Tag Archives: police reform

A Progressive Challenger Was Attacked For Calling To Defund The Police. She Won Anyway.

Originally published in The Intercept on June 4, 2020.
——–

CALLS TO DEFUND the police have become a focal point of nationwide protests following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, with local politicians from New York City to Los Angeles weighing new budget cuts to their police departments. While some critics dismiss the idea as politically untenable, a city council election in Washington, D.C., this week offers lessons on how politicians can succeed while pushing bold positions on policing.

Janeese Lewis George, a 32-year-old democratic socialist, decisively won an election in D.C.’s Ward 4 — the northernmost part of the city — despite facing weeks of attacks from her opponent that she was too radical on policing. She ousted the moderate incumbent, a protege of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, by a margin of 54-46 percent.

Lewis George, a Ward 4 native, ran on a platform of expanding affordable housing, creating higher-paying jobs, fighting money in politics, and supporting criminal justice reform. She also campaigned on demilitarizing the police and reallocating portions of the Metropolitan Police Department’s budget toward social services and violence prevention initiatives — a position that drew the ire of backers of her opponent, Brandon Todd.

Democrats for Education Reform-DC, a pro-charter school advocacy group that endorsed Todd, sent out a series of mailers in the weeks leading up to the Tuesday election taking Lewis George’s comments out of context and smearing her as being anti-police.

“It was very disheartening for me that they were trying to use my message of demilitarization to say I don’t care about safety when the exact reason I spoke out was because I believe we need to be safe,” she told The Intercept.

Todd, a moderate and former Republican, by contrast has called for putting more cops on the streets, and praised the mayor for proposing an increase to the MPD’s budget. He has also consistently voted against some of the most progressive bills to cross the council’s desk. He was one of four lawmakers to vote against the city’s paid leave law in 2016, and he voted to repeal a ballot measure that would have gradually eliminated the city’s tipped minimum wage. (A majority of voters in his ward backed the measure.)

Like many insurgent candidates, Lewis George’s challenge to Todd was an uphill battle from a fundraising perspective. But through amassing robust grassroots support, she was able to overcome that by participating in D.C.’s first year of publicly financed elections, where candidates eschew PACs and corporate donations and have their local contributions matched 5:1. Todd declined to participate in the program, arguing public dollars were better spent elsewhere.

Lewis George urged other politicians considering whether it’s safe to back bold police reforms to step up.

“This time is not the time for political leaders to be in a place of comfort but to be in a place of courage,” she said. “If you stand with the people, the people will come out and show up for you.”

LEWIS GEORGE HAS been particularly attuned to criminal justice issues since her time as a student at Howard Law School, where she learned about the immense discretionary power that prosecutors hold. She took this knowledge with her when she went to work as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, where she says she spoke out against what she saw as harsher punishments for the same offense when committed by black people. In 2016, she came back to D.C. to work for the city’s attorney general office, leading efforts in the Juvenile Section of their Public Safety Division that encouraged alternatives to jail time.

As a candidate, she urged an end to mass incarceration and the militarization of the police, ending cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and decriminalizing drugs and sex work.

It was these positions that drew attacks from DFER-DC. One mailer funded by the group misrepresented a tweet Lewis George posted in October, which promised to divest from the local police department and put money into “violence interruption” programs.

The DFER-DC funded mailer sent to Ward 4 voters claimed Lewis George “BRAGGED: ‘I WILL DIVEST FROM MPD!” It warned against letting Lewis George bring her “harmful ideas” to the city council and claimed she was looking to cut police officers.

Image-1-copy

Another mailer funded by DFER-DC pulled answers Lewis George had given to a Metro DSA questionnaire out of context.

The questionnaire had asked about whether she supported efforts to “demilitarize and disarm” police departments. Lewis George said yes, and explained “We’re told the institution of policing is intended to protect all of us from some suspicious menace, but the fact is that crime is a public health problem, not a battle of military opponents. The transformation of American police departments, especially the MPD, into military units trained to occupy the very communities promised protection is one of the greatest dangers to the future of urban life.”

The DFER-DC mailers read “Our police officers have dedicated their lives to keeping Ward 4 families safe. But Janeese Lewis George calls them ‘one of the greatest dangers to the future of urban life,’” suggesting she was denigrating officers specifically, not the militarization of their departments.

