OPINION
Defunding The Police Will Save Black And Indigenous Lives In Canada

If we truly want to effect change that could stop police killings of Black people, we need to have this conversation.

By Sandy Hudson, Special To HuffPost 06/03/2020

GRAHAM HUGHES/CANADIAN PRESS

Police push back protesters during a demonstration on May 31, 2020 calling for justice in the death of George Floyd and victims of police brutality in Montreal.

As I write, demonstrations are raging across North America in protest of continued police violence against Black people. The police killings of Black people have sparked resistance uprisings, from Whitehorse to Miami and seemingly everywhere in between.

Demonstrators are calling for justice for Regis Korchinski-Paquet in Toronto, who fell to her death while police were in her apartment, D’Andre Campbell in Brampton, Ont., George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and countless others who have faced anti-Black police brutality.

If we truly want to effect change that could stop police killings of Black people, we must have a conversation about defunding the police.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/DARRYL DYCK

Thousands of people gather for a peaceful demonstration in support of George Floyd and Regis Korchinski-Paquet and protest against racism, injustice and police brutality, in Vancouver on May 31, 2020.
Perhaps you are thinking to yourself, “What about violent crime?”

I hear you. And I want you to consider this simple fact: police do not prevent violence. What we need in the event of violent crime is a service that will effectively respond to it, stop it from happening if it is ongoing, and investigate the circumstances surrounding it.

This is a conversation about safety, and the mechanism through which we as a society will provide safety for one another.

Policing is ill-equipped to suit these needs.

When victims are not the right kinds of victims, police have utterly failed. When the queer community in Toronto told police there was a serial killer targeting racialized queer men in the Church Street village, the police openly deniedthere was a serial killer and did not take the threat seriously. This allowed serial killer Bruce MacArthur to get away with murdering at least eight men over at least seven years.

In British Columbia, police failed to apprehend serial killer Robert Pickton for over 20 years, and this failure meant that Pickton was able to murder 49 women. The majority of these women were Indigenous, and police routinely refuse to take the disappearance of Indigenous women seriously. When Toronto police attended to the suspicious death of Black trans woman Sumaya Dalmarin 2015, they closed the investigation without ruling it a homicide or releasing a cause of death after social media outcry.
Defunding the police can free up funding that we can reinvest in services that provide real safety.

Black communities interact with police regularly because we live in neighbourhoods police target. We are experts in the ways that police can brutalize and inflict violence upon us. Their presence is no assurance of safety in Black communities. This is often true for Indigenous communities and communities living in poverty as well.

There are other communities who do not interact with police regularly. Wealthier, non-Black, non-Indigenous, privileged communities tend to feel safe because they have a rarely used option to call the police when they feel their safety is threatened. But, they are generally not interacting with police; their communities are not policed in the same way, and they are not targeted for criminalization.
Alternatives to policing

Instead of relying on police, we could rely on well-trained social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, researchers and other well-trained individuals to fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place. In the event that intervention is required while a violent crime is ongoing, a service that provides expert specialized rapid response does not need to be connected to an institution of policing that fails in every other respect. Such a specific tactical service does not require the billions of dollars we waste in ineffective policing from year to year.

Defunding the police can free up funding that we can reinvest in services that provide real safety for both kinds of communities. The communities that are constantly exposed to police violence should not be deprived of effective safety and security services simply because more privileged communities feel safer when calling the police is an option.

We can rethink the way that we create safety in our communities by creating alternative services that truly create safety and security for everyone. Black Lives Matter - Toronto has been advocating for this since our inception, alongside our global counterparts and other Black justice organizations.

Right now, the only emergency option available for most people who are experiencing mental distress is to call 911. Both D’Andre Campbell and Regis Korchinski-Paquet died while the police were attending to calls about their mental distress.

Couldn’t we create a new emergency service that connects us with unarmed, mental health emergency service workers specifically trained to provide the health and social care required in crisis situations? It’s happening already, with front-line programs active and working in conjunction with police in parts of the U.K. and in states such as Oregon, where the CAHOOTS program has been active since 1989.
STEVE RUSSELL VIA GETTY IMAGES

Activists and protesters rally in front of Toronto police headquarters on May 30, 2020 after the death of 29-year-old Regis Korchinski-Paquet.
We can also decriminalize activities that are currently against the law, and reinvest the money we save on unnecessary policing and put it into programs supporting the security of communities who need it. The decriminalization of cannabis and our response to the opioid crisis show how a public-health approach to drug use is more effective than policing to support people who need help.

As another example, some public transportation systems use police to ensure that each passenger pays their fare. If we defund the police, we could reinvest our savings to help make public transit free. Fare evasion could no longer be a crime, and the policing of passengers would be unnecessary.

The minor services police provide — adherence to bylaw infractions, traffic services, attending to noise complaints — can be enforced by civilian services. In Ontario in 2015, Marc Ekamba-Boekwa was shot at 19 times and killed by Peel police after a noise complaint was made in his Mississauga, Ont. public-housing complex. Do we really need police attending to noise complaints with lethal force?
The very purpose of the police has always been antithetical to the safety of Black and Indigenous people.

In several large cities across Canada, policing accounts for some of the largest municipal budget expenditures. Let’s defund the police and create budgets that truly reflect our priorities. Perhaps then we could fund guaranteed access to housing, increased adult support for children in schools, and other services that create true safety and security.

Each year, police budgets generally increase. But rather than increased safety, all we see is increased militarization and criminalization. Police have been caught infringing on our privacy rights by implementing surveillance techniquesthat can access our smartphones. They have used the funding they receive to purchase stealth emergency vehicles, and to purchase increasingly militarized devices to harm civilians, including assault-style weaponry and sound cannonsin the case of the Toronto Police Service.

Why do we need these services? The police have utterly failed to deliver on their evergreen promise to create safety by being “tough on crime.”

But they have continued their original purpose of harming us. The institution of modern policing was created in France as a mechanism to protect the property of wealthy men — including enslaved people. The police acted as slave catchers to kidnap Black people who had liberated themselves from slaveowners.

In Canada, this mandate was expanded when the RCMP was created in 1873 to “free up land” of Indigenous people to make way for white settlement.

The very purpose of the police has always been antithetical to the safety of Black and Indigenous people. Why continue to try to reform this irredeemable institution?

Let’s not be constrained by an inability to imagine a system beyond the one that currently exists. We can do far better than the institution of policing to create safety for all of us. It’s high time we did so.

Sandy Hudson Co-founder, Black Lives Matter - Toronto. Political strategist, communications powerhouse, writer

Alleged Police Brutality Against Black Ontario Couple Reveals Hospital Failures Too: Lawyer

Livingston Jeffers was repeatedly punched in the head by police after leaving a hospital with his wife in 2018

By Samantha Beattie 06/18/2020 

TORONTO — Livingston Jeffers accompanied his wife Pamelia to the emergency department of an Ontario hospital one night in October 2018, seeking relief for her insomnia and stomach ache. Their grandson dropped them off, believing his grandmother would get the help she needed.

Hours later and tired of waiting, the Black couple, who are both in their 60s, attempted to leave the Lakeridge Health hospital in Ajax, Ont., said their lawyer.

Outside, they were stopped by a nurse, security guards and then two police officers. The nurse thought Pamelia was to be held at the hospital for up to 72 hours to see a psychiatrist, an order known as a Form 1, according to witness statements compiled in a police report. A doctor later told police that Pamelia was exhibiting signs of delusion and paranoia and he was in the process of completing the form.

Within minutes, the situation escalated, with police pinning Jeffers to the ground, punching and elbowing him four times in the face, as he screamed “Murder, murder, murder,” until he was nearly unconscious, the police report said.

When their grandson Tre returned to the hospital to pick them up later that night, he was shocked to find Jeffers slouched in a chair not moving, with bruises on his face and handcuffed.

I couldn’t believe it. A hospital is where you go when you’re sick or need help.Tre, the couple's grandson

What happened when the Jeffers were at the hospital is complicated, and raises questions about why the situation quickly escalated, and what could have been done by hospital staff and police to prevent the violent altercation.

“I couldn’t believe it. A hospital is where you go when you’re sick or need help,” Tre, 22, told HuffPost Canada. He requested his full name not be used out of concern for his safety. “I thought, ‘Wow this is our system. It’s scary.’”

