June 18, 2020
By Jill Colvin, Lisa Mascaro and Zeke Miller
Associated Press
Following weeks of national protests since the death of George Floyd, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday that he said would encourage better police practices. But he made no mention of the roiling national debate over racism spawned by police killings of Black men and women.
Trump met privately with the families of several Black Americans killed in interactions with police before his Rose Garden signing ceremony and said he grieved for the lives lost and families devastated.
But then he quickly shifted his tone and devoted most of his public remarks to a need to respect and support ``the brave men and women in blue who police our streets and keep us safe.''
He characterized the officers who have used excessive force as a “tiny” number of outliers among “trustworthy” police ranks.
“Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals,” he said before signing the order, flanked by police officials.
Trump and Republicans in Congress have been rushing to respond to the mass demonstrations against police brutality and racial prejudice that have raged for weeks across the country in response to the deaths of Floyd and other Black Americans. It's a sudden shift that underscores how quickly the protests have changed the political conversation and pressured Washington to act.
But Trump, who has faced criticism for failing to acknowledge systemic racial bias and has advocated for rougher police treatment of suspects in the past, has continued to hold his “law and order.” line. At the signing event, he railed against those who committed violence during the largely peaceful protests while hailing the vast majority of officers as selfless public servants.
Trump's executive order would establish a database that tracks police officers with excessive use-of-force complaints in their records. Many officers who wind up involved in fatal incidents have long complaint histories, including Derek Chauvin, the white Minneapolis police officer who has been charged with murder in the death of Floyd. Those records are often not made public, making it difficult to know if an officer has such a history.
The order would also give police departments a financial incentive to adopt best practices and encourage co-responder programs, in which social workers join police when they respond to nonviolent calls involving mental health, addiction and homeless issues.
Trump said that, as part of the order, the use of chokeholds, which have become a symbol of police brutality, would be banned ``except if an officer's life is at risk.`` Actually, the order instructs the Justice Department to push local police departments to be certified by a “reputable independent credentialing body” with use-of-force policies that prohibit the use of chokeholds, except when the use of deadly force is allowed by law. Chokeholds are already largely banned in police departments nationwide.
While Trump hailed his efforts as “historic,” Democrats and other critics said he didn't go nearly far enough.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said, “One modest inadequate executive order will not make up for his decades of inflammatory rhetoric and his recent policies designed to roll back the progress that we've made in previous years.”
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the order “falls sadly and seriously short of what is required to combat the epidemic of racial injustice and police brutality that is murdering hundreds of Black Americans.”
Kristina Roth at Amnesty International USA said the order “amounts to a Band-Aid for a bullet wound.”
But Trump said others want to go to far. He, framed his plan as an alternative to the “defund the police” movement to fully revamp departments that has emerged from the protests and which he slammed as “radical and dangerous.”
“Americans know the truth: Without police there is chaos. Without law there is anarchy and without safety there is catastrophe,” he said.
Trump's audience included police officials and members of Congress, and came after he met privately at the White House with the families of men and women who have been killed in interactions with police.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters that many tears were shed at the meeting and ``the president was devastated.'' Trump listed the families' relatives who died and said: “To all the hurting families, I want you to know that all Americans mourn by your side. Your loved ones will not have died in vain.”
White House adviser Ja'Ron Smith said it was “a mutual decision” for the families not to attend the public signing. “It really wasn't about doing a photo opportunity,” he said. “We wanted the opportunity to really hear from the families and protect them. I mean I think it's really unfortunate that some civil rights groups have even attacked them for coming.”
The White House action came as Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been rolling out their own packages of policing changes. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the sole African American Republican in the Senate, has been crafting the GOP legislative package, which will include new restrictions on police chokeholds and greater use of police body cameras, among other provisions.
While the emerging GOP package isn't as extensive as sweeping Democratic proposals, which are headed for a House vote next week, it includes perhaps the most far-reaching proposed changes ever from a party that often echoes Trump's “law and order” rhetoric.
It remains unclear whether the parties will be able to find common ground. Though their proposals share many similar provisions – both would create a national database so officers cannot transfer from one department to another without public oversight of their records, for instance – differences remain.
The Republican bill does not go as far as the Democrats' on the issue of eliminating qualified immunity, which would allow those injured by law enforcement personnel to sue for damages. The White House has said that is a step too far. As an alternative, Scott has suggested a “decertification” process for officers involved in misconduct.
During the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder opened a series of civil rights investigations into local law enforcement practices that often ended with court-approved consent decrees that mandated reforms. Those included Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown and Baltimore following the police custody death of Freddie Gray.