DFER-DC’s director Ramin Taheri declined to comment on the mailers or on Lewis George’s win, but said in an email that his group stands in support of the police brutality protesters organizing in the wake of Floyd’s death. “Our mission has always been to elect candidates who will fight to reverse the educational inequities that too many Black children face, and like many, we are reflecting on how we can be a better ally in dismantling systemic racism in the District.”

He previously told Washington City Paper that his group crafted its mailers based on recent polling that most Ward 4 voters were less likely to vote for someone who wanted to cut police officers from the force. The telephone poll, which was conducted by Garin-Hart-Yang Research in late April, also said Todd had a 22 percentage point advantage over Lewis George, and that she was unlikely to win a majority of the 25 percent of then- undecided voters. Taheri told City Paper they quoted Lewis George correctly in their ads.

In an interview, Lewis George blasted DFER-DC and emphasized that cutting the police budget isn’t synonymous with cutting officers.

“The fact that they saw my platform as a weakness instead of a conversation to have in the community about what it means to be safe speaks to their ultimate goal which is not reforming education but retaining power within our political system,” she said. Lewis George also noted that when D.C. Councilmember and Education Chair David Grosso spoke out about the militarization of the police both in 2017 and as recently as a few days ago, DFER-DC did not object.

THE SUBJECT OF DFER-DC’s attacks on Lewis George have become especially relevant as the call to defund the police has gone mainstream over the last week amid nationwide police brutality protests. While activists have long called for the same types of reforms Lewis George champions, elected officials across the country are now taking note. On Wednesday, the president of the Los Angeles City Council introduced a measure asking city staff to find up to $150 million in possible cuts to the local police department, and to reinvest those funds into poor communities and communities of color. In New York, state Sen. Julia Salazar recently argued for cutting the New York Police Department’s $6 billion budget and transferring those dollars to nonprofit organizations and mental health services.

In D.C., a growing chorus of activists have been calling to defund the MPD, which is one of the 10 largest police departments in the nation. The city council is currently reviewing Bowser’s budget proposal, which would increase police funding by 3.3 percent — resulting in a budget of over $500 million — coupled with an 11 percent cut to violence prevention programs.

“I think it’s easy for people to lean on doing the same things again and again out of comfort,” said Lewis George, when asked about the proposed budget. “But the point has to come when you realize that doing the same thing over and over isn’t going to produce the results you want.”

Makia Green, a local organizer with the Working Families Party who embedded herself in Lewis George’s campaign, told The Intercept that she believes the negative mailers backfired.

“They were a complete failed attempt at misleading voters and putting forth scare tactics,” she said. “They tried to mislead about Janeese’s record, plans and support we have and instead I think it helped strengthen people’s resolve, and turn more passive supporters into active ones.”

Lewis George notably had the backing of not just DSA and WFP, but labor unions like the Washington Teachers Union, Unite Here Local 25, and SEIU Local 500.

Black Lives Matter DC and Sanctuary DMV also backed Lewis George — their first political endorsements ever. “We do not take making endorsements lightly,” April Goggans, an organizer with Black Lives Matter DC said in November. “Janeese[‘s] policy and budget priorities around public safety, policing, and addressing intra-community violence are informed by values and principles that not only align with ours but will result in real safety.”

Benjy Cannon, a spokesperson for Unite Here Local 25, called Lewis George’s win a victory for organized labor and workers. “Her campaign showed that when we’re united, a powerful coalition of workers, tenants, progressive advocacy groups, and grassroots activists can defeat even the most deep-pocketed corporate interests,” he said.

Advertisement

After a Black Cop Was Convicted Of Killing a White Woman, Minnesota Activists Say Focus Should Be Police Reform

Originally published in The Intercept on May 2, 2019.
—–

ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, outside the Hennepin County government building in downtown Minneapolis, a few dozen community activists gathered in the cold to process the rare and polarizing conviction of Mohamed Noor, a Somali American and former police officer. A day earlier, a Hennepin County jury found 33-year-old Noor guilty of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, who had called the police to report a possible sexual assault in her neighborhood in the summer of 2017. Noor shot and killed her, and at trial, he claimed self-defense.