Investigators determined Durham police had used a reasonable amount of force, but “cherry picked” evidence to charge Jeffers with assault, said his lawyer Faisal Kutty in a letter to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), which handles public complaints made against police. All charges against Jeffers were dropped once a video surfaced of the incident — a video witnesses allege police instructed them to delete.

“This case suggests that elderly Black people must weigh the dangers to their personal safety and exercise extra vigilance when attempting to leave a hospital,” Kutty wrote. The Jeffers are requesting the office reinvestigate the case, and declined HuffPost’s request to comment.

“What has occurred in this instance was an egregious act of police overreach, use of excessive force against two elderly and vulnerable individuals and abuse of authority when demanding that witnesses delete their videos.”
SUPPLIED

A photo of Livingston Jeffers shows bruising on his face following an altercation with police in Ajax, Ont., on Oct. 30, 2018.

The Jeffers’ story made headlines this week with the public release of the videos, as Canadians acknowledge the systemic racism rife in our institutions. Pressure continues to mount for an overhaul of police forces that are quick to use violence against Black Canadians, Indigenous people and other racialized people, following the recent police killing of George Floyd in the U.S., and the Toronto-area deaths of Regis Korchinski-Paquet and D’Andre Campbell.

But the Jeffers’ experience in the hospital, before police became involved, also highlights the discrimination Black Canadians and people who experience mental health challenges face in the health-care system, said Toronto clinical psychologist Dr. Taslim Alani-Verjee, who researches the health and wellbeing of racialized people. She reviewed the Jeffers’ case, but spoke generally.

“We expect, rightfully so, for health professionals to approach their patients with care and compassion but that turned into aggression and frustration — we see that way more with Indigenous and people of colour,” Alani-Verjee said.

“They’re often mistrusted within the health-care system, and are thought to be more likely to be violent and aggressive, leading to very quick escalation.”
Report paints husband as the aggressor: lawyer

In his letter to OIPRD, Kutty said Lakeridge Health staff failed in their handling of the situation.

“The attending physician, nurses and officers all note in their statements that Mr. Jeffers appeared disturbed, but took no action to address this appropriately,” Kutty wrote.

“The investigative report’s depiction of events without their context paints Mr. Jeffers as the aggressor. Examining Mr. Jeffers’ actions in context, however, clearly illustrates that he was acting out of fear and distress.”

Due to patient confidentiality, Lakeridge Health said it could not speak about individual cases, but that “it is committed to working withthe communities we serve to promote a just and equitable environment for all members of our diverse community, including those who are most vulnerable.”

SUPPLIED VIDEO SCREENSHOT

A witness filmed two police officers pinning Livingston Jeffers to the ground outside an Ajax, Ont. hospital, on Oct. 30, 2018.
Tre dropped off his grandfather and grandmother at the hospital around 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 30, 2018.

More than three hours later, Pamelia was assessed by a doctor who determined she was “delusional and paranoid” and advised that she see the hospital’s crisis intervention team, according to medical records supplied by the Jeffers’ lawyer.

The crisis team includes a nurse or social worker who helps to de-escalate situations, consults with the patient, and suggests possible treatments and community resources, hospital spokesperson Sharon Navarro said in a statement. In most cases, the patient is discharged. Sometimes patients are admitted to the mental health unit.

That crisis team, however, wasn’t staffed the night of the Jeffers’ visit, so the doctor advised Pamelia that she should go home and return the next day, according to the police investigation report.

(Since this incident, the hospital’s crisis team has become available 24/7.)

The doctor wrote in his note that Pamelia “never tried to hurt anybody or herself.” However, shortly after the assessment, he decided to place Pamelia on the Form 1, which would require her to remain on site. He later told police investigators he couldn’t remember why he changed his mind.

A nurse told the Jeffers that Pamelia now couldn’t leave the hospital and then left to prepare the form, according to the police report. Their medical records show that the hospital did not issue the Form 1 for Pamelia until after the violent incident with police.
SUPPLIED 

Pamelia and Livingston Jeffers are seen in a photo from this year.

Security footage from the hospital showed the Jeffers walking out of the hospital. The nurse, alerted by a colleague that they were leaving, followed them out the door and down the sidewalk near the ambulance bay, joined by two security guards. She was trying to explain that Pamelia wasn’t allowed to leave, but Jeffers “refused to listen,” according to the police report.

The nurse described him as “very angry” and said she was “afraid for her safety as he was yelling and very close to her.” One of the security guards described Jeffers as “confused,” said the police report.
Intersection of ethnicity and mental health

Little data is collected about racialized Canadians, making it difficult for researchers to study how ethnicity intersects with health care and mental health.

But studies do suggest that Black Ontarians experience double the wait times to get evidence-based mental health support than their white counterparts, and are more likely to be restrained or confined in the mental health and addictions system.

Mentally ill patients generally experience “some of the most deeply felt stigma” from doctors and nurses, and feel “patronized, punished or humiliated,” reported the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2013. Front-line workers tend to misattribute unrelated symptoms and complaints to mental illness, and be pessimistic about a patient’s chance of recovery, while lacking training and skills to treat mental illness.

Health-care workers also tend not to explain processes, such as a Form 1, as effectively to racialized patients and their families, compared to white people, said Alani-Verjee.

“And when it comes to treatments, medications and side effects, health care professionals, for whatever reason, don’t take the time to explain those things and Black and Indigenous people feel less empowered to ask questions and challenge people in positions of authority,” she said.

There’s also evidence to suggest Black people are not taken seriously by health-care workers when they seek out treatment for physical ailments.

A landmark 2016 study found that systemically, Black Americans do not receive adequate treatment for pain because of health professionals’ racial bias, including the assumptions they will abuse medications, don’t feel pain as intensely as white people and other false beliefs.

Anecdotally, Black Canadians have reported similar failings in Canada’s health-care system. Canadian Rapper John River, whose real name is Matthew John Derrick-Huie, posted to social media in 2018 that he was experiencing chest pain, and despite visiting five Toronto-area hospitals, had not received medical treatment.

He ended up having to wait two months for an emergency procedure and in the meantime faced allegations he was a drug dealer or user, or imagining his symptoms.
The manner of the intervention displayed by police remains unacceptable.Faisal Kutty, lawyer


The Jeffers incident also calls into question if police responded appropriately to the situation.

“The manner of the intervention displayed by police remains unacceptable,” Kutty wrote in his letter to OIPRD. “We assume you’d agree with us that it would be odd to allow two police officers to nearly beat a 68-year-old man unconscious ostensibly to prevent him from harming himself.”

Two police officers were at the hospital that October night for an unrelated call when they heard yelling and walked up to the scene with the Jeffers, the nurse and the security guards, according to the police report. The nurse told the officers that Pamelia was being held on a Form 1, and wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital.

“Brother, take it easy. Please don’t hold on to me,” Jeffers said to officer Alex Edwards, as captured in body camera footage and partially transcribed in the police report. “I didn’t do you all nothing. Please take it easy brother and keep off of me.”

Jeffers told the police that people were trying to murder him and his family.

“This is going to go one of two ways,” said Edwards. “Now take a deep breath, take a deep breath.”

Jeffers told the officer that Pamelia did not want to stay in the hospital.

“You don’t have a choice,” Edwards said, putting his hand on Jeffers’ chest, attempting to separate him from his wife, according to the police report.

“Brother, easy, what am I doing?” Jeffers asked. He raised his arm “toward” Edwards, according to the transcript.

Within one minute of intervening, the police pinned Jeffers to the ground.
SUPPLIED

Livingston Jeffers experienced facial swelling after his violent arrest, as shown here in an Ajax, Ont. hospital, on Oct. 31, 2018.

Edwards told investigators the move was intended to de-escalate the situation, and he used his body weight to stop the grandfather from moving. Jeffers scratched Edwards’ face, and the other officer, Iyan Dusko, punched Jeffers in the head.

That’s when Jeffers screamed, “Murder, murder, murder.”

Edwards told investigators that he then “felt the pulling and tug on his use of force belt” where his gun was hoisted and yelled “Let go of my gun!” In response, Dusko punched Jeffers in the head, and then handcuffed him. Jeffers later said in his statement to investigators that it felt like he was struck with “something heavy” before blacking out.

