — where the department allocates more officers — felt like the aggressive policing was something happening to them, not for them .

Jon Dengler, a white 35-year-old who runs a ministry to feed the poor, lives in Ybor Heights. In the past six years, he has gotten nine traffic tickets in Tampa, but not a single one for bad driving. In 2013, he got three from the same officer, adding up to $345, because his registration had expired and he didn’t have his insurance card or license handy. Two of those tickets were dismissed.

“I love our neighborhood and I don’t feel anxious or afraid,” he told City Council earlier this year. “But when I see TPD on the street, I do get nervous. I don’t get nervous because I’m up to no good, but because of who they are and represent in our community.”

A shift is now underway at the department, one that could change the way officers do their jobs.

It involves the new chief, a new formula and a new definition for what it means to be “productive.”

Though the Tampa Police Department produces detailed statistics to make sure officers are doing their jobs — counting every report they write, tabulating every stolen penny they recover — the ratio has proven to be a powerful little number.

A good one glows on an evaluation. A bad one can stand in the way of a promotion, or even lead to a suspension.

“It was a good program set up to get rid of the guys who weren’t producing, sitting under a tree all night,” said Brian Reschke, a patrol officer who retired in 2011. “It just got carried away.”

To understand how the department got to this point, you need to go back to 2001, when then-Police Chief Bennie Holder sought to come up with an answer to this question:

“You’ve got officers out there working for 40 hours,” he told the Times. “How do you know you’re getting 40 hours of work out of them?”

His administration implemented a series of measures modeled after tools used to evaluate production in corporate America. There was one that calculated time spent on public aid and one that showed how often an officer found a case instead of waiting for a call to come in.

All of those metrics are still in place today, but the one officers now refer to simply as the productivity ratio calculates how long it takes for an officer to either arrest or ticket someone.

It wasn’t supposed to be like a quota.

“This wasn’t made to say you have to give X number of tickets, make X numbers of arrests,” Holder told the Times. “You can be productive without writing 100 tickets or putting 100 people in jail.”

A lot of things happened after Chief Holder retired in 2003.

Chief Stephen Hogue, and later Chief Jane Castor, embraced a proactive policing model tasking officers with finding crime instead of waiting for calls. Technology and statistics became increasingly important, with analysts studying crime patterns and districts deploying resources to hot spots.

Crime dropped.

It’s dropped steadily across the nation, in part because of this kind of modern policing and in part because of societal factors outside of any one department’s control.

But by 2005, the department’s annual report attributed the lowest crime rate in 28 years to “productivity,” including a 14 percent increase in citations and a 15 percent increase in arrests.

The department arrested 10,859 more people that year — enough to fill half the city’s hockey arena — with growth mostly in the lowest category of offense, “miscellaneous” charges like driving with a suspended license.

“The assumption was, well if you go out and make more arrests and you write more tickets, crime is going to drop more,” said Vincent Gericitano, president of the Tampa Police Benevolent Association.

By 2007, Tampa led the state in arrests; almost half the crimes were “miscellaneous.”

“Some supervisors looked at the productivity ratio as the only critique or metric on judging an officer’s productivity,” Gericitano said.

Officers who didn’t write many tickets were put on notice.

There was the officer “recognized by many children in the Belmont Heights area as a positive role model,” according to his evaluation.

Issue more traffic citations, his evaluation said.

There was one district’s “Officer of the Month,” also recognized for “catch of the month” twice in a year.

Improve traffic law enforcement … by 30 percent, he was told.

Then there was the officer whose supervisor noted, “He knows the area he patrols, but more importantly, he knows the people and the people know him… He does not talk at them or down to them … He is objective and leaves people feeling he was interested in serving them.”

Year after year, he was evaluated “below expectations” because of his poor productivity ratio.

He wrote letters to the administration calling the ratio “damaging… to the men and women who abandon their ideals to comply with it.”

If I could only change the way I treat people out here — see them less through the lens of sacred trust they place in us and more as stats to be harvested by us, resolution would be easy.