The case has galvanized local activists, some of whom embraced the verdict and others who say that, in a criminal justice system where cops are rarely held accountable for on-duty killings, Noor was unfairly targeted because he is a black man who killed a white woman.

At the rally, Leslie Redmond, the president of the Minneapolis branch of the NAACP, said the case was a “scapegoat” against a man of color to fool residents into thinking “the police force is in tact.” Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights lawyer and local racial justice leader, said Noor’s conviction reveals how the court system treats white people differently compared to everyone else.

Family members of other police shooting victims gave speeches, including Kimberly Handy-Jones, a mother who lost her 29-year-old son to St. Paul police in 2017, and Don Amorosi who lost his 16-year-old son to Carver County deputies last summer. Activists held up signs for other local victims of police shootings, like Tycel Nelson, a 17-year-old shot and killed in Minneapolis in 1990, and Philip Quinn, a 30-year-old shot and killed by a St. Paul police officer in 2015.

Noor’s conviction marks the first guilty verdict for a fatal shooting by an on-duty cop in Minnesota in decades — something that brings both relief to advocates who seek greater accountability for police shootings but also anguish, as residents wrestle with the racial realities of the conviction. Meanwhile, in recent police killings of unarmed black men in the Twin Cities, white cops involved were either not charged at all or acquitted of charges. According to data compiled by the Star Tribune, Noor’s case marks the first conviction out of 179 police-involved deaths in Minnesota since 2000.

“There would have been no trial if Noor’s victim was African American or Native American, and I think the vast majority of people in our movement believe that,” said Jess Sundin, an activist with the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice4Jamar; the group is named after 24-year-old Jamar Clark, a black man shot to death by Minneapolis police in 2015 and whose killers faced no criminal charges. “There also would have also been no conviction if it was a white police officer.”

The July 2017 killing led to a number of shuffles within the police department. Following Damond’s death, then-Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges requested the city’s police chief step down, leading to the appointment of Medaria Arradondo, the city’s first African American police chief. Noor was fired shortly after being charged in March 2018.

In the wake of the verdict, a broad swath of activists are seeking to build on their multi-year efforts to reform the police and use Damond’s case as a way to highlight racial disparities in the criminal justice system. There has been global interest in the case because Damond was Australian, and the activists are leveraging that attention to make their concerns and demands known to a wider audience.

A GROUP OF Damond’s neighbors, who started organizing under the banner of Justice4Justine shortly after her death, planned the rally with the backing of local groups, including the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice4Jamar, Black Lives Matter Minnesota, and Communities United Against Police Brutality.

Todd Schuman, an activist with Justice4Justine, told The Intercept they planned the rally because “we’re not afraid to say that in the dozens of other examples where white officers shot black victims, there wasn’t anything close to the level of investigative rigor, anywhere close to the level of media coverage, or a result in a conviction.” Schuman emphasized that his group is “not afraid to name that disparity, and we want to create a space where families of police violence victims who did not receive justice have their opportunity to share their perspective.”

Noor’s guilty verdict has had reverberations throughout Minnesota, galvanizing not only the activists who held the Wednesday rally, but also prompting reactions from elected officials and the local Somali community.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose legislative district includes Minneapolis, released a statement on Wednesday morning calling Noor’s guilty verdict “an important step towards justice and a victory for all who oppose police brutality.” Omar also said it cannot be lost that Noor’s verdict comes in the wake of other acquittals for officers who took the lives of people of color, and called for “the same level of accountability and justice” for all officer-involved killings. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement that the city must come together, and that Minneapolis stands with both the Somali community and the local police. “Wherever a person’s beliefs may part ways with today’s decision, we should find comfort in knowing that not one person in Minneapolis hoped for what transpired that July night,” he said.

Other members of the local Somali community said Noor was wrongfully convicted. Community leader Omar Jamal told local news outlet WCCO that many Somali people had called him to say they feel Noor was innocent. Noor’s cousin, Goth Ali, told the Star Tribune that the decision was “shocking” and that he thought Noor “didn’t get a fair trial.”