Only one witness said they saw Jeffers reach for Edwards’ gun, and that witness did not have a clear view of the incident, according to their interview in the police report.

After the struggle, as the officers were escorting Jeffers to the hospital, Edwards said, according to the body camera video, “Why were you fighting us? What was going on? How much sense did that make?”

“That’s what you get for fighting us,” said Dusko.

“I not fight you guys. I just didn’t want me wife to be taken,” Jeffers responded.

Two witnesses filmed the incident on their phones, but were told by hospital staff and police to delete the videos, said Kutty. Only part of one video was not deleted, and shows officers pinning Jeffers to the ground, as he screams, while Pamelia is held back by security guards. She is also screaming.

Jeffers was restrained to a hospital bed, with a head injury. He and Pamelia were kept in the psychiatric ward overnight. In the morning, the doctor assessed both Jeffers, determined Pamelia “was not suicidal or homicidal at all” and they were discharged.

Calgary Police Officer's Lawsuit Against Force Says Work Crossed Moral, Ethical Boundaries

Kim Prodaniuk also says she experienced multiple encounters involving sexual harassment and intimidatio

Bill Graveland Canadian Press 
06/21/2020

SPRINGBANK, Alta. — Kim Prodaniuk didn’t plan to be a crusader for change but hopes her lawsuit against the Calgary Police Service alleging harassment and emotional distress will make a difference.

The 40-year-old officer joined the service in 2008 and left on stress leave in 2017. She joined other female officers who publicly alleged that the force failed to provide a safe environment against bullying and harassment.

Prodaniuk, who filed a statement of claim against the police chief’s office, the Calgary Police Association and the City of Calgary in March, recently added a 132-page affidavit with details about her time on the force.

“I see myself as a change agent. I’ve been standing up since 2017 about systemic issues in policing, police brutality, abuse of authority,” Prodaniuk said in an interview with The Canadian Press at her home in Springbank, Alta.

“It’s real and it exists. It’s the dark shadow over good policing and good police officers, and it exists here in Calgary as well.”

JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Calgary Police Service Const. Kim Prodaniuk, photographed at her home in Spring Bank, Alta., on June 11, 2020, has filed a 132-page affidavit of allegations of police misconduct and sexual harassment with the Court of Queen's Bench.

Prodaniuk said the death of George Floyd, a Black man who protested he couldn’t breathe while a Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck for nearly nine minutes, is the catalyst for the change she’s talking about.

“This is the opportunity to fix it. Good cops don’t have the right to remain silent about this anymore.”

Protests over Floyd’s death across the United States, Canada and internationally are demanding an end to systemic racism and police brutality.

“It’s horrific, absolutely horrific, that we’re still dealing with this kind of thing in 2020,” Prodaniuk said as she wiped away tears.

“The things we see on video that happened are real and these can’t be reduced any more by the police.”

JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Calgary Police Service Const. Kim Prodaniuk in her home on June 11.
In her affidavit, Prodaniuk alleges multiple encounters involving sexual harassment and intimidation. She describes one case involving an officer who she says told her about his domestic situation and that he was having visions of killing his girlfriend.

“He told me if I told anyone what he’d said he would make up rumours of a sexual nature about me and spread them around the CPS,” she wrote.

“Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine as a police officer I would be in a situation where reporting danger to my police employer could result in consequences to my career and reputation.”

Prodaniuk also alleges that when she was training to work undercover she was ordered to fake an orgasm while riding a carousel at a shopping mall and to make sexually explicit phone calls to audition for an imaginary phone sex line that the male officers shared among themselves.

“I could either fail the scenario, which would potentially end my ability to do undercover work in the CPS, or follow through ... What the CPS was asking me to do crossed my moral and ethical boundaries,” she wrote.

“In reality, it was a one-week long course dedicated to entertaining male CPS officers at the expense of female officers’ sexual dignity.”
JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Mementos of Calgary Police Service Const. Kim Prodaniuk's career in the service are displayed at her home in Spring Bank, Alta. on June 11, 2020.

None of the allegations has been proven in court.

The police service has not filed a statement of defence, but has entered a motion to strike the lawsuit. It says the collective agreement covering officers requires grievances to be filed within 60 days.

Chief Mark Neufeld said he has read the affidavit.

“I’m not going to talk to you about this particular case because it is before the courts,” he said.

“What I will say is those allegations that I read in that statement of claim were repugnant. I’m very concerned about those types of things, and every person deserves a respectful workplace and to be safe in their workplace.”

Prodaniuk’s lawyer, Brendan Miller, said the Calgary Police Service could waive the 60-day limit for filing a complaint.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2020.

Greta Thunberg Calls Out Alberta Minister Who Said It’s A Great Time To Build Pipelines

The climate activist called out Alberta’s Sonya Savage for “at least being honest” for once.

By Melanie Woods

Greta Thunberg has no time for the Alberta energy minister’s pro-pipeline talk during the coronavirus pandemic.

Minster Sonya Savage said in a recent podcast that bans on mass gatherings mean there are fewer protests, which makes it “a great time” to build pipelines, but the Swedish climate activist was having none of it.

Savage’s comments were part of a discussion about the ongoing Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

“Now is a great time to be building a pipeline because you can’t have protests of more than 15 people, so let’s get it built,” Savage said.

In a tweet overnight Monday, Thunberg sarcastically praised Savage because “at least we are seeing some honesty for once.”

"Alberta minister says it’s a ‘great time’ to build a pipeline because COVID-19 restrictions limit protests against them."
Well, at least we are seeing some honesty for once... Unfortunately this how large parts of the world are run. https://t.co/1zrYjm286t— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) May 26, 2020

Who’s the savage one now?

Thunberg also pointed out that Savage’s mindset is not unique to Alberta.

“Unfortunately this [is] how large parts of the world are run,” she wrote.

The 17-year-old climate activist became a vocal presence on the global stage last year through her “Fridays For Future” demonstrations, which began as a school strike in her home Sweden to protest inaction on the climate crisis. Since then, she’s galvanized millions around the world to participate in climate marches and rallies.

But it’s not the first time Thunberg and Alberta have crossed paths.

Earlier this year, an Alberta oilfield company apologized after distributing stickers depicting Thunberg being sexually assaulted. The stickers showed a drawing of a nude female and two hands pulling from behind on her braided hair. The word “Greta” is written across her lower back.

MELISSA RENWICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Greta Thunberg attends a climate rally in Vancouver on Oct. 25, 2019.

“They are starting to get more and more desperate…” Thunberg tweeted in response to the stickers going viral. “This shows that we’re winning.”

X-Site management accepted full responsibility for the stickers and said they made “organizational changes,” and planned to hold training sessions about respect in the workplace.

Thunberg visited Alberta last fall when she appeared at a “Fridays For Future” march organized by Edmonton Youth For Climate.

“We need to start treating this crisis as a crisis,” she said at that rally. “Because you cannot solve an emergency without treating it as one.”

Ahead of Thunberg’s fall visit, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney acknowledged she likely wasn’t a “fan” of Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

“If you believe that the entire industrial modern economy should be shut down tomorrow, that the airplanes should stop flying, the cars should all stop driving, that millions of people should be put into unemployment, because we need to turn off the consumption of all hydrocarbon energy tomorrow, if that’s what you believe, then you’re probably not going to be a supporter of what we’re doing in Alberta,” Kenney said.

Melanie WoodsAssociate Editor, HuffPost Canada

UKRAINE PUPPY MILL
‘Nightmare’ Flight Packed With Puppies Lands In Toronto With 38 Dead Dogs

The CFIA says 500 dogs were being transported on a Ukraine International Airlines flight.


Canadian Press

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is investigating after thirty-eight dogs were found dead upon arrival to Toronto on a flight from Ukraine.

About 500 dogs had landed at Pearson International Airport last Saturday aboard a Ukraine International Airlines flight, according to the CFIA. Thirty-eight were found dead on arrival, and many others were dehydrated, weak or vomiting.
“CFIA officials are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding this incident and will determine next steps once the investigation is complete,″ a spokesperson said in a statement.

CBC reported that since the CFIA’s investigation has come to light, videos from witnesses at a loading dock at Kyiv airport have been released. The videos show crates of dogs being loaded onto a plane headed for Toronto.
JOZSEF SOOS VIA GETTY IMAGES

A Ukraine International Airlines plane carrying 500 puppies from Kyiv to Toronto arrived with 38 of the animals dead, according to authorities.

