We pay taxes to send police to Israel for “counter terrorism” training, only to have them return to America and use what they learned from the IDF to more efficiently brutalize Black and Brown civilians (source) (source) (source)
Dean of law school orders first amendment clinic to curtail core work, including on Atlanta Police Foundation case
"The dean at the University of Georgia’s law school has ordered its first amendment law clinic to cease all work related to public records law – including a lawsuit against the Atlanta Police Foundation, the non-profit organization behind a planned $109m training center colloquially known as Cop City.
Dean Peter B “Bo” Rutledge gave the order to clinic director Clare R Norins within weeks of the clinic’s February announcement that one of its attorneys would be representing the digital news outlet Atlanta Community Press Collective, or ACPC, and the Chicago-based digital transparency research organization Lucy Parsons Labs in a lawsuit against the police foundation. Both groups filed the suit after making numerous queries to the organization under Georgia’s open records act, only to be ignored.
Ed Vogel, a researcher at Lucy Parsons Labs and a plaintiff, called the timing of the decision “alarming”, adding that Rutledge “has a responsibility to be completely transparent about why it was made”.
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Rutledge later sent the Guardian a statement asserting that the move was “part of ongoing efforts to align the First Amendment Clinic’s activities more closely with the institution’s educational mission”.
This is “puzzling” given that the clinic’s own website says the issues it focuses on include “government transparency”, and “that transparent government is essential to a free, open and democratic society”, noted Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.
“This is frankly impossible to achieve if the dean of the law school takes open-records work off the table. Government transparency is composed of ‘sunshine’ and public records laws,” he said.
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the fight against Cop City has drawn national and global headlines, particularly since 18 January of last year, when state troopers shot and killed Manuel Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, who was camping in protest at a public park near the Cop City site – the first such incident in US history. Opposition to the project has come from a wide range of local and national supporters, with concerns such as unchecked police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police say the center is needed for “world-class” training.
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Rutledge clerked for Clarence Thomas, and is featured in a painting included in ProPublica’s reporting on Republican donor Harlan Crow’s gifts to the supreme court justice.
“The fact that this institution that embodies and makes up so much of the power structure in our state is limiting itself from supplying a critical tool for government transparency is appalling and disappointing,” Barnes added.
The decision doesn’t just affect the Cop City case. Various local press outlets this week have expressed concern after learning about losing free legal help with public records. Appen Media, based in the suburbs north of Atlanta, wrote that “[j]ournalists across Georgia are mourning the loss of a crucial service”.
The suit against the police foundation, meanwhile, could have an impact beyond Georgia, said Vogel.
“If a decision is made that makes them subject to open records requests,” he said, “it will set a precedent that others will follow around the country.”
what a fucking JOKE of a country we are when we can see police forces across the nation armed to the T with protective equipment; TANKS, guns, flash bombs, tear gas, and countless other items but our own DOCTORS and NURSES can’t get fucking PPE durning a global pandemic. Our Teachers have to get second jobs and buy school supplies out of their own pockets for students. And in Cali specifically, where the LAPD is one of the most technological advanced and murderous police forces in the whole country, we have a HUGE homeless population that they claim we can’t house. It’s a fucking JOKE. It’s APPARENT where the priorities of the state lie. Protecting property and rich white folks. The rest of us be damned. LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!!!!
Cops are giving curiously muddled messages as to why this 21-year-old Marylander was shot while he was sleeping.
Five days after shooting 21-year-old Duncan Lemp in a predawn raid, the Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Department announced Tuesday that the killing was immaculate. Under pressure by media criticism, the police department issued a detailed statement this afternoon purportedly exonerating itself. But that statement -- the third revision of their official account of the fatal raid -- is contradicted by multiple eyewitnesses. Police now say that the raid was spurred by "an anonymous tip at the beginning of the year, indicating that Lemp was in possession of firearms."... The press release reads almost as if Lemp died from an overwhelming sense of guilt, rather than being shot perhaps multiple times by police.... The police department has offered a sham of transparency. They refused to answer any of my questions last Friday. I sent another set of questions to them this morning... Howard County Attorney's Office spokeswoman Yolanda Vazquez responded that the case was "still under investigation" and thus they would disclose nothing. And folks wonder why I am cynical.... The Montgomery County Police Department doesn't have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent after it kills county residents. The SWAT team wore body cams and police have thus far refused to release the footage. They deserve no benefit of the doubt for this violent killing.