The Somali American Police Association, or SAPA, released a statement saying it “believes the institutional prejudices against people of color, including officers of color, have heavily influenced the verdict of this case.” The “aggressive manner” taken by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, the group said, “reveals that there were other motives at play other than serving justice.” SAPA, which expressed condolences to Damond’s family, said it fears the “differential treatment” given to minority officers will “have a devastating effect on police morale and make the recruitment of minority officers all the more difficult.”

The incident is reminiscent in some respects to the 2014 killing of 28-year-old Akai Gurley, a black man shot by a Chinese American police officer while in a Brooklyn public housing complex. Gurley’s death came just four months after Eric Garner, another black New Yorker, was killed after being placed in a chokehold by a white police officer. In Gurley’s case, NYPD cop Peter Liang was indicted in 2015, a rarity for police-involved killings, and in 2016, a jury found him guilty of manslaughter — another extremely rare outcome. The charges sparked some of the largest Asian American protests in decades, as Liang’s supporters accused prosecutors of scapegoating Liang due to his race. (Two months after Liang’s conviction, a judge reduced the charges, sentencing him to just five years of probation and 800 hours of community service.)

Reached for comment, Minneapolis Police Union President Lt. Bob Kroll said his union “respects the legal process and the findings of the jury.” He said this has been an “extremely unfortunate situation for all involved” and that his union sends condolences to Ruszczyk’s family, and that “our thoughts are with former Officer Noor.” At the rally on Wednesday evening, activists said Kroll threw Noor under the bus by firing him and only nominally speaking up in support of him; they argued the union would have more vigorously defended a white officer. Justice4Justine criticized the police union’s statement on the verdict as “empty and vapid.”

The Minneapolis Police Department did not return request for comment, but Arradondo, the chief of police, released a statement on Tuesday to say he “respect[s] the verdict rendered” and will “ensure that the MPD learns from this case and we will be in spaces to listen, learn and do all we can to help our communities in healing.” Through collaboration and partnerships, he added, “I am hopeful that we will strengthen our community wellness and safety.”

WHEN JUSTICE4JUSTINE FIRST formed, neighbors focused primarily on supporting Justine’s grieving fiancé, Don Damond, and the Ruszczyk family, who are based in Australia. Over time, according to Schuman, the group began shifting their energies toward police reform and police violence more broadly.

“We have a lot of mixed feelings,” Schuman said of the verdict. “We said from almost day one that for us, this is more than just one trial and one verdict, and while we wanted a conviction, in this case, the real justice that we’re looking for is a comprehensive reform of the police. Our commitment is to a justice system where what Justine got is what everyone gets.”

One of the concrete policy changes racial justice organizations in the Twin Cities have pushed for is ending so-called “warrior-style” police trainings, which activists describe as a fear-based approach that encourages cops to believe they are always under threat. Last May, about four dozen people staged a protest outside the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, to call for the mall to stop sponsoring the trainings and for local police departments to stop using them.

Last month, in a victory for activists, Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, announced that the city’s police officers will no longer be allowed to use the warrior-style training. “Chief Medaria Arradondo’s police department rests on trust, accountability, and professional service,” the mayor said in his recent State of the City address. “Whereas fear-based, warrior-style trainings like ‘killology’ are in direct conflict with everything that our chief and I stand for in our police department. Fear-based trainings violate the values at the very heart of community policing.”

Sundin of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice4Jamar told The Intercept that her group remains focused on prosecution for Jamar’s killers, hoping to see the case reopened. Sundin said her group is also focused on getting community control over the police through an elected board of community representatives. “Our experience has been that the mayor and the city council—both those presently in office and those before—have been unwilling to fire abusive police officers, and we want that to change,” she said. “We think the community has every right to decide who policies our communities and how.” Community control would go beyond just disciplining officers when something goes wrong, Sundin explained, and would also include “writing the rule book” for police officers and negotiating contracts.

When asked to reflect on how things have evolved since 2015, Sundin said she thinks there is a greater recognition of police brutality among residents of the Twin Cities and a deeper understanding from the media to not “parrot the police’s story without looking into it first.”

Sundin also says the Minneapolis police chief being asked to resign following Damond’s death marked a significant development, because a police chief “had never before been held accountable for the police killings that happen under their watch.” Arradondo replaced Janeé Harteau, who stepped down in July 2017.