I could merely “play the game,” see what we do not as putting on a uniform but instead as wearing a costume, then achieve the magic number sought by my supervisors that could be — as one of my old captains said — “easily achieved within the first 10 minutes of each shift.”

The officer was ultimately cited with insubordination and violations of standards of conduct for refusing to increase traffic stops and failing to improve his productivity ratio.

He was suspended for three days.

Eric Ward became chief of police at a critical time this past May, as his department grappled with a spate of inner-city shootings, lack of witness cooperation and calls for a civil rights investigation of the racial disparity the Times found in bicycle tickets.

The department’s relationship with Tampa’s black community was under a microscope, and here came a man who knew both sides of that experience.

He remembers how angry he felt as a kid after an officer questioned him in a convenience store as he tried to buy a jug of milk.

But he also remembers playing in the Police Athletic League.

As a first order of business, Ward told officers to stop worrying so much about their statistics and focus on getting to know the people they police.

He told supervisors to look at the many activities the department already tracks for each officer instead of just the ratio.

“That old fashioned ‘arrest, arrest, arrest, citation, citation, citation’ is not the key. It’s not going to solve our problem with the crime,” Ward told the Times. “Getting back in to the community, walking around, talking to people. That alone will reduce crime.”

He talks of “quality over quantity,” of arresting “the right people,” of “discretion.”

He recalls telling an officer patrolling a park that if he saw kids throwing a ball around, he should join the game. “If you worry about your uniform getting dirty,” the chief said, “I’ll buy you a new uniform.”

The current formula considers tag football a waste of time.

Ward is hoping to change the math with the help of Sgt. Felicia Pecora, who says she has been trying to come up with a better way to measure productivity for years.

She downplayed the ratio’s influence on today’s department, saying supervisors take a more nuanced view than they did when it was first implemented. Nonetheless, she likened the ratio to “when Ford put out the Pinto.”

“It’s a beta version” she said. “Everybody’s got to start somewhere.”

In February, the department made a significant change to the ratio, giving officers credit for written warnings instead of just citations.

It shows in the data. Unless something drastic happens, Tampa is on track to have its lowest ticketing year in at least a decade.

Pecora’s rough draft of a new series of formulas doesn’t count tickets at all.

Among actions counted: traffic stops, street checks, guns seized, stolen cars recovered, reports written and arrests made from reports.

Instead of measuring how long it takes to accomplish these actions, it calculates the percentage of each of those things an officer contributes to a squad. It would still allow supervisors to spot those who aren’t pulling their weight, but would reward the investigative types along with the enforcers.

She calls it a “contribution ratio” and is running versions of it by the chief and her colleagues.

Pecora told of an incident earlier this month in which she and one of her officers tried to track down the owner of an abandoned, broken-down car. Their search led to a home in Belmont Heights and a frail, elderly woman who answered the door.

She said the car belonged to her son, and that he hadn’t been home since the previous night. They asked if she had eaten since then, and she said she was hungry. Pecora heated up some rice and beans and bought groceries to stock the woman’s pantry. By the time the sergeant returned, the son had arrived.

The officers lectured him about keeping his mother fed, closed out the car case and referred the family for elderly services.

None of it counted toward the productivity ratio.

From Tampabay.com by Alexandra Zayas

AUSTIN — A case of jaywalking turns nasty as Austin PD tackles a San Antonio man, punching and kicking him to the ground.

Cameras roll as he and his friends yell for officers to let up.

The video, which was posted to Facebook and YouTube, shows seven bicycle police officers arresting three people on the sidewalk along 6th street in Austin.

One of those arrested, 22-year-old Jeremy King, had come up from San Antonio to enjoy a music festival.

His mother, Nevetta King, says she learned of the incident shortly after it happened, around 3:00am. She says when she saw the video, her heart dropped.

“One of the most difficult things I’ve had to watch,” said King. “I kept watching trying to look for fault on his part, I didn’t see any.”

The video doesn’t show what happened before the officers began apprehending Jeremy and his friends.

Jeremy says they had crossed the street before being given a walk signal. When the cops approached, he says he and his friends made the mistake of uttering something rude under their breath.

