my new tag is: policing in the USA

[rose_griffes]

• Free e-book (Kindle or epub): The End of Policing
• Free PDF download of the book The Growth of Incarceration in the United States
• I found that second link thanks to this twitter thread about the USA’s “war on drugs” (as a means to incarcerate black people)
• article: How Tear Gas Became the White Supremacist’s Favorite Poison

• To the good cops: 
• Jay Park, who knew Georgia’s laws about intoxication better than his superiors, so he didn’t arrest drunk college kids. He got fired for not making what he knew would be illegal arrests.
• the NYPD’s Adrian Schoolcraft, the only cop many people on his beat knew because he tried to engage them in conversation. He was harassed by his colleagues and placed against his will in a psychiatrist facility after speaking up about arrest quotas and wrongful arrests.
• Cariol Horne stopped her Buffalo PD colleague from choking a handcuffed man. She lost her job and pension; he kept working. Later, when he pleaded guilty to federal charges, he was allowed to keep his pension.
• In 2011 Kyle Pirog spoke out about a fellow officer in their New Jersey township PD who committed perjury to obtain a search warrant, strip-searched a minor, and targeted people of color for traffic stops. Pirog was demoted and then suspended. His chief made Pirog report to that same officer whose conduct he had spoken out about. Eventually Pirog was forced to resign in 2014; he then filed suit. (It looks like he got his job back finally. I’m guessing that details have been suppressed but there’s a 2018 photo of Officer Pirog on Facebook and it’s labeled as a fun run for the Bedminster PD.)
• Regina Tasca stopped a fellow officer from beating a mentally ill young man. She was fired.

I currently have a Washington Post subscription so if any WaPo article links are paywalled for you, let me know and I'll get you the text.

Comments

[rosaxx50]

It's saddening to see how temporally spread the acts are. It's systemic, it's generational, the entire police departments are rotten top to bottom, and all those cops that got away with things in 2011 are probably heading up their departments now and making life miserable for anyone who wants to change things.

[rose_griffes]

Agreed: police officers who do the worst often make it the furthest, and those who wanted to make a positive difference end up leaving. Voluntarily, if they're fortunate...