Witnesses told the National Post they could see the dogs visibly suffering and being stacked on top of each other, with two dogs to one crate, in extremely high temperatures. The CFIA said 500 dogs were on the flight.

Abby Lorenzen, a professional show dog handler, told CBC she was at the cargo area of the Toronto airport to pick up a different animal, when she saw what she described as a “nightmare.”

Lorenzen described seeing garbage cans filled with the bodies of dead puppies, according to the National Post.

The plane was filled mostly with French bulldogs, CBC reported. Animal welfare activists previously warned that the rising popularity and demand for French bulldogs would mean the rise of puppy mills — where the dogs are bred in large numbers and sold to new owners at too young of an age. Being sold off too young can bring an onslaught of health problems for bulldogs.

Ukrainian International Airlines is part of the International Air Transport Association, which has codes requiring dogs and other animals to travel in temperatures under 29.5 C.

In a Facebook post Friday, Ukraine International Airlines apologized for the “tragic loss of animal life″ on one of its flights. UIA did not address video footage from Kyiv in their statement.

Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of the Canadian branch of Humane Society International, called on authorities to get to the bottom of how so many puppies were transported at such high temperatures, possibly in violation of industry animal safety standards.

“It raises a lot of questions. And I definitely think the Canadian public wants answers to these questions,” Aldworth said.

“Responsible airlines will not transport animals in extreme heat, because they know there is a risk of dehydration, heat exhaustion and even suffocation.

“And I would question what airline has the capacity to put 500 dogs on one plane.”

Aldworth said the circumstances bear all the hallmarks of a puppy mill.

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“My organization has been working for more than a decade to shut down puppy mills in Canada. And we are devastated to see that animals continue to be imported from equally horrific facilities and other parts of the world into this country,″ she said.

“People are looking for (pets) on the internet, they’re buying sight unseen, and they’re importing cruelty into this country when we have so much of it to deal with right here at home.″

The CFIA’s standards are rigorous, a spokesperson told the Canadian Press. According to the agency website, most imports of commercial dogs require permits and they require containers that are adequately sized to travel.

In a separate case, one Calgary family who bought a French bulldog through Kijiji, found that dog soon developed breathing problems, according to CTV News. A lot of bulldogs being bought online or through unverified sellers were traced back to Ukraine, CTV reported.

With files from Premila D’Sa

Family Of Ejaz Choudry Call For Inquiry Into Police Killing

Choudry was shot dead by Peel Regional Police after they were called because of a medical crisis.

PEEL POLICE ONE OF THE WORST POLICE FORCES IN CANADA 

Salmaan Farooqui Canadian Press

GALIT RODAN/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Hashim Choudhary addresses media on June 21, 2020 in front of the apartment building where his uncle Ejaz Choudry was shot by Peel police.

The family of a 62-year-old man who died after being shot by police west of Toronto over the weekend called for a public inquiry into the death, citing a lack of faith in the province’s police watchdog to conduct a fair investigation.

Hashim Choudry, the man’s nephew, argued police overused force in shooting his uncle, who he said was suffering from a schizophrenic episode and had threatened to hurt himself.

“We don’t want an investigation with the police and the (Special Investigations Unit),” a visibly emotional Choudry said on Sunday. “We want a public inquiry with politicians involved to help bring this to justice. This is cruel and injustice to the limit.”

The incident began at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Peel Regional Police said, when officers were called to the man’s home because he was in crisis due to a medical condition for which he reportedly was not taking his medication.


HASHIM CHOUDHARY/GOFUNDME

Ejaz Choudry was identified by family as the man shot by Peel police on June 20, 2020.

Police said officers believed the man had access to weapons and entered the home after he stopped communicating, leading to an “interaction” where police fired a stun gun, plastic bullets and a gun.

The SIU has launched an investigation, and has already indentified one officer as its subject, with nine others who witnessed the shooting.
Nine investigators have been assigned to Saturday’s incident, and the SIU said a police-issued firearm, a stun gun, an anti-riot gun and a knife were found at the scene.

The Muslim Council of Peel, which spoke alongside the family at a Sunday press conference, identified the deceased as Ejaz Choudry.

Family members said they asked police to allow them to try to calm their uncle down, but were told by officers to be patient.

The family also said that officers were shouting at Ejaz Choudry in English, which he didn’t understand.

“Anyone in distress knows that ... when anyone you know that really cares about you comes and tells you ‘hey its going to be OK,’ it makes a difference,” said Hassan Choudry, another of his nephews. “None of us were able to go up there and say, ‘uncle, you’re going to be OK.’”

This is insane. This happened in Malton today. The police were called because a man was suffering a mental health crisis. So what did the police do? They climbed a ladder, entered the apartment from the balcony and opened fire on the man, shooting him multiple times pic.twitter.com/Gz9OMVuCih
— Ibrahim Hindy (@Hindy500) June 21, 2020

Family members said officers were shouting to Ejaz from the front door when they saw more officers enter the apartment from the back at around 8:30 p.m. They said they heard multiple shots ring out shortly after.

Ibrahim Hindy, president of the Muslim Council of Peel, told the press conference that police didn’t do enough to de-escalate the situation.

“It’s clear from everything that the family has already shared, from the eyewitness reports, from the video evidence that we have, that the senseless acts of Peel police yesterday was wildly excessive,” Hindy said. “It’s Father’s Day and he’s been robbed from being with his children.”

Hindy said he had no faith in an investigation by the SIU and called on political leaders to get involved.

Choudry’s family has set up an online fundraiser to support his widow and four children.

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The incident comes a month after the high-profile police-involved death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a Black woman who fell from her balcony and died after Toronto police responded to a mental health call.

The death prompted thousands of people to protest against racism and use of force by police in Toronto and across Canada.

The SIU continues to investigate both incidents.

Elsewhere in Canada, the police watchdog in Quebec is investigating after a 51-year-old man died during a police intervention in Montreal on Saturday.

Investigators said officers used pepper spray to subdue the man and handcuffed him after a chase, but noticed after that he’d lost consciousness and didn’t have a pulse.

And in nearby Oakville, Ont., an officer was suspended this weekend in relation to an online video that appears to show a cop pushing a man to the ground.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2020

Inside The Dangerous Online Fever Swamps Of American Police

Cops have a far-right media ecosystem of their own, where they post racist memes, spread disinformation and call for violence against antifa.
By Jesselyn Cook
Nick Robins-Early, HuffPost US


ILLUSTRATION: DAMON DAHLEN/HUFFPOST; PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

Around the time news broke on Monday afternoon that the New York City Police Department would disband plainclothes anti-crime units that had been tied to several high-profile police shootings, someone calling themselves “ltdad613” started a thread on Thee Rant, a police message board that purports to host current and former NYPD employees. “I wouldn’t want to be a [Commanding Officer] for the next few compstats,” ltdad613 wrote. “This is right from [New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio]. I feel for anybody still on the job.”

Elsewhere, the posts on Thee Rant were much darker. In one Monday thread, “dominop” wrote that “A Firing squad would be a good cure for ANTIFA!!!” Other users chimed in to say snipers or napalm might be more fitting.

Thee Rant is just one node in a wider web of right-wing police media. On similar message boards, in Facebook groups and on news sites such as Law Enforcement Today — a sort of Breitbart-like outlet written by and for police — there is a fervent narrative that police are under nonstop siege, and that antifa in particular is a constant threat.

This police media ecosystem is not necessarily a broad representation of what most cops believe. But inside this echo chamber, which has thousands of users and readers, extremist views dictate the narrative. Wild misinformation and bigotry are rampant, with people who claim to be current and former officers posting debunked falsehoods and racist stereotypes about protesters.

Intense public focus on police behavior in recent weeks, following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, has led to the termination of several law enforcement officers who posted conspiratorial or racist messages on their personal social media pages. When these posts are singled out for scrutiny and have a real officer’s name attached, opprobrium comes quickly, but most of those posts would be right at home in right-wing police media.
“What I think we have here is a market for this kind of racist and divisive garbage across the internet, and unfortunately police are participating in that wave that is witnessed across various professions,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “It pains me as a former NYPD officer to see this,” he said. “These posts are devastating.”