The last difference, Sundin said, is that she thinks there’s a much greater awareness surrounding the “shoddy investigation work” conducted by the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that helps law enforcement agencies prevent and solve crimes. In December 2017, a video surfaced of Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman telling a group of union members that the BCA was doing a poor job of collecting evidence that could lead to charges against Noor. While Freeman later apologized for his remarks and said he didn’t know he was being recorded, he also extended the time for the BCA investigation, something Sundin says has never happened before.

“Every family we’ve ever talked to has had the experience of the BCA botching investigations, but in Justine’s case, it came to light because Mr. Freeman was caught on tape criticizing the BCA for its bad investigatory work,” Sundin said. During the trial, which was held in April, prosecutors also criticized the BCA for its initial handling of the investigation, citing things like waiting three days to interview the only witness and refusing to investigate the source of the screaming that prompted Damond to call the police in the first place. On Wednesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced that his office was looking into the allegations surrounding the BCA’s investigation.

Chuck Laszewski, a spokesperson for Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, told The Intercept his office is not taking individual interviews on the case until Noor is sentenced on June 7. At a press conference after the trial, though, when Freeman was asked about the allegations that he worked harder to charge a black officer who killed a white woman, Freeman denied that he would have behaved differently in the case of a black person shot by a white cop. “Race has never been a factor in making any decision and never will be,” Freeman said. “We have charged white cops with crimes, and we will again.”

Baltimore Is Finally Doing Something About Its Notorious Police Force

Originally published in VICE on January 12, 2016.
—-
The city of Baltimore and the federal government unveiled the terms of a sweeping 227 page consent decree Thursday morning, a legal document mandating reforms to the local police force. The deal emerged 21 months after 25-year-old Freddie Gray died while in police custody in April 2015, and five months after a scathing Department of Justice report alleged a litany of unconstitutional, racist, and just plain mean-spirited policing practices in Charm City.

“Through this agreement, we are moving forward together to heal the tension in the relationship between BPD and the community it serves,” US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at a press conference in the city. “The agreement is robust and comprehensive,” she added, emphasizing that it was negotiated to ensure effective policing, restore the community’s trust in law enforcement, and advance the public and police officers’ safety.

Like 14 similar deals currently being enforced on law enforcement jurisdictions across America, the Baltimore consent decree lays out a number of new rules and systemic changes. Among other things, it calls for a community oversight task force to recommend tweaks to the current civilian oversight systems, insists on respect for individuals’ First Amendment rights to protest and monitor the police, imposes guidelines on proper use of force and transport of people in custody, protocols on constitutional stops, searches, and arrests, requirements for annual “community policing” trainings for all officers, and new procedures for conducting sexual assault investigations. While the BPD has moved to implement some of these reforms already—which the decree acknowledges and commends—Baltimore now has a legal tool to help cure what critics believe is a broken culture of often-brutal policing.

The deal also represents one of the last chances for the Obama administration’s activist Justice Department to leave its fingerprint on the American criminal justice system—and to rein in rogue cops at the center of Black Lives Matter protests. The only question is how aggressively a new, “law and order” happy White House under Donald Trump will enforce it.

The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of the Police, the local police union, quickly issued a critical statement after news of the decree broke Thursday, bemoaning the fact that they were not included in the negotiations. “Despite continued assurance by representatives of the Department of Justice that our organization would be included in the Consent Decree negotiations, no request to participate was ever forthcoming and we were not involved in the process,” the statement said. “As we were not afforded an advance copy of the agreement, neither our rank and file members who will be the most affected, nor our attorneys, have had a chance to read the final product and, as such, we will not have a comment now. Be assured, however, that a response will be forthcoming at the appropriate time.”

Police unions in other cities have worked to block reform efforts through their collective bargaining agreements, and Baltimore activists say they are bracing for similar resistance from the local FOP. The Baltimore police union has opposed reforms to the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights, which governs how officers accused of misconduct are treated in Maryland. Some activists say the statewide law stands as the city’s biggest barrier for meaningful police accountability and transparency.

In October, for its part, the Baltimore FOP issued its own recommendations for inclusion in the consent decree, calling for things like increased whistleblower protections, more cops, and technology upgrades.

