Mark Rowley launches initiative that includes reset of stop and search, but acknowledges ‘there is still a lot to do’
Scotland Yard has launched its latest steps to try to rebuild trust with London’s black community, which the Met police commissioner acknowledged had been let down for many years.
Mark Rowley said “there remains a long way to go and there is a lot more work to do”, but that the force’s race action plan was a step in the right direction.
Continue reading...Senator does not call for Robinson to drop out of governor race and says he ‘deserves a chance to defend himself’
The senior Senate Republican Lindsey Graham has said reports that the North Carolina Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, calling himself a “black NAZI!” in posts on the porn forum Nude Africa a decade ago are “beyond unnerving” and should see him end his political career if proven true.
“If they’re true, he’s unfit to serve for office,” the long-serving South Carolina senator said Sunday. “If they’re not true, he has the best lawsuit in the history of the country for libel.”
Continue reading...Report details litany of missed opportunities; House votes to investigate second apparent Trump assassination attempt
Kamala Harris will be in Georgia today and is expected to speak about Donald Trump’s role in the abortion bans that now blanket much of the United States, days after news broke that two Georgia mothers died after being unable to access legal abortions and adequate medical care.
The deaths of the Georgia mothers, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, were first reported earlier this week by ProPublica and occurred as a result of Georgia enacting a six-week abortion ban. Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee looked at both women’s cases and deemed their deaths “preventable”, according to ProPublica.
You’re looking at a mother that is broken, the worst pain ever that a mother, that a parent can ever feel.
Continue reading...Jamar Powell says PC Connor Jones should be sacked rather than receiving written warning over traumatising action
A Metropolitan police officer who put a Taser to the neck of an innocent black child after he had been forced to kneel in the street has been found guilty of gross misconduct but allowed to keep his job.
Jamar Powell told the Guardian he had feared he might die during the incident in September 2020, was left traumatised and would struggle to ever trust the police again, having been stopped and searched more than 30 times with nothing ever being found.
Continue reading...Six Rankin county officers known as ‘Goon Squad’ were convicted for hours-long attack involving racial slurs
The US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into a Mississippi sheriff’s department whose officers tortured two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said Thursday.
The justice department will investigate whether the Rankin county sheriff’s department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and whether it has used racially discriminatory policing practices, according to assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke.
Continue reading...Black universal credit claimants 58% more likely to get sanctions than white people, while mixed ethnic groups are 72% more likely
Black and minority ethnic benefit claimants are disproportionately likely to be hit with universal credit sanctions – financial penalties typically running into hundreds of pounds – according to official statistics unveiled for the first time.
Black universal credit claimants were 58% more likely to be sanctioned than white claimants, mixed ethnic groups were 72% more likely and Asians 5% more likely, according to the figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Continue reading...Danny Torres, 27-year veteran who forcibly arrested Hill in Florida on Sunday, suspended for total of about 50 days
The police officer who detained NFL player Tyreek Hill in Florida had racked up six suspensions and multiple reprimands before his encounter with the Miami Dolphins wide receiver, records from his agency show.
According to employee records reviewed by NBC, Danny Torres, the Miami-Dade police department officer who forcibly arrested and handcuffed Hill last Sunday, has a tainted disciplinary record that includes being suspended for as many as 50 days between 2014 and 2019.
Continue reading...Two hospitals sent into lockdown, government buildings shut down and local schools evacuated
Two hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, were sent into lockdown after bomb threats, police said Saturday, marking the fourth such case in as many days that appears linked to false claims circulating among the far right that Haitian immigrants there are eating domestic pets and wildlife.
Saturday’s threats came even after the woman who started the rumors acknowledged to NBC News that they were unfounded and publicly apologized.
Continue reading...Judge reduces sentence to four years of probation for Peter Cichuniec, who injected McClain with ketamine in 2019
A Colorado paramedic convicted in the death of Elijah McClain, a Black man whose name became part of the rallying cries for social justice that swept the US in 2020, is being released from prison after a judge reduced his sentence to four years of probation on Friday.
Judge Mark Warner ruled that “unusual and extenuating circumstances” in the case justified reducing the five-year prison sentence for Peter Cichuniec, the Denver Post reported.
Continue reading...Party took £5m after Rishi Sunak condemned businessman for saying Abbott made you ‘want to hate all black women’
Diane Abbott has said the Conservatives are “only paying lip service to fighting racism” after it emerged their controversial donor Frank Hester had given a further £5m to the party before the election.