Hours before he resigned as Trump's first attorney general in November 2018, Jeff Sessions signed a memo that sharply curtailed the use of consent decrees.
June 18, 2020
By: Danny J. Bakewell, Jr.
Executive Editor
Councilwoman Nury Martinez became president of the Los Angeles City Council in January of 2020. Becoming the first Latina City Councilwoman to serve in this position in the history of the City. Needless to say, there was no way that the newly elected madam president could have foreseen all of the unprecedented events that would rock the city and the nation when she took on the historic position.
Under Martinez’ presidency, she has been instrumental in helping the city cope with and navigate through the tragic death of Lakers superstar, Kobe Bryant. She is also leading efforts to bring resolution to an unparalleled homeless crisis in Los Angles, while challenged by a court order limiting how and what the city can do to address the thousands of homeless people sleeping on the streets, under and over freeways and throughout the city.
Then, there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which the entire nation was unprepared for, and the federal government’s slow response only perpetuated an already critical disease that is debilitating Los Angeles.
The fallout from COVID-19 forced businesses throughout the city to close, bringing about record unemployment, putting an overwhelming strain on our medical system and virtually bringing the Los Angeles economy to a screeching halt.
In May of 2020, the nation also witnessed the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, a public killing that outraged the world and lead thousands, if not millions of people, to the streets all over the world, calling for justice and police reform. The outrage over Floyd’s death also brought attention and shed light to other tragic Black deaths at the hands of police, including Breonna Taylor who was murdered in her own home when Louisville police entered into the wrong house and subsequently shot and killed her.
Yet, through all the city’s challenges, Martinez has endured, pushed forward and continued to lead her council district (#6, Pacoima/San Fernando Valley area) and the city council doing the people’s business.
“We are busy working for our citizens; people are hurting, people are not working. We are trying to re-open the economy and unfortunately some jobs may not come back online, and people are not going to be able to go back to the jobs that they had before COVID,” stated Martinez.
Needless to say, 2020 has been a tough year so far, and she is quick to remind us that we are only halfway through. She also wants to remind the city that we have to still navigate through fire season (which the City is currently updating plans for).
The City is still trying to lock in the 20-21 fiscal budget and then, there are the challenges City Council faces with “Defunding LAPD.”
When asked about defunding the police, the council president had this to say. “Sometimes, you have to make a difficult decision that makes some people uncomfortable. And since the pandemic, this council has had to make some very tough decisions. So, when it comes to the LAPD question, we are in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crisis. 
We’ve been asking everyone (City departments) to take a look at their budgets. We’re not asking LAPD to do anything that we are no asking other City departments and employees to do themselves. We know there is going to be a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars and we all have to share in this sacrifice in order to be able to provide some of our other critical services.”
Martinez points out that she values public safety and values good officers and appreciates the work that they do. She points out that “We ask police officers to do jobs that they shouldn’t have to be doing; they’re not mental health workers, they’re not homeless care providers and we are relying on them to do work that they should not be doing. We are asking them to do too much.”
But, her decision to reallocate funds from the police and direct them to other departments to re-think how the City and the police department allocate their resources, has brought the council president under fire from members of the rank and file, as well as from the powerful peace officer’s union.
A Spectrum News report brought to light that she had a security detail placed in front of her home for several weeks providing the council president with added security for herself and her family. When asked for her version of the story, President Martinez said, “Thank you for asking; no one has asked me for my side of the story.”
Because of COVID-19, the entire city council was forced to change how they did business, just as many businesses and governments throughout the nation have had to do. The City of Los Angeles has an old and antiquated voting system. So, as a result of the mayor’s Safer at Home Order, the City had to figure out how to conduct its business remotely. This caused her to have to cancel some city council meetings while the city got up to speed on how to handle meeting remotely.
Martinez’ decision was not a popular one, with protesters blocking her street and protesting in front of her home. Threatening her and her family (the council president has an 11-year-old daughter), calling and emailing her office and threatening her life. Because of these threats, she met with LAPD and the recommendation was to assign a detail to protect her and her home, and to ensure that none of the protests and protesters got out of hand.
“I don’t live in a gated community; I live in the same neighborhood I grew up in. I live in a working-class community and these protesters were not only disrupting me and my family, but they were showing up early in the morning, blocking driveways and not allowing my neighbors to get out of their driveway and go to work.” Martinez has never had a protection detail; she doesn’t have a driver.
Only the mayor and the City Attorney have a full-time protection detail, but when one of her neighbors asked a protester to move so they could pull out of the driveway, the protester refused and altercation escalated. At that point, Nury agreed to allow LAPD to provide her, her family and her neighborhood with a patrol detail in front of her home.
