London force accepts watchdog advice over flawed tactics undermining community confidence
The Metropolitan police force has been getting its use of stop and search wrong with multiple errors that have undermined its legitimacy, the police watchdog has found.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct said police in one case stopped and searched two black men who were innocently fist bumping, because officers wrongly thought they were drug dealing.
Continue reading...Prince blames royal upbringing for prior lack of insight and calls on others to educate themselves
The Duke of Sussex has said his upbringing as a privileged member of the royal family resulted in him having no understanding of unconscious racial bias, and called for others in a similar situation to “educate themselves”.
Prince Harry made the comments during a conversation with Patrick Hutchinson, the south London personal trainer who was photographed carrying a far-right protester to safety during unrest at an anti-Black Lives Matter rally this summer.
Continue reading...Officer who fatally shot Marcellis Stinnette and wounded Tafara Williams committed ‘multiple policy’ violations, said police chief
Attorneys representing a Black woman who was shot and wounded inside a vehicle by a suburban Chicago police officer who also fatally shot her 19-year-old boyfriend called the officer’s firing “a first step in police accountability”, but said they were pressing ahead with their own investigation of the shooting.
The Waukegan police chief, Wayne Walles, announced late on Friday the firing of the officer who killed Marcellis Stinnette, a Black man, and wounded Tafara Williams, 20. Walles said in a brief statement the male officer committed “multiple policy and procedure violations”.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has defended his handling of race issues in the US, declaring three times during the final presidential debate he is 'the least racist person in this room'. Trump was questioned on his handling of incidents such as describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a symbol of hate and saying protesting Black athletes should be fired. Presidential rival Joe Biden called Trump 'one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern history. He pours fuel on every racist fire', before adding 'this guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn'
The 1994 crime bill paved the way to mass incarceration of Black Americans. Biden says his support was a ‘mistake’
In 1994, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware stood proudly behind Bill Clinton as he signed into law a reform bill that touched nearly every aspect of the US criminal justice system.
Related: Trump trails Biden with two weeks to go – but there could yet be surprises
Continue reading...In seven years, BLM has gone from hashtag to global rallying cry. So why has the co-founder stepped away from the movement she helped create?
Alicia Garza is not synonymous with Black Lives Matter, the movement she helped create, and that’s very deliberate. The 39-year-old organiser is not interested in being the face of things; she’s interested in change. “We are often taught that, like a stork, some leader swoops from the sky to save us,” she tells me over Zoom from her home in Oakland, California. That sort of mythologising, she says, “obscures the average person’s role in creating change”.
Garza is also scornful of fame for fame’s sake and of celebrity activists. The number of people who want to be online influencers rather than do the work of offline organising – knocking on doors, finding common ground, building alliances – depresses her. “Our aspiration should not be to have a million followers on Twitter,” she says. “We shouldn’t be focused on building a brand but building a base, and building the kind of movement that can succeed.”
Continue reading...Case expected to open door for others wanting to drop ‘atig’ or ‘liberated by’ from their name
A court in Tunisia has allowed an 81-year-old man to remove a word from his name that marked him out as descended from slaves, in the country’s first ruling of its kind, his lawyer has said.
Tunisia abolished slavery in 1846, but critics say it has not done enough to address racism against black Tunisians, who make up 10-15% of the population and are mostly descended from slaves.
Continue reading...ONS update also shows that males have higher death rate than females
People of black and South Asian ethnic background have a greater risk of death from Covid than white people, figures have confirmed, revealing such differences are not driven by pre-existing health conditions, but largely down to factors such as living arrangements and jobs.
Since the pandemic began, it has been clear that people of some ethnic backgrounds are at greater risk from the coronavirus than others, with previous data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggesting black people have a four-fold higher risk of dying from Covid than white people.
Continue reading...Amy Cooper, the white woman charged with filing a false police report for calling 911 during a videotaped dispute with a black birdwatcher in New York’s Central Park, made a second, previously undisclosed, emergency call in which she added that the man had tried to assault her, it was revealed on Wednesday.
Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance called Cooper’s complaints a hoax and noted it was lucky that no one had been injured or killed that day as a result.
Continue reading...Ken McCallum also pledges to boost diversity in the service as response to Black Lives Matter movement
MI5’s new boss has said the spy threats posed by China and Russia to the UK are “growing in severity and complexity” while the terrorist threat from Isis and the far right “persists at scale”.
Giving his first speech since his domestic spy agency’s director general in April, Ken McCallum focused on risks from hostile states, including undermining “the integrity of UK research” on a coronavirus vaccine.
Continue reading...From Black Panther to Black Lives Matter, I’ve felt a new sense of identity and pride, that I will pass on to my children
Growing up, I envied those who understood their mother’s native language. Speaking it was admirable, but the very act of comprehension was a beautiful thing to witness. From afar it seemed like a love language, something intimate and secretive spoken between families – it suggested a bond, a closeness that seemed impenetrable.