Levin doesn’t think people should assume that “cops en masse subscribe to this,” but he does see dangerous potential, because online echo chambers tend to “self-accelerate” bigoted beliefs. For “police in particular, who so often have to hold their tongue and try to restrain themselves,” he said, “online it becomes even more [of an] accelerant.”
The Extreme Views Of ‘Law Enforcement Today’

Law Enforcement Today claims to be the largest law enforcement-owned and -operated media company in America. It has repeatedly promoted far-right conspiracy theorists and authoritarian policies, particularly during the recent mass demonstrations against police violence.

Founded by Robert Greenberg, a Florida police captain who has called his outlet “a platform for the voice of law enforcement,” LET has more than 800,000 followers on Facebook and runs a syndicated radio show. Much of its content is provided by former or current police officers, and it offers paid memberships of $75 a year to gain access to “the patriotic content that the social media giants don’t want you to see.”

The site’s articles often bear only a passing resemblance to reality. Earlier this month, Law Enforcement Today published an article calling for the arrest of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, accusing him of aiding and abetting “antifa” terrorists. The post cited numerous far-right media activists, including anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, and suggested that Democratic officials including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.) are antifa sympathizers. It also baselessly attacked Tlaib and Omar, who are Muslim, as “arguably anti-Semites and ISIS supporters (if not in words, in actions).”

“Law Enforcement Today supports Laura [Loomer]’s demand that Dorsey be arrested and prosecuted for promoting an insurrection against the United States,” the article says. It also suggests that politicians such as Omar who have expressed support for the current protests against police brutality and systemic injustice should be arrested as well.

The article is published under the pseudonym “Sgt. A. Merica” and claims to be “written by several staff writers, including retired and wounded law enforcement officers.” Law Enforcement Today says it verifies the identity and background of its authors before publishing.

When it isn’t stirring fear of antifa, much of the site’s coverage focuses on law enforcement officers who have been harmed in the line of duty. It also regularly criticizes elected officials who are seeking to curb police powers, part of what the site calls a “war on law enforcement.” The consistent message is that police are perpetually under attack, and that the government — with the exception of President Donald Trump — does not have their back.

In recent weeks, rumors of antifa reaching small towns have created a kind of moral panic in some communities, leading to armed groups patrolling the streets. Law Enforcement Today has eagerly trafficked in these conspiracy theories. One LET article quotes a source purporting to be an anonymous Connecticut state trooper, who warns that riots in rural areas would be reminiscent of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that “once they start moving into rural America, there will be a LOT of bloodshed.”

Another one of Law Enforcement Today’s recent articles is a far-right screed that claims the Black Lives Matter movement and antifa are using protests to “destroy America from the inside.” The piece echoes common white nationalist talking points: It blames the “radical left” for attacking “our Judeo-Christian heritage,” and claims that Western society faces an existential threat in part from “mass immigration from sub-Saharan Africa and the middle east.” LET tagged the article as one of its “must reads.”

The site also ran an article endorsing far-right congressional candidate Marjorie Greene, who in a campaign ad from early June warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her rural Georgia district ― while cocking a gun ― and who has spread a conspiracy theory that billionaire George Soros is funding protesters. Greene has also voiced support for the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement. Facebook removed Greene’s ad from its platform for inciting violence.

Another Law Enforcement Today post promoted a Florida sheriff who responded to unfounded social media rumors of riots moving into small towns by encouraging homeowners to arm themselves and shoot people encroaching on their property. Multiple articles include tweets from QAnon conspiracy theorists.

False, incendiary claims about antifa have rocketed around the right-wing media ecosystem, from Twitter to Fox News and ultimately to the White House. Trump recently tweeted a baseless claim that Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old man who was seriously injured by police in Buffalo, New York, may have been an antifa instigator.

Greenberg, who founded Law Enforcement Today in 2007, is listed as a police captain with the Indian Creek Village Public Safety Department on its official website. It’s not exactly a rough-and-tumble job on the front lines of American policing. Indian Creek Village, Florida, is a tiny island enclave for the superrich that bills itself as “the world’s most exclusive municipality.” At the time of a Miami Herald report in 2014, it had only 86 residents, whose combined net worth exceeded $37 billion. Jay-Z and Beyoncé previously owned a home on the island. (Incidentally, Law Enforcement Today ran an article earlier this month opposing Apple Music’s support of Black Lives Matter and criticizing “cop-hater Beyoncé,” who was included in Apple’s playlist.)

The offices of the village public safety department and of its mayor did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on whether they have any policy on conduct or work outside of the department, or about Greenberg’s current employment status. Law Enforcement Today did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Old-School Message Boards Breed Hatred And Racism

Thee Rant, formerly NYPD Rant, bills itself as a salon of “New York City Cops speaking their minds,” though often the extremist rhetoric on the site more closely resembles 4chan. Edward Polstein, who was fired from the NYPD in 2004, created the site to give verified members of the force — both current and former — an outlet to anonymously vent about their jobs without fear of retribution.

The message board is a cesspool of disinformation, bigoted memes and far-right propaganda, and regularly lights up with racist comments after publicized incidents of police brutality against people of color. Lately, users have been targeting protesters participating in the nationwide Black Lives Matter marches sparked by Floyd’s killing.

Thee Rant posts in the past three weeks have described Floyd as a “mutt” and a “worthless thug,” Black people as “Negroids” and “ghetto rats,” and protesters as “scum.” Various posts call for violence against protesters and spread debunked conspiracy theories that are often sourced to far-right media outlets, including Breitbart, One America News Network and The Federalist.

One post, referring to the recent arrest of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mixed-race daughter, Chiara, is titled “DeBlasswhole’s Junkie Daughter Collared.” Another, “White Men Stand Up To Negroid Thugs And Looters In Philly,” cheered on a group of bat-wielding white men who reportedly intimidated protesters and assaulted a journalist in Philadelphia. A June 5 post called “BUFFALO PD KNOCKDOWN IS A HOAX” claimed that a video of police officers violently shoving Gugino to the ground, causing him to bleed from his ears, was staged to make cops look bad.

Many other posts on Thee Rant praise Trump, and even entertain QAnon conspiracies.

For much of the forum’s decadeslong existence, members have only been able to sign up with valid NYPD IDs, meaning its content has come directly from New York law enforcement. HuffPost could not independently verify if this is still the case — a request to join the group has not been approved — but posters continue to demonstrate an intimate familiarity with the department, its operations and its officials.

Thee Rant has for years been a source of embarrassment to the NYPD, which has said it’s been unable to take action due to the users’ anonymity.

“We see it. It’s a problem,” Stephen Davis, at the time the chief spokesperson for the NYPD, told ProPublica of the message board in 2015. But, he added, “there are privacy issues involved. We can’t go and peel back email names and tags and try to find out who these people are.”

Thee Rant posters “represent the worst elements of the department,” veteran police reporter Leonard Levitt, who died last month, said at the time. “I don’t think they speak for the average cop.”

Polstein has claimed he was terminated in retaliation for creating Thee Rant, which has long criticized the NYPD and city officials. The department’s given reason for his firing is that he reneged on a retirement deal. The dispute led to a bitter lawsuit, and in a 2008 deal that granted Polstein his pension, he agreed to rename the forum from NYPD Rant to Thee Rant.

“I haven’t been part of [Thee Rant] in over 10 years,” Polstein told HuffPost in an email. “I don’t know who runs it now.”

Thee Rant “is not affiliated with the New York City Police Department,” Sgt. Mary Frances O’Donnell, a spokesperson for the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information, told HuffPost. She didn’t answer repeated questions about whether the NYPD has investigated the possibility of its officers using racist and extremist rhetoric on the site.

On similar message boards that also claim to existfor police conversation, such as Law Enforcement Rant, posters suggest that the NYPD should “assign Police Officers by their ethnicity,” putting “Black Officers in black neighborhoods.” They ridicule officers who’ve been photographed kneeling in solidarity with protesters, and complain about citizens filming officers in public. Although some posts show self-described police officers grappling with questions of racism and brutality, the majority are hateful and angry.

“I know cops are beat up, tired, angry, and hurt. But every time we do something it will be recorded and will be used to play against us,” one Law Enforcement Rant poster lamented in a recent thread about the clip of cops assaulting Gugino.