During his confirmation hearings for US Attorney General this week, Alabama US Senator Jeff Sessions expressed skepticism about using consent decrees to force change in police departments. “These lawsuits undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness,” he said. Sessions also once wrote that court-ordered consent decrees were “undemocratic” and “dangerous,” which taken with his more recent comments has served to send a chill down the spine of police reformers nationwide.

Still, Outgoing Attorney General Lynch assured the public at Thursday’s press conference that the consent decree “will live on past this administration.” After all, it is court-enforceable and there will be an independent monitor overseeing the agreement.

But Lawrence Brown, an assistant professor of public health at Morgan State University, told VICE he has “no faith in Trump’s folks, especially if it’s Beauregard Sessions” and that he expects the police union to oppose key elements of the agreement. “Other means will have to be utilized to ensure this is enforced,” he said, pointing to ongoing efforts to change or repeal the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights.

Meanwhile, DeRay McKesson, a Black Lives Matter national activist and administrator in the Baltimore City Public School system, praised the agreement on Twitter for its scope, and noted that it’s the first consent decree he’s ever seen to include school police.

 

Skepticism that the new administration will hold local cops’ feet to the fire abounds, however. One member of Baltimore Bloc, a grassroots group focused on police reform, told VICE that she and her fellow activists have no confidence in a Trump DOJ to enforce the consent decree, even if they had their doubts about enforcement under a Hillary Clinton DOJ, too. “I think Baltimore Police is going to resist it all the way, FOP’s statement is already obstructionist as hell, and it was the police gleefully violating people’s rights that got us here,” the activist said.

The city has been under pressure to finish the consent decree before Inauguration Day. That’s because once the agreement is finalized—it still needs court approval—a federal judge will be empowered to enforce it, no matter who is president or US attorney general. Still, legal experts generally agree that if the police department or city political leadership fail to follow through on the terms of the agreement, it will be up to Trump’s Department of Justice to take them to court to compel change

Baltimore Jews join Freddie Gray protests – but it’s complicated

Originally published in Haaretz on May 5th, 2015
________________
After a tumultuous couple of weeks in Baltimore, in which protests, marches and riots raged through Charm City following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray — the Jewish community moved to raise funds, organize volunteers and engage in interfaith outreach. But in Baltimore, which has a complicated, and often fraught, history of Jewish-black relations, there is both a commitment to fight inequality and a reluctance to ruffle long-established relationships with city officials and the police.

The Baltimore Jewish Council, which represents about 55 local congregations and institutions, issued a statement that called for Jews to “stand beside our African American partners to combat racism and economic inequality.” Arthur Abramson, BJC’s executive director for the past 25 years, says his organization “has not hesitated for one moment” to stand up for injustice.

But he was frank about the challenges that remain for Jews seeking to combat racism. “Look, Maryland is a southern state. It was a slave state. In general, it’s not what I would describe as a place where African Americans and Jews sit around and sing ‘Kumbaya,’” he said.

Throughout the decades there have been plenty of instances of Jewish racism and black anti-Semitism in the city. Still, Abramson feels proud of the improved relations the BJC has helped to build over the past 25 years, which he attributes to concerted engagement, dialogue and programs involving the two communities.

Rabbi Etan Mintz, who leads Baltimore’s oldest and continually active synagogue, B’nai Israel, spent much of last week – as protests spread in the city and elsewhere following the death of Gray, for which six police officers have been charged – working with other local clergy.

“It’s a very powerful experience just to listen to people, to pray with people, and to be a presence face-to-face with one another,” Mintz said. He noted what he called the “outrageous reality” of poverty, inequality and mass incarcerations, but also stressed that the majority of police officers in the city are “peace-loving individuals who are trying to protect us on a daily basis.” He is concerned about a phenomenon of “guilt by association” — linking the broader police force to a few bad officers who acted inhumanely.

Mintz’s synagogue, which is Orthodox, is located downtown near the Inner Harbor, the former epicenter of Baltimore Jewish life. Now B’nai Israel, which is the last of what were once 20 synagogues in this area, is sometimes nicknamed “the Masada of East Baltimore.”

Jews began moving out toward the suburb of Pikesville in the 1950s and ’60s, and Mintz says the real “nail in the coffin” of inner-city presence was the 1968 riots, where many Jewish businesses were looted and destroyed. The latest disturbances, he adds, have sparked difficult memories for some of his congregants.