After the city council had worked out it’s remote meeting challenges, Martinez office began rolling back the protection detail, but the threats to her and her family continued, so Martinez went back to LAPD and asked for advice on what to do. The advice came back leave the detail in place and so she did.
“My daughter’s room is at the front of our home, so to have people out front yelling profanity, making noise and being disruptive to my family and my neighbors was crazy.” The protesters were not people from her community, but what she was really trying to avoid was her neighbors taking control of their street and confronting the protesters, which Martinez believes was certainly possible.
Nury Martinez has always been about her community; at a young age she learned that it was Black and Brown and communities of color that were often disenfranchised and needed the most help. This inspires her to bring resources into her community and communities of color. She says she sees and knows first-hand how Black and Brown people are often the last communities to receive the desperately needed resources from the City and the federal government.
Through all of the challenges she’s faced in 2020, she continues to provide and direct as many resources as she and her colleagues can to those most in need. She has worked tirelessly for the COVID-19 Paid Leave for Families Motion, which ensures paid leave for people needing to care for a family member affected with COVID.
She has also led the effort to create the Workers Retention Ordinance and Workers Recall Ordinance to insure when employees go back to work, they return at the same status or level they were at pre COVID.
She fought for the creation of the COVID Eviction Moratorium and included giving tenants the right to sue landlords who pressured them for stimulus monies or who do not honor the eviction moratorium. She is also leading the council to provide over $100 Million for Residential Renter Relief paying landlords directly for tenants who have been laid off or have been affected by COVID.
With the help of her city council colleagues, Martinez has gotten a lot done, but her biggest challenge to schematically reimagine how to reinvest public safety and public safety dollars for the betterment of all communities and the people who live them.
She is not shy about pointing out that racism in Los Angeles and throughout this nation is real. She says, addressing racism requires the uncomfortable conversations that many don’t want to have.
She knows there are good police officers and that the few bad ones make it difficult for all of the good ones. She remembers growing up, she had never seen a Latina police officer, and it was not until she was 19 years of age that she had ever met a police officer of color.
“I was organizing a community clean up and someone suggested that I go to the police station and ask them for help. I had never even imagined you could ask the police to help on a community clean-up project.”
But there she met then Captain Kenny Gardner, a well-known African American police officer who passed away of a heart condition a few years ago.
Kenny was a beautiful person; he asked where the clean-up was taking place? That Saturday, he showed up with his then 6-year-old daughter and helped with the clean-up.
“Kenny was my first experience with community policing, and I know that most officers are good honest hard-working men and women.”
We’ve made great strides, but she also believes we can still do better by reallocating funds to the people who are better trained to provide the services to those in need; one way that Council President Nury Martinez intends to make a difference.
June 18, 2020
By Jake Bleiberg
Associated Press
In the fatal shooting of a Black man by police in Atlanta last week, officers' body cameras captured about 40 minutes of footage, but not the critical moments that end with one of them opening fire.
In Oklahoma City, it took police more than a year to release video from the arrest of a man who died in custody. It came out months after the officers involved were cleared of any wrongdoing, and shows them struggling with the man as he says “I can't breathe.” One officer replies: “I don't care.”
Nationwide, police departments have rushed to ramp up the use of body cameras, which have been hailed as a potential equalizer that would show the unvarnished truth of an encounter with officers.
But the cases in Georgia and Oklahoma highlight why the technology's benefit has come into question amid protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd and calls for sweeping changes to American law enforcement. With budget crises looming and cries to ``defund the police,'' some are asking whether the tens of millions of taxpayer dollars spent to outfit officers with cameras has provided the accountability and transparency expected.
Advocates and officers agree the technology's broad adoption has been helpful, but its value is dictated by the policies and practices around its use: Cameras improve transparency when departments care about transparency.
“They were going to be a panacea to all of the problems we're facing,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “Body-worn cameras have their limitations and they're certainly not a panacea, but they do have valuable uses.”
This month, four Atlanta police officers were fired and criminally charged over an incident in which officers pulled two college students from a car and hit them with stun guns during protests late last month. The police chief, who resigned Saturday, told her staff she expected the footage to reinforce that the officers did the right thing, but it did the opposite.
But that case was unusual. Cameras have largely failed to deliver swift accountability because the release of video is frequently long delayed or denied entirely, said Harlan Yu, executive director at the civil rights and technology nonprofit Upturn. When footage of a controversial incident is released, Yu said, it's often only after intense public outcry.
That was the case in Oklahoma City last week, when police put out video of the deadly May 2019 arrest of Derrick Elliot Scott.