“I recall being at many protests and we could use necessary force. But times have changed,” wrote another. “[The Buffalo video] looks terrible, especially a 75 year old person that wasn’t actively resisting or has a weapon or was fighting us in any real way,” a third poster wrote. “Right now it’s all about optics and the PD is losing the propaganda battle.”
Facebook’s Cop Communities

Social media sites are another place where law enforcement officers can find each other and talk about modern policing — and, lately, post a torrent of false and unsubstantiated antifa-related information. In many large pro-cop groups and pages on Facebook, people have been gleefully exchanging videos of “antifa” protesters getting beaten, and threatening to publish the personal information of supposed antifa activists. Many such pages and groups claim to be operated by police, although it’s unclear how many members are actually law enforcement officers.

A search for the term “antifa” in Back The Blue, a Facebook group with more than 60,000 members, yields dozens of recent results, including a blog post baselessly accusing Gugino of being a “professional agitator and Antifa provocateur” — another early example of police media circulating a conspiracy theory that the president would later share on Twitter to swift condemnation.

Posters in the Facebook group Law Enforcement Family, which claims to have been “developed by law enforcement officers” and has more than 53,000 members, perpetuate racist stereotypes about Black people and call cops who kneel with protesters “pussies.” Those in Brothers Before Others have been sharing entirely unsourced data about gang violence in Black communitiesand spreading debunked claims about antifa.

U.S. Law Enforcement, a page that claims to be run “by several current and retired US Law Enforcement Officers,” has also spread false information to its nearly 500,000 followers. It posted a screenshot of a tweet from what appeared to be an antifa account claiming that antifa would “move into the residential areas… the white hoods…. and we take what’s ours.”Butas Twitter quickly noted, a white supremacist group posing as antifa activists was actually behind that account. The U.S. Law Enforcement page has since acknowledged that the tweet was debunked, and suggested this happened because the Twitter account “may not have been ‘official.’” Yet it has not removed the false post from its page.
‘We Can’t Have That In Policing Today’

American police officers have already been tied to the spread of extremist content on social media. A Reveal News investigation last June found that hundreds of active-duty and retired officers, from every level of U.S. law enforcement, had quietly joined private Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia Facebook groups full of racist memes and conspiracy theories.

The investigation was a rare glimpse at the culture behind the blue wall. As Reveal News noted, disciplinary records and investigations into police misconduct “are kept secret in a majority of states, meaning most American cops enjoy a blanket of protection that can cover up biases.”

But the recent unrest has provokedsome law enforcement officials to openly broadcast their tolerance for police misconduct online, outside of these closed or little-known groups. In a Facebook post earlier this month, the Brevard County, Florida, chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police offered to rehire police officers from other areas who are charged with using excessive force against protesters.

“Lower taxes, no spineless leadership, or dumb mayors rambling on at press conferences,” promised the now-deleted Facebook post, for which Brevard County FOP President Bert Gamin has claimed responsibility. “Plus.... we got your back!”

Certainly not all police officers believe the wild stories pushed by Law Enforcement Today and circulated on pro-police social media groups. But right-wing media and many police labor leaders are heavily invested in the idea of presenting police as hard-right defenders of law and order.

Outlets such as Fox News and OAN often provide a safe space for former officers and labor officials to defend law enforcement’s conduct without challenge. One such voice has been police union leader Ed Mullins, head of the NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association, who in February announced the NYPD was “declaring war” on de Blasio and accused the mayor of fomenting anti-cop sentiment. Mullins has recently appeared on Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity’s shows, as well as far-right outlets Newsmax and OAN, where he called for military support to quell the protests.

Levin, from theCenter for the Study of Hate & Extremism, said police and city officials nationwide need to pay attention to what some cops are reading and writing online, and get a handle on it.

“We can’t have that in policing today,” he said. “We’re now in an era where police are so detached from many segments of the community that they serve that we don’t have the luxury of having this kind of garbage being tolerated within departments.”

New Yorkers Said ‘F**k The Police,’ So The Police Rioted
A historic uprising against police brutality in the city has seen the arrest of nearly 2,000 people, including me.
By Christopher Mathias, HuffPost US  06/03/2020 

NEW YORK — Thousands of New Yorkers over the last few days have taken to the streets in all five boroughs, setting cop cars aflame, braving beatings by batons and suffering pepper spray to the eyes, all so they can scream an urgent message for all the world to hear: Fuck the police.
They marched in Manhattan, where the New York Police Department once gunned down Patrick Dorismond.

In Queens, where the NYPD shot 50 bullets at Sean Bell.

In the Bronx, where an NYPD cop choked the life out of Anthony Baez.

In Brooklyn, where the NYPD shot 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr.

And they marched on Staten Island, where the NYPD stole the breath from Eric Garner’s lungs.

Nearly 2,000 protesters were arrested over five nights as America’s largest city joined a national uprising against police brutality that saw demonstrations in about 140 cities, a mass unrest the likes of which this country hasn’t seen in over a generation.

There were moments in New York when it felt like this multi-racial coalition of protesters, led largely by young people of color, was taking back the streets from the NYPD, a police force bigger than some nations’ armies that’s terrorized this city’s Black and brown residents since its founding.

It felt like more and more people here had come to question the cops’ monopoly on force and to embrace the radical idea of defunding the department, or even the abolitionist dream of a New York without New York’s Finest at all.

And so New York’s Finest erupted in violence.

The videos of tumult went viral. A cop speeding a patrol car into the middle of a crowd of protesters. A cop pulling down a man’s mask — worn to protect against the coronavirus — and pepper-spraying him in the face. Another using a car door to hit a man. One aiming a gun at demonstrators. Another shoving a woman into the ground so hard that she went into a seizure. And another could be heard saying “Shoot those motherfuckers” over the police scanner. The list goes on.

I witnessed cops brutalize and arrest people before being violently arrested myself.

And yet by Monday, New York’s Democratic governor, the city’s mayor and the country’s Republican president had settled on similarsolutions to all the turmoil: suppressing this historic uprising with more armed agents of the state.

To the protesters, it felt like their government still hadn’t heard them at all, and probably had never been listening in the first place.
“The Only Fucking Way They Understand”

On Saturday in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, thousands gathered outside the Parkside Avenue subway station under the afternoon sun for a series of speeches before that day’s marches. People hung out of windows and draped Black Lives Matter banners off of fire escapes while listening to the speakers below.

“You know how fucked up it is to turn on the news and see another nigga that look like you dead?” a young Black man asked the crowd through a megaphone.

“If you white,” he added, “and you not in the crowd, not on the fire escape, not on the roof screaming ‘Black lives matter’ in New York City … then get the fuck out!”

He and all the other speakers, all Black or Hispanic or Native American, invoked the names of Americans whose recent murders had sparked the demonstrations rocking dozens of U.S. cities: Breonna Taylor, shot by police in Louisville, Kentucky; Ahmaud Arbery, shot and killed while jogging in Georgia by a former cop and his son; and George Floyd, killed in Minneapolis just eight days ago, when a cop pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck and kept it there like a noose.

“We are George!” the crowd chanted.



Protest in Brooklyn getting big. Chants of “We are George!” and “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!” pic.twitter.com/aAI2kNn2H6— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) May 30, 2020


Constance Malcolm, the mother of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham, who was killed by the NYPD in 2012, was joined on the podium by her son Chinoor Campbell, who was only 6 years old when he witnessed a white cop shoot his unarmed big brother inside his own home.

A few years ago, Malcolm showed me the bloodstained bath mat she kept on a shelf in her home, from when the cop’s bullet tore through her son’s heart. She couldn’t bring herself to throw it away, she said.

Malcolm has marched in many protests against police brutality in this city, and I once visited her as she slept on the sidewalk outside a Department of Justice building in Manhattan, demanding a civil rights investigation into her son’s murder.

But to the crowd in Flatbush on Saturday, Malcolm argued that such nonviolent actions simply haven’t accomplished what needs to be accomplished.

“We see all the looting and burning buildings down and everything going on, and they call us thugs,” Malcolm said, referring to all the volatile demonstrations across the country, particularly in Minneapolis, where protesters ransacked and then burned down a police precinct.

“I’m not condoning the burning and stuff,” she continued, “but it’s the only fucking way they understand!”