Solidarity events

Another organization, Jews United for Justice, (JUFJ) has taken a more demonstrably public role in supporting African-American protestors. The group was formed in late 2014 to provide an outlet for Jews, mostly in their twenties and thirties, to engage in social justice work. Many of these activists turned out for Ferguson solidarity events earlier in the year, so it was not surprising to see 30 JUFJ members marching on April 25th in Baltimore with black-and-white picket signs that called for #JusticeForFreddie.

Last Friday, the day Baltimore’s State Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that the six policemen would face criminal charges, the number of JUFJ members who turned out to march rose to 100.

“I think this reflects the growing interest,” says JUFJ member Owen Silverman Andrews. “[We have] created a space where people can plug in within their own communities in a way that is still connected to the larger struggle.”

Marc Terrill, the president of The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, says he is pleased with the fast response the Jewish community took, and continues to take, in showing solidarity with the Freddie Gray protests. He says that ultimately there needs to be an agenda, both with short-term and long-term goals.

In the short term, the Associated has helped to organize volunteers and raise funds for food, toys and other supplies in order “to rebuild the communities torn asunder by wide-spread looting and vandalism,” according to its website. In the long term, Terrill mentions the need to promote greater access for city residents to health care, job training, education, counseling and mentoring programs, and to contribute to an overall greater push for societal integration.

“Our relationship with the African-American community is collaborative,” Terrill says. “Not everything is good, but we have the will and desire to work at it.”

While the Jewish community is presenting a relatively united front for now, the question of how and if its members will come together around the issue of police reform remains unclear. This community is one of the more politically conservative Jewish communities in the United States. And the established relationships Jewish leaders have cultivated with city and state officials — which have helped ensure enhanced security and support for Jewish groups and institutions — are very important.

The BJC did not come out strongly for any of the police reform bills that were being considered in Annapolis this past legislative season, despite months of organizing and campaigning by local activists. By contrast, members from JUJF, including Rabbi Daniel Burg, who leads an egalitarian synagogue in Reservoir Hill, offered testimony in support of legislation that would alter the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights.

Jewish communal leaders have all expressed a commitment to tackle the “deeper issues” provoked by the Freddie Gray protests – specifically with regards to economic inequality and poverty. However, whether they will be able to do so without inserting tension into some of their long-standing political relationships remains to be seen.

Inside the Chaos, Rage and Confusion That Consumed Baltimore Last Night

Originally published in VICE on April 28, 2015.
_______

10996095_3087979085951_8514579901023162352_n

 photo credit: Rachel Cohen

As I walked through the streets of West Baltimore on Monday evening, small bright green opiates littered the sidewalk, pills left over from when the local CVS pharmacy was looted hours earlier. The air felt thick and musty—police had fired teargas canisters near the Penn-North subway station. By 6:15 PM, clouds of smoke were pouring out of the empty pharmacy, which filled with flames. At one point, protestors cut the hose that was being used to put out the fire.

Except for a few young activists hoisting “Justice 4 Freddie Gray!” picket signs, most people hanging around were not protestors. The majority of Baltimoreans on the streets were just snapping photos and watching the events unfold as spectators. Unlike Saturday’s protests, where thousands proudly marched, chanted, and gave speeches about accountability and justice for Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black Baltimore resident who suffered a fatal spinal cord injury while in police custody earlier this month, Monday felt perilously chaotic.

By the corner of North Avenue and Pennsylvania, just a half-mile down from where Freddie Gray’s funeral took place earlier that day, two Maryland Transit Administration vehicles were burning. A wrecked police car sat in the middle of the street a few hundred feet down—every one of its windshields and windows cracked and shattered. Broken glass lay by its tires. By 9 PM, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan had deployed National Guard troops, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake announced there would be a weeklong 10 PM curfew, and all public schools were cancelled for Tuesday. The city was officially declared to be in “a state of emergency.”