Officers arrested Scott, who was black, because he matched the description of an armed suspect, Capt. Larry Withrow said. Scott had a loaded gun in his pocket, Withrow said.
A prosecutor cleared the officers of any wrongdoing last August. The video was released after media requests and demands from activists.The video shows an officer confronting Scott and then tackling him after he takes off running. As officers hold Scott down, he can be heard saying he can't breathe. He appears to go in and out of consciousness and the officers eventually call for an ambulance. He was later pronounced dead; an autopsy showed the encounter with police was a factor.
The Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson, executive director of Black Lives Matter OKC, said police held the footage back because it would have changed how the case was handled. Had it been public ``there would have been collective power in demanding justice,'' Dickerson said.
Oklahoma City police spent roughly $750,000 on cameras and servers, and pay another $150,000 annually for software and maintenance.
Their use has grown nationwide since a 2013 federal court ruling that New York City police wrongly targeted minorities with the stop-and-frisk program. The court ordered the nation's largest police department adopt body cameras. On Tuesday, the mayor announced police will release footage within 30 days of shootings and other instances when force results in injury or death.
“Body-worn cameras are only as powerful as the transparency that comes with them,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
In the last five years, a Justice Department program awarded 420 grants worth nearly $83 million to help agencies pay for body cameras, according to a spokeswoman. Local governments spend many millions more for cameras and costly video storage.
The cameras also raise privacy issues, especially for those worried their public-facing lenses could be combined with facial recognition technology. Often, however, the videos that show the public grim realities of policing don't come from body cameras at all. They're made by bystanders.
The video that showed the world Floyd crying for air and then going limp under the knee of a white Minneapolis officer was shot by a bystander, who told the officers they were being filmed.
Activists say Floyd's death shows a rolling camera won't stop police abuse when officers believe they are beyond punishment.
“We now see a plethora of daily videos of black people being brutalized, shocked, beaten, choked out,” said Damario Solomon-Simmons, a Tulsa civil rights attorney. But, he said, there isn't enough accountability.
How cameras affect officer behavior is an open question. A 2019 analysis by researchers at George Mason University of 70 past studies found cameras have not met police leaders' nor citizens' expectations and there is still a ``lacuna of knowledge'' around their impact.
In Atlanta, where the police have a five-year contract for the cameras worth nearly $14 million, the department on Sunday released video showing a sobriety check outside a Wendy's restaurant spin suddenly out of control.
Footage from body and dash-mounted cameras show Rayshard Brooks chatted cooperatively with the two white officers, saying he'd had a couple of drinks to celebrate his daughter's birthday and agreeing to a breath test.
The 27-year-old Black man appears to pull away as the officers start putting him in handcuffs. Both officers' body cameras were knocked to the ground in the ensuing struggle over a Taser. It was footage released from a security camera that ultimately captured an officer fatally shooting Brooks in the back. The officer who pulled the trigger was fired; the other one is on leave, and the police chief resigned.
Kenneth Kissiedu, a retired African American New York Police Department sergeant, won a nearly $200,000 settlement in 2015 after suing police in Yonkers, New York, for allegedly beating him. He sees value in the cameras but said what's really needed is for mayors, police chiefs and police unions to stand together and say brutality and excessive force won't be tolerated.
“Before even the cameras,” Kissiedu said, “it's the culture.”
June 18, 2020
Associated Press
An organization that founded the nation's first memorial to lynching victims announced Tuesday that it has documented thousands of additional killings of Black people during the era of Reconstruction.
The Equal Justice Initiative said it has now documented nearly 6,500 lynchings of Black people between 1877 and 1950. The group, which previously documented 4,500 lynchings, on Tuesday released a new report titled “Reconstruction in America” that documents nearly an additional 2,000 lynchings between 1865 and 1876.
“We cannot understand our present moment without recognizing the lasting damage caused by allowing White supremacy and racial hierarchy to prevail during Reconstruction,” Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson said in a statement released with the report.
The lynchings, concentrated but not limited to the South, in the years after the Civil War came as enslaved people were newly freed, but mobs attacked their attempts to live freely and participate in the political process.
The reported documented 34 mass lynchings. In Opelousas, Louisiana in 1868 an estimated 200 black people were killed over several days after attempting to participate in the political process.
In one lynching documented in the report, Perry Jeffreys, his wife, and four sons were killed in Georgia after a mob learned they planned to vote for presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant.
The report said the review of available records, “paints a haunting and devastating picture of a period of deadly attacks that yielded thousands of documented victims and terrorized Black communities across the South with near-daily acts of lynching and assault.”
The Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, a legal advocacy group, began working several years ago to document lynchings. Stevenson said that telling the truth about the nation's past, and confronting it, is crucial to understanding the present.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a memorial to lynching victims, opened in 2018. The memorial is located about a mile from the Alabama Capitol.
The design of the memorial evokes the image of a hanging, featuring scores of coffin-sized dark metal columns suspended in the air from above. The rectangular structures include the names of counties where lynchings occurred, in addition to the dates and the names of the victims.
The organization said the combined museum and memorial will be the nation's first site to document racial inequality in America from slavery through Jim Crow to the issues of today.
June 18, 2020
By Tanu Henry
California Black Media
Last week, Norman Pearlstine, the editor of the LA Times, sent a memo to staffers announcing that the publication will begin capitalizing “B” in the word Black in its articles when referring to a race of people.
That move puts the publication with the largest circulation in California in line with the way the majority of the Black Press in California and around the country have referred to African Americans for decades since they retired “Negro,” beginning in the 1960s to the early 1970s.
Pearlstine also announced that the LA Times is taking steps to add more diversity to its newsroom by increasing the number of Black and Latino journalists on its staff.
“Within the next two weeks we shall form a group to work on overhauling our hiring process,” Pearlstine wrote to employees. “The global pandemic and the global financial crisis constrain our ability to make a hiring commitment by a specific date. We can commit, however, that the next hires in Metro will be Black reporters, as we begin to address the underrepresentation.”
In the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the violent protests that followed it, across America, more and more people have begun to point out, own up to, and apologize for abetting racism and anti-Blackness in all of their forms — explicit, subtle and systemic. Americans from all backgrounds have begun to publicly acknowledge how discrimination, over the years, have hurt and held back African Americans for centuries.
Last week, other media organizations across the country, including BuzzFeed News, NBC News, MSNBC, Metro Detroit, and others, announced that they have made the decision to begin capitalizing the “B” in Black as well.
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the country’s largest professional organization of Black media professionals and journalism students, released a statement that said the organization has been writing Black with a capital “B” in all of its communications for about a year now.
The NABJ is also recommending that “White” and “Brown” be capitalized, too, when referring to race.
“It is equally important that the word is capitalized in news coverage and reporting about Black people, Black communities, Black culture, Black institutions, etc,” the NABJ statement said.
Sarah Glover, past president of the NABJ, wrote a letter to the Associated Press (AP).
“I’m writing today to request the mainstream news media begin capitalizing the “B” in Black when describing people and the community,” wrote Glover.
“I’m also asking the AP to update its Stylebook to reflect this change, effective immediately,” Glover continued. “This book is the bible for working journalists and sets journalistic industry standards. The AP has tremendous impact as a wire service with more than 1,000 subscribers worldwide.”
Larry Lee, the publisher and CEO of the Sacramento Observer, the oldest Black-owned news publication in California’s capital city said whenever he sees a lowercase “B” in Black, it feels like a “slap in the face.”
I always felt that they were devaluing our community,” said Lee, who is a second-generation publisher of the Observer. He took the helm of the family-owned business from his father William Lee, who founded the newspaper in 1969 and passed last year.
“This is wonderful. Its progress,” Lee continued. “I applaud other media outlets that are doing that. We thought it was important, in a journalistic sense, to recognize Black Americans and African Americans in the same vein that you stylistically recognize Hispanics and any other ethnicity.”
Lee, who’s is 47, says for as long as he can remember, the Observer and other Black-owned newspapers across the country have capitalized the “B” in Black also to affirm the humanity of African Americans, evoke a sense of cultural pride, and to align themselves with the 1970’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud” movement popularized in pop culture by James Brown and others.
Lee says, for a while now, Black publishers have called on general market newspapers to adapt that policy, too.
Paulette Brown-Hinds, Publisher of the Black Voice News in Riverside, is also a second-generation executive of an African American, family-owned newspaper in California.
“As a newspaper, we have capitalized the word Black for decades,” said Brown-Hinds, who took over the day-to-day operation of the paper in 2012 from her parents, Hardy and Cheryl Brown.
“We have always shared a Pan-Africanist worldview, regarding Black as being more encompassing of people of the African Diaspora,” she continued. “I guess our counterparts, in what people call the mainstream media, are finally catching-up with something we’ve been doing all along.”
In her letter, Glover said organizations moving to change their policy on capitalizing Black is a “good first step.”
“This matters. It’s to bring humanity to a group of people who have experienced forms of oppression and discrimination since they first came to the United States 401 years ago as enslaved people. I ask for this change in honor of the Black Press,” she wrote.
The New York Times, which adheres to its own style guide that is different from AP’s, also still uses Black with a lowercase B.
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