The crowd roared. A short time later, Malcolm grabbed onto a banner that said “Justice for George Floyd,” her surviving son at her side, and led the crowd as it started to march through the streets.

Chants of “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!!” and “NYPD, suck my dick!” and “Fuck the police!” filled Flatbush Avenue.

Residents — many of whom have been stuck in their homes, out of work and sheltering from COVID-19, which has devastated predominantly Black and brown working-class neighborhoods like Flatbush — piled out onto the sidewalks to watch and sometimes join in.

An old man inside a bodega explained to another old man what the march was all about, pointing to his knee, and then to his neck.

People in cars — including sanitation workers in a garbage truck, and the drivers of Flatbush’s one-dollar vans, who are regularly harassed by the NYPD for providing cheap rides for locals in an area with scant subway service — honked horns to cheer on the protesters.

Auto shop workers stepped out of their shop to dance and throw up fists of solidarity. A crying woman screamed “I love each and every one of you!” out of a fourth-story apartment window.



Every single car the protesters pass in Flatbush is honking and cheering pic.twitter.com/h33KRgdQBn— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) May 30, 2020



Auto shop workers cheer on protesters marching past in Brooklyn pic.twitter.com/g4wSgVIumm— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) May 30, 2020


The protesters marched for blocks and blocks. A Black organizer occasionally chided white protesters to stay in the back, to let the Black and brown voices be front and center.

Some in the crowd wouldn’t talk to journalists, and why would they? The predominantly white local and national press has drummed up fear of Black New Yorkers or acted as stenographers for the NYPD.
MICHAEL NAGLE/XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGESA New York Police Department SUV is burned Sunday during a Brooklyn protest over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.


As day turned to dusk on Saturday, some protesters torched their first NYPD vehicle, a cruiser. Flames curled out the windows, just above the car decals declaring the “Courtesy, Professionalism, and Respect” of the department. Protesters warned others not to get too close in case the car exploded.

Cops in riot gear pushed back the protesters. A firetruck arrived, put out the fire and then left. And then the battle lines formed.

The NYPD stood in rows in the middle of the street, near a Shell gas station. Protesters formed a line directly in front of them. Both Black and white protesters called for white protesters to stand on the front lines, and the white protesters obliged.

A cycle emerged: protesters would throw projectiles at the cops — glass bottles, stones, the occasional fireworks — and cops would charge into the crowd, tackling and arresting protesters before dragging them back to waiting police vans as the melee subsided and the two sides resumed formations.

Michael, an attorney from Brooklyn, stood on the sidewalk during a brief interlude with his friend Jerome, who did not give their last names.

The violence didn’t start with the burning cop cars or the glass bottles flying through the air, Michael argued. The police started the violence a long time ago.

“Every other week, every other day, we hear another story of a Black man being gunned down or a Black woman being gunned down, and that’s not fair, and then they just get away with it, and enough is enough,” Michael said.

“We’re tired, and, no, we don’t want to be out here destroying cop cars and destroying our own neighborhoods and stuff like that, but that’s the way to —” Michael continued, before his friend Jerome interrupted.

“I’m fucking tired of that shit about ‘We are destroying our own fuckin’ community,’” Jerome said. “We do not fucking own the fucking community! We don’t own this shit! Every year we do not fucking own it. Stop fucking telling us that we destroy our own community. We don’t own shit that is fucking here!”

KEVIN HAGEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Activists carry protest signs during a march in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn on Sunday over the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Throughout the day, some protesters had carried signs calling for the defunding of the NYPD, a proposal that’s moved from more radical corners of the left to mainstream discourse in recent years. The idea is to reallocate a big chunk of the department’s mammoth $6 billion annual budget and instead invest it in housing, employment, mental health services and other non-police remedies for the problems of public safety.

“Just imagine if all of that money, or some of that money, was redistributed in the communities, to the broken schools, to our health care system,” Michael told me as the police prepared to charge again. “Like, come on! These are the communities that need it, and yet we don’t see that. We see police cars patrolling.”

The cops were getting angrier. When they charged this time, a white cop screamed “C’mere, you motherfuckers! You bitches!” while chasing after a young Black man.

A woman who gave her name as Jennifer L. yelled after a cop who had just violently tackled and arrested a protester.

“They don’t have no reason to be scared!” her voice trembled. “We should be scared! We should be scared! What are they scared for? Oh, a few bottles? A few bottles?! How about a knee? How about a knee?!”

Nearby, a young white couple stood stunned and silent holding hands and looking out across all the chaos. Their coronavirus masks were stained with baking soda, used as a treatment for the pepper spray that had left their eyes red and irritated. They’d been roughed up in the last police advance, they explained. A cop had hit the woman in the stomach with a baton.

They declined to tell me their names. “Our names are irrelevant in this whole thing,” the man said. “The lives that were lost are the only names that need to be repeated.”
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS

NYPD officers keep an eye on protesters in Brooklyn on Saturday while they clash during a march against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd.
After every time the cops charged, the protesters reassembled, staring down their heavily armed attackers, preparing for the next onslaught. They chanted, “Say her name! Breonna Taylor!” and “Say his name! George Floyd!”

They taunted the cops with chants of “NYPD, suck my dick!” and climbed atop a city bus abandoned in the street by its driver, arms outstretched as if, for a moment, the city where they lived actually belonged to them.

The battle lines started to dissolve. Cops ran riot after protesters all along Church Avenue as helicopters circled overhead, occasionally shining spotlights down onto the scattered melees.

I started to film the police charge as I walked backward with a group of retreating protesters, my press pass dangling from my neck.

A sprinting cop veered toward me and bumped into me with his shoulder as he ran past, yelling “Get out my way!” even though there was plenty of room around me.

I’d been watching the cops toss around young New Yorkers all day, pressing their faces into the concrete and cursing at them. I was worked up.

“Fuck you,” I told the cop.

He stopped charging after the protesters and circled back to me, shoving a baton into my chest and knocking me to the curb.

I don’t know how many cops piled on top of me, but there were a lot. A knee or a foot pressed my head and neck into the concrete. Hands tugged at my legs and arms in different directions while different voices issued impossible demands.

“Put your left hand behind your back!” The way my body was twisted, I couldn’t. “Stop resisting!” I wasn’t.

I asked them to look at my press pass. I told them I was a journalist. I begged them to get my phone, which had fallen out of my hand during the fracas.

“Shut the fuck up,” I heard one cop say.

When they cuffed me and stood me up, a white cop, maskless and with rage in his eyes, came within a few inches of my face. “Fucking asshole,” he called me.

Again and again, my press pass clearly visible on my neck, I pleaded for the cops to get my phone, worried that I’d lose so much of what I’d documented that day. The cops refused, leaving it on the street before escorting me to the police van.

If this is how they treat a white journalist, I thought.
COREY SIPKIN/UPI/NEWSCOMHuffPost senior reporter Christopher Mathias is taken into custody after being roughed up while covering the clash between police brutality protesters and New York Police Department officers on Saturday.

“Nigga, I Ain’t George”

As the cops escorted us into the 67th Precinct, we passed a hulking white cop on his way out into the street. He wore a “Punisher” skull patch on his bulletproof vest, a popularfascist ode among cops to the murderous vigilante comic-book character.

Inside the precinct lobby, a tired and demoralized cop stood by the front desk as new detainees were brought in for processing. He had only three years left until he could retire with a full pension, he told me. “If I could, I’d drop my belt and walk out of here right now.”

The officers then put me in a cell with 15 other guys. Everyonehad been arrested at the demonstration; most were Black or brown, save for me and three other white guys. The cops wouldn’t provide anyone with masks, and it was impossible to socially distance.

One of the white guys had a badly broken foot, bare and swollen on the cell floor. He pleaded with the cops for medical attention, and the cops assured him it was coming.

“You’ve just been lied to,” one of the other guys in the cell quipped.

Despite the circumstances, there was camaraderie, and the mood was almost buoyant. One guy polled the cell: Was this anybody’s first time in jail?

Only a few hands went up.

“I’ve been arrested 16 times,” said one respondent, a seasoned activist and protest medic. The cell erupted into cheers and applause so loud that three cops came to check on us.