The donation, made by his company the Phoenix Partnership, brings his total funding to the Tories to more than £20m, cementing his status as their single biggest donor.
Continue reading...Trial for Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith Jr, and Demetrius Haley begins on charges linked to 29-year-old’s 2023 death
The federal trial of three former Memphis police officers charged in the killing of Tyre Nichols begins Monday.
Ex-officers Tadarrius Bean, Justin Smith Jr, and Demetrius Haley will stand trial for federal civil rights and conspiracy charges in connection to Nichols’s death, according to an announcement from the Department of Justice last year.
Continue reading...Court worker secretly recorded calls in which Kathleen Ryan made homophobic slur and called Black people lazy
A suburban Detroit judge is no longer handling cases after a court official turned over recordings of her making anti-gay insults and referring to Black people as lazy.
Oakland county probate judge Kathleen Ryan was removed from her docket on 27 August for unspecified misconduct. Now the court’s administrator has stepped forward to say he blew the whistle on her, secretly recording their phone calls.
Continue reading...Removal of popular cabinet member Silvio Almeida comes as a blow to Lula’s administration
Brazil’s president has sacked one of his most popular cabinet members after claims Silvio Almeida sexually harassed at least two women – one of whom is another prominent figure, the racial equality minister Anielle Franco.
Almeida, the human rights minister, has denied the allegations, while Franco thanked the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for his “decisive action”. But the scandal has dealt a major blow to Lula’s administration and has been greeted with deep dismay by the Black rights movement.
Continue reading...Advocates say profiling ‘characterized many arrests’ as judge awards millions in damages in class-action lawsuit
Racial profiling is a systemic problem in the Montreal police force, a Quebec judge has ruled, as she awarded damages in a class action lawsuit that advocates call a “decision that meets with reality”.
Justice Dominique Poulin found that the city bore responsibility for racial profiling committed by its police officers and was obliged to compensate those affected.
Continue reading...Transparency campaigners welcome government move to publish details of system algorithms
Artificial intelligence and algorithmic tools used by central government are to be published on a public register after warnings they can contain “entrenched” racism and bias.
Officials confirmed this weekend that tools challenged by campaigners over alleged secrecy and a risk of bias will be named shortly. The technology has been used for a range of purposes, from trying to detect sham marriages to rooting out fraud and error in benefit claims.
Continue reading...Statue of congressman, who died in 2020 of cancer, replaces obelisk erected in 1908 celebrating the Confederacy
A 12ft-tall statue of John Lewis was unveiled in Georgia on Saturday morning, honoring the legacy of the civil rights leader and congressman who died in 2020.
The statue stands in Decatur Square outside the historic Decatur courthouse in outer Atlanta, in a district Lewis represented in Congress from 1987 to his death. Lewis was 80 when he died due to complications related to pancreatic cancer.
Continue reading...Review also highlights racial profiling in police practices, and failure to address legacies of colonialism and slavery
The UK must act to curb a sharp increase in the use of racist hate speech by British politicians and high-profile public figures, a UN body has said.
Ministers must “adopt comprehensive measures to discourage and combat racist hate speech and xenophobic discourse by political and public figures” and ensure that such cases are “effectively investigated and sanctioned”, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination recommended in a report.
Continue reading...Michelle Charters urges more recognition and reconciliation on Unesco’s Slavery Remembrance Day
Liverpool must not “shy away” from its historic involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, the organiser of the city’s 25th Slavery Remembrance Day commemoration has said.
Michelle Charters, who is leading Liverpool’s events for Unesco’s Slavery Remembrance Day, said it was important to address and recognise the city’s tarnished history.
Continue reading...Children’s commissioner finds wide disparity with white counterparts in year to June 2023, with 88% of searches aimed at finding drugs
Black children are four times more likely to be strip-searched by police officers across England and Wales than their white counterparts, according to the latest nationwide figures disclosed by a watchdog.
The children’s commissioner also found that children under the age of 15 are a bigger proportion of those subjected to intimate searches, official figures from the year to June 2023 showed. Fewer than half of all searches of children in that year (45%) were conducted in the presence of an appropriate adult.
Continue reading...Most think Labour handled unrest well and agree with pursuit of those inciting racial hatred online
Voters have given broad approval to the government’s handling of the social unrest that broke out this summer, including its pursuit of those inciting racial hatred and violence online, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
However, the significant boost Keir Starmer enjoyed in his personal approval ratings immediately after his election win has dissipated, falling back to the levels he recorded during the election campaign.
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