As a child, it didn’t necessarily bother me that I was unable to understand my family’s mother tongue (my parents are Nigerian, and the language they used in our household was robustly and loudly Yoruba). I was too busy navigating all the complexities of being an adolescent to really notice that my parents actively chose to only speak English to their five children. It’s also fair to say that when I was growing up in the late 1980s and early 90s, I had no friends of a similar background to me – most were from the Caribbean. Certainly, Africa wasn’t deemed a cool destination, so that part of myself was mostly folded away.
Continue reading...A Black man who was led by a rope by two white officers on horseback has sued a south-east Texas city and its police department for $1m, saying he suffered humiliation and fear during his arrest.
Related: Texas police apologise after officers on horseback led black man by rope
Continue reading...Republican senator made comment in televised ‘conversation’ with his rival, Jamie Harrison, who is Black
In a televised campaign event US senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said African Americans and immigrants can “go anywhere” in his home state but they “ just need to be conservative”.
Graham made the comment in a televised “conversation” with his political rival, former South Carolina Democratic party chair Jaime Harrison, the first African American to serve in the role.
Continue reading...In a suburb of Chicago, the world’s first government-funded slavery reparations programme is beginning. Robin Rue Simmons helped make it happen – but her victory has been more than 200 years in the making
It began with an email. On an especially cold day in Evanston, Illinois, in February 2019, Robin Rue Simmons, 43 years old and two years into her first term as alderman for the city’s historically Black 5th ward, sent an email whose effects would eventually make US history. The message to the nine-member equity and empowerment commission of the Evanston city council started with a disarmingly matter-of-fact heading: “Because ‘reparations’ makes people uncomfortable.”
She continued:
Continue reading...Bank’s former chief executive reportedly walked out of room during act at party last year
A leading investment bank has apologised for “any offence caused” after it was reported that its black former chief executive left his chairman’s birthday party when a black performer dressed as a janitor danced on stage.
The New York Times reported that Tidjane Thiam, who ran Credit Suisse between 2015 and February this year, walked out of the room during the act at Urs Rohner’s 6oth birthday celebration.
Continue reading...Issues of bigotry, belonging, race and redemption and are unpicked in this majestic biopic of police officer Leroy Logan
Steve McQueen’s five-movie series for the BBC, Small Axe, only gets more thrilling and captivating with the appearance of this new episode at the New York film festival. He is setting new gold standard for drama – and cinema – on screens of any size.
Related: Lovers Rock review – Steve McQueen throws the best party ever
Continue reading...The director’s new Small Axe series kicks off with the landmark 1971 trial of the Mangrove Nine. It’s his aim to fill these gaps in British history, he says, and to open the industry to other black film-makers
Photographer Misan Harriman is gently cajoling actor Shaun Parkes as the sun burns through the morning cloud above St Michael’s church in Ladbroke Grove, west London. “Look at me as if you’re searching for redemption,” he says, as Parkes looks down the lens. “But it’s redemption for something you haven’t even done.” Parkes, who rose to prominence as a raver in Human Traffic but now has flecks of grey in his beard, doesn’t ask for more clarity; he simply flashes a look at the camera and then slowly changes pose.
Today Parkes and Harriman, who recently shot Vogue’s “Activism Now” September issue, along with portraits of Black Lives Matter protesters, are revisiting the west London area that is the setting of Steve McQueen’s new film, Mangrove. It’s a glorious September morning and, despite the Covid-19 restrictions, the cafes are busy and the flower shops open. It’s hard to imagine that 50 years earlier, a few streets away, there was a pitched battle between the police and protesters that would help change the way Britain thought about race. Parkes plays Frank Crichlow, the real-life figure at the heart of McQueen’s film, which centres on Notting Hill’s Mangrove restaurant and nine West Indians who fought police harassment and then a court case. The look of redemption that Harriman is searching for is something Crichlow and the Mangrove Nine earned the hard way.
Continue reading...Hours of private proceeding were made public, with an officer telling the grand jury police announced their presence before shooting
In grand jury testimony made public on Friday, a law enforcement officer said police in Kentucky did not end up searching Breonna Taylor’s apartment on the day she was shot and killed by police who had arrived with a search warrant.
Police were carrying a narcotics warrant for Taylor’s Louisville apartment on 13 March. In a botched raid, they shot her after Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired at them on the assumption that they were intruders.
Continue reading...Juror had sued to release transcripts, saying ‘absolute truth of how this matter was handled’ should be published
Kentucky’s attorney general has said he will release a recording of the grand jury proceedings in the Breonna Taylor case, after a judge ordered they be filed in court by noon on Wednesday. It follows an anonymous juror suing for them to be made public.
Attorney general, Daniel Cameron, said in a statement: “The Grand Jury is meant to be a secretive body. It’s apparent that the public interest in this case isn’t going to allow that to happen.”
Continue reading...Campaigners call for urgent institutional response after attacks and death threats targeting MPs, academics and activists
Over the summer, Mamadou Ba, the head of an anti-racist organisation in Lisbon, received a letter. “Our goal is to kill every foreigner and anti-fascist – and you are among our targets,” it read. A few weeks later, it was followed up with a message telling him to leave Portugal or let his family face the consequences. That message was accompanied by a bullet casing.
Ba’s experience is one of a growing number of racist incidents perpetrated across Portugal that have led the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) to call for “an urgent institutional response”.
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