Saba Nazeer, a local resident who works with the Right to Housing Alliance, a Baltimore housing justice organization, came out to watch one standoff unfold between high school students and the police. The cops knew to meet the teenagers because a flier circulating earlier on social media called for students to meet for a “purge” out by the mall after school. (Frederick Douglass High School is across the street from Mondawmin Mall.) Dozens of cops were ready to meet the 75 or so students that showed up. Things escalated quickly. Students hurled bricks, rocks, and bottles at the police; cops sprayed mace and teargas. Fifteen officers were injured in clashes around the city, six seriously, and two were hospitalized Monday evening.

“These kids were going to fight for their neighborhoods, and they want justice not just for Freddie Gray but for all those who have died at the hands of police in their communities,” Nazeer said, defending the students. “I’ve been seeing it all day, the police try to put fear in the communities, they harass and bully. They’ve been doing it for decades. And people are tired of it.”

10386269_3087980605989_3794526195910937202_n

photo credit: Rachel Cohen

Speaking out Monday night, hours after the funeral, Freddie Gray’s mother Gloria Darden pleaded for the violence to end. “I want you all to get justice for my son,” she said. “But don’t do it like this here.”

A national conversation on police brutality broke out after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner last year, but local cops’ excesses have been a major political issue in Baltimore for a while now. A Baltimore Sun investigation released in September found that the city paid out $5.7 million in judgments and settlements in cases related to alleged police brutality and civil rights violations since 2011. Even before Gray’s death, the city was haunted by two recent high-profile incidents of unarmed Baltimore black men dying in police custody— Tyrone West in 2013 and Anthony Anderson a year earlier. Cops faced no charges following the deaths of either men.

Since West’s death in July 2013, Baltimore community members have convened outside City Hall every Wednesday to call for the police to be charged with homicide. (These weekly demonstrations are locally referred to as “West Wednesdays.”) Activists keep count— Monday marked day 648 since West’s death. While an independent review issued in August determined that the police did not use excessive force, some still insist they saw cops kick West in the head, yank him by his dreadlocks, and beat him with batons.

In September, an alarming video surfaced that showed a Baltimore cop repeatedly punching a man. Unable to ignore the damning footage, Mayor Rawlings-Blake vowed to develop a “comprehensive” plan to address police brutality in the city. A few months later, however, she vetoed a bill that would have required city police to wear body cameras. Rawlings-Blake has said she supports the measure, but felt the specific legislation proposed was not within the City Council’s authority.

Freddie Gray was arrested on April 12 after making eye contact with police and taking flight, but more than two weeks later the public has still not been given any meaningful details about how he sustained his fatal injury. (He died on April 19.) Last week, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts admitted Gray was unbuckled when police placed him in a van despite being shackled and handcuffed, and noted that Gray’s multiple requests for medical attention were ignored. Other findings from the department’s internal investigation, however, have not been made public. More information will be released on May 1— a deadline Batts set to share findings with Baltimore’s State Attorney.

“This is one case where body cameras certainly would have been useful,” said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore City Police Officer and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We’d have a lot better idea of what actually happened, and we’d know far more quickly.” (A bystander’s mobile footage showed Gray writhing in agony as police carried him away.)

11203050_3087978045925_2724119197233361859_n

photo credit: Rachel Cohen

Baltimore Bloc, a grassroots activist group in Baltimore, has announced that they are planning another protest for Freddie Gray Tuesday afternoon at 3 PM. They told me that while their collective has been in “emergency response mode” for the past two weeks, eventually they will begin to outline more long-term plans. The “pace and emotion [has] left us with less space than we normally have to strategize,” they explained. But soon, they will join with other local organizing groups to “turn our attention to the next steps, including legislative strategy at the state level and organizing here at home for the 2016 city elections.”

Speaking at a press conference in the evening, Mayor Rawlings-Blake referred to the Monday rioters as “thugs” who were senselessly “trying to do tear down what so many have fought for.” Some 200 arrests were made by Tuesday morning. Brandon Scott, a city councilman, said, “We can’t let this be a repeat of 1968″—referring to the violent Baltimore riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. “Adults have to step up and be adults.”

Tensions between political leaders, police, and community members are unlikely to abate any time soon, but multiple community cleanup efforts are being organized on social media today in West Baltimore. One group will be meeting back by the Penn-North subway station at 10 AM, and another will start at 2 PM by the University of Baltimore. Organizers have asked individuals to bring their own gloves, trash bags, brooms, and food.