Video shows cops punching accused jaywalkers

Austin police declined to discuss the details of the arrest, but released a statement saying they are currently investigating.

“As is standard protocol, the Chain of Command will review the Response to Resistance and the incident to determine what led up to the events captured in the video and whether the officer’s actions were in compliance with APD policy.”

Nevetta says wants to see what happens with the investigation, but at this point can’t see any justification for the manner of the arrest.

She says she’s proud of Jeremy for containing his temper during the scuffle, and hopes the video raises awareness as accusations of police brutality ring out around the country.

“Just comply, quickly, so you do not become a statistic,” said King.

More than anything, though, she says she just wants to be there for her son.

“I want to hug my son and support him through this,” said King.

Denver’s largest police union is filing a lawsuit against the city for its new body camera policy, saying that it was implemented without input from members of the force. The Denver Police Protective Association also said they support the program, but just didn’t like the process that led to its implementation.

The announcement came on Nov. 4, with the union filing the suit against the City of Denver on behalf of its roughly 1,300 members. They are seeking to stop the implementation of the full program, scheduled to begin after the beginning of the year, or at least fix what they deem as its flaws. There is a pilot program currently underway, but the department is saying they will continue as planned unless the courts tell them otherwise.

“There’s lawsuits all the time,” said Deputy Chief Matt Murray. “The courts have their job, and we will respect that process. And we also have things we have to do, and certainly we will react appropriately if the courts tell us to stop.”

The camera program comes in the wake of several high profile police abuse cases around the nation and the need to observe incidents, both for the protection of citizens and police. After all, if there is video evidence, the truth is much easier to obtain. However, video evidence is not a silver bullet by any stretch, as several recent cases have shown, because people will still have different interpretations of the events in question. Additionally, some civil rights advocates fear unintended consequences, such as the possibility ofillegally obtaining evidence.

The union alluded to the latter in their statement, citing broader privacy concerns for citizens in their filing. They also expressed concerns about officer safety and security, as well as possible mistrust among officers thanks to their lack of input.

Overall, the implementation of body cameras will likely be a good thing. It will have a few kinks to iron out at first, to be sure, but it’s hard to argue that having a second set of eyes on a possible altercation will do anything but aid the good cops while weeding out the bad ones.

By Bob Knudsen from The Examiner

The Guarding writes:

Django Unchained star Jamie Foxx has encouraged his friend Quentin Tarantino to “keep telling the truth” about alleged police brutality in the US, despite a growing rightwing backlash.

Speaking at the Hollywood Film Awards on Sunday, Foxx said the Oscar-winning film-maker should “keep speaking the truth and don’t worry about none of the haters”. His backing came after The Wrap reported that Tarantino would soon write a comment piece explaining his reasons for attending a protest against alleged police brutality on 24 October, during which he made controversial remarks to a crowd of around 300 which have drawn anger and calls for a boycott of the director’s films from police unions.

Speaking at the rally in New York, which was organised by a group opposing what it described as a “genocidal assault on black and Latino people in this country”, the film-maker stated: “If you believe there’s murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered.”

Police unions in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, New Jersey, Chicago and Philadelphia have criticised the Pulp Fiction director for his appearance and choice of words one week after NYPD officer Randolph Holder was fatally shot in the city. On Friday, the National Association of Police Organisations joined the growing boycott.

“As a high profile figure, Tarantino’s language is utterly irresponsible, particularly at a time when the nation is seeing increasing and persistent calls for the killing of officers,” said the association in a statement. “Anti-police rhetoric like Tarantino’s threatens the safety of police and citizens alike. The police he is calling murderers are the same officers who were present along the protest route to ensure the safety of protesters, who provide security when he is filming and who put their lives on the line to protect our communities day in and day out.”

Tarantino has also come in for criticism from US conservative commentators such as Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who said in a broadcast that he suspected the film-maker had “destroyed his career” with the New York appearance.

Studio The Weinstein Company, which is releasing Tarantino’s new film The Hateful Eight on Christmas Day in the US, were unavailable to comment on fears of a boycott.