Everyone started sharing their stories. One guy described liberating an NYPD riot shield from a police van earlier that day. He’d carried it through the crowd as everyone cheered.

Another guy described why he was dressed in sweatpants, an undershirt and Adidas slides.

He’d just stepped out of his apartment to check out the protests, he said, when cops tackled him. One of the cops pressed a knee hard into his neck.

“Nigga, I ain’t George!’” he said he’d told the officers, before using his strength to briefly free himself.

A little after midnight, cops arrived to take me to another precinct where they told me I’d be processed and released. My cellmates wished me luck and told me to stay safe.

The cops put me back into the van and we drove to the 72nd Precinct in Sunset Park. There they put me in a cell by myself and through the bars I could see a fresh batch of arrested protesters arrive in the lobby, including two Black women who were bleeding from the face.

“You’re murderers for hire!” one of the women screamed at the cops as she stood cuffed and crying, waiting to be put in a cell. “You’re murderers for hire!”

I was released and issued a summons to appear in court later this year for a charge of “refusal to disperse.”

A short time later, a spokesman for the New York City mayor’s office told my HuffPost colleagues in a statement that they “apologize” for what I had “experienced tonight.”

It’s unclear if any of the other hundreds of people arrested over the last few days have received such personal apologies from the mayor.

Instead, Mayor Bill de Blasio said officers had shown “tremendous restraint” during the demonstrations. On Monday, de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented a curfew in the city and announced they’d double the number of cops on the streets.

President Donald Trump, while he was threatening to sic the military on anti-racist protesters, used federal police to tear-gas protesters near the White House to clear space for a photo-op in front of a church Monday.

New Yorkers continued to protest on Monday anyway. A woman in Brooklyn stood atop a car holding a sign that read “Radical action brings radical change. #BLM.”

As they took over the Brooklyn Bridge, the sun setting over the Manhattan skyline, a single car accompanied the protesters as they walked, driving slowly with “Fuck Tha Police” blaring from the speakers, a raised Black fist reaching out of the sunroof.

CORRECTION: This article previously misattributed a quote to Kerbie Joseph, a Black woman and community organizer with the Party For Socialism and Liberation. The quote was made by a different speaker at Saturday’s protest rally.

Christopher MathiasSenior Reporter, HuffPost

BANANA REPUBLIC OF AMERIKA

2 Lawyers Of Color Face 45-Year Sentences — For Vandalism

Samantha Storey HuffPost June 22, 202

Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis (Photo: Courtesy of Hyder Kazmi, left; Meghna Philip, right)

In a high school English assignment in which students were asked to describe themselves as a metaphor, Colinford King Mattis had a lot of fun with his essay.

Mattis described himself as a piece of vintage furniture that you aren’t sure you want, but you bring it home anyway and put it in a room — and it somehow perfectly brings the room together, and you don’t know how you lived without it in the first place.

In recent days, dozens of colleagues, friends and former classmates have come together and reached for the same hopeful metaphor. As the 32-year-old lawyer sits in a Brooklyn jail awaiting a bail hearing, they say they can’t imagine a room without Mattis in it. He is a loyal and community-minded man who poses no threat to society and deserves to be released pending trial, they argue.

Mattis, along with Urooj Rahman, 31, was arrested in New York City on May 30 during protests against racism and police brutality following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. The two were charged with attempting to burn an unoccupied, already damaged New York City Police Department vehicle. Nobody was injured in the incident. Now Mattis and Rahman face additional federal charges that carry a 45-year mandatory minimum sentence, and up to life in prison — for what essentially amounts to property damage.

Activists and lawyers are alarmed by the unusually harsh charges being brought against them, and believe Mattis and Rahman should not be awaiting trial in jail. They say that they are not a threat to society — which the prosecution is arguing — and it is highly unlikely they’re a flight risk or will commit another crime. Mattis is a corporate lawyer educated at Princeton and NYU Law; Rahman went to Fordham Law and works for Bronx Legal Services, helping low-income clients fight evictions in housing court. Both grew up in New York and are deeply connected to their communities.

Mattis and Rahman — a Black man and Muslim woman — sit in jail at the same time that Derek Chauvin, the white police officer who killed George Floyd, awaits his trial from the comfort of home, and while the police officers who fatally shot Breonna Taylor have not even had charges brought against them.

The contrast in treatment of a white murder defendant and two activists of color is particularly stark at this moment people around the world are rising up and demonstrating against racism. Lawyers familiar with their case say it is highly unusual for defendants like Mattis and Rahman — Ivy-league educated and human-rights minded with no history of violence — to be held in jail, and not out on bail.

The decision of whether defendants are released or detained pending trial will determine whether they can be at home contributing to their legal defense or whether they will be in jail, where COVID-19 continues to run rampant; where inmates are frequently targets of violence; and where they are separated from their attorneys, peers and friends.

Hundreds of law students and professors from NYU — more than 850 — wrote to express their concern with the federal government’s aggressive charges and pursuit of pretrial detention; so did the Legal Services Staff Association union. Fordham Law School gathered 650 signatures from students and faculty. They wrote, “We believe that the Department of Justice’s prosecution and efforts to incarcerate Urooj and Colin are a gross overreach of federal law enforcement power, and an attempt to stifle and delegitimize dissent against police brutality.”

The head of Mattis’s former high school, the boarding school St. Andrew’s in Delaware, issued a statement to the school community in support of their former student. HuffPost spoke to Darcy Caldwell, his former English teacher, who described him as a teenager who overcame enormous academic hurdles to become successful in her class.

“Colin has so much goodness to offer this world and I hope he has the chance to do that,” she said.

Alexa Caldwell, Darcy’s daughter, attended school with Mattis and was on a trip to a school conference with him in 2006. He was always social justice minded, Caldwell said. She remembers boarding the bus back to the hotel and how he and his friend Ikenna Iheoma couldn’t stop talking about a senator they met. It wasn’t someone she had heard of before — his name was Barack Obama. They even took a photo with him.



Colin Mattis, right, with then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2006. 

Photo: Courtesy of Ikenna Iheoma

Initially after their arrest, Mattis and Rahman went before the Magistrate Judge Steven M. Gold, who presided over their arraignment virtually. He found that Mattis and Rahman could safely be released with electronic monitoring. But then federal prosecutors appealed the ruling; they believed the two were a potential threat to society and a flight risk. The case was then examined by the District Judge Margo K. Brodie. She reviewed Judge Gold’s decision and determined that Mattis and Rahman should be released, too. Mattis and Rahman were released on a $250,000 bond to home confinement with GPS monitoring.

From there the case took a highly unusual turn, according to lawyers familiar with it. Almost immediately, the government filed a notice of appeal. They announced that they were going to seek an emergency stay of the district court’s decision to send them home. On June 5, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit revoked Mattis and Rahman’s bond on the basis that the defendants were a continual danger to society. They were taken back into custody that day.

It is noteworthy that two of the three judges on the panel, Judge Michael H. Park and Judge William J. Nardini, were appointed by President Donald Trump, lawyers say.

“The disproportionate prosecution of Urooj and Colin is another iteration of the Trump administration’s attempt to detract from police violence in the US,” the Fordham Law School signatories wrote in their open letter. “Indeed, Rahman, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant and Mattis, a young Black man, are convenient scapegoats given this country’s deeply entrenched and violent history of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia.”

It is an extraordinary move for the government to order them back in jail, said J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights. What stands in harsh contrast is the notion that if you are a white police officer standing accused of murdering a Black man, you get to be out on bail, he said. But if you are Black and Muslim, you are too dangerous to await trial from home.

“It is an illustration of everything that is wrong with the criminal justice system,” Dixon said in a phone call with HuffPost. “It is the reason why thousands of people have taken to the streets around the world.”

Pretrial detention has enormous knock-on effects, according to the authors of a recent paper on what happens to defendants during the pretrial period. Being kept in detention during pretrial causally increases “the likelihood of a conviction, the severity of the sentence, and, in some jurisdictions, defendants’ likelihood of future contact with the criminal justice system.”

“They face a 45-year mandatory minimum,” Dixon said. “How do you square that? It is shocking and appalling that in the United States someone could spend 45 years in prison for vandalizing an empty police car that had been previously vandalized. That is not right.”
On Tuesday, Mattis and Rahman will go before another panel of judges — none of them Trump appointees.