#and obviously the police here need oversight and accountability so...

[gillianthecat]

My best beloved, Reporter Im Gyu Soek, is back! 🥰

[scripttorture]

I’m not sure if you’ll be comfortable answering those, but with recent police brutality in the U.S, I want to write about police torture of protestors and protestors’ feelings. I have a wheelchair user Latina girl and a blind Black trans man. They will be arrested together after the trans man tries to talk down a cop (inspired by a real video) and I wanted them both to be tear gassed. I have experience with police brutality, but was not arrested.

Part 2- How do they arrest blind people and wheelchair users? I understand mobility aids are usually taken away. Does this apply to canes for blind people? Also, I was going to have them in holding for 1 day with no treatment for their eyes after being tear gassed. Is this realistic or do you think police should pour water on them? I was going to involve the arrested characters all going on hunger strike, which might cause the police to transport them to booking faster. Does this sound okay?

-

‘Comfortable’ feels like the wrong word for all of this subject to be honest. I don’t think I could do this if I was comfortable, I am incandescent with rage. I am furious that the world we live in is still infested with this pointless, preventable brutality. Yes I am essentially a ball of rage and ferrets.

 And a portion of that is about the fact it only really makes the news when it affects wealthy countries. Seeing the response in Kenya and Nigeria to these movements/events in the West has been… interesting.

 Let’s start off with some definitions here because I think that will help as we discuss the story idea.

 Realism in the context of these discussions doesn’t necessarily mean ‘this would happen to 100% of people in this situation.’ If we’re talking about torture techniques used and treatment of particular groups in society then it’s less a case of ‘does this happen or not’ and more a case of ‘how often does this happen?’ ‘how likely is this?’

 Most modern torture is ‘clean’, which means that it doesn’t leave obvious external marks. But you do still get incidents (including in rich Western countries) where scarring torture occurs. They just a lot rarer.

 And, continuing this example, if a writer came to me asking about writing a scarring torture in a modern setting I’d warn them about the implications that can go with that. I’d talk about how survivors of clean tortures are dismissed and belittled. I’d talk about how the harm clean tortures do is downplayed. And I’d say that while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to use a scarring torture in a story, when we do it’s important to be aware of the context: that scarring tortures are rare and that they’re not ‘worse’.

 Everything you’ve described for your story is possible and it’s the sort of thing that’s more common in the country and time period you’ve chosen for your story.

 I’ve found it difficult to get hold of larger studies focused on the US. A lot of the statistical analysis I’m seeing focuses on mental illness or doesn’t draw a distinction between mental illness and physical disability. That can be pretty common when you’re looking up stuff about disability. It can be a helpful approach in some respects, showing how the disabled population broadly is discriminated against. But it also masks things that affect particular sub sections of the disabled population by lumping everyone in together.

 The Prison Policy Initiative has a page here you might find helpful, but most of these articles focus on mental illness and low IQ. Solitary Watch has a frankly horrifying list of cases in a prison where the disabled were routinely denied treatment and left in neglectful conditions that amount to torture. (The list includes a blind man denied a cane for 16 years.)

 Based on individual cases I’ve read I’d say that what you have planned is realistic, in the sense that it is possible. Similar things have occurred in America.

 In the absence of clear statistics on the number of disabled people in custody in the US, let alone how they’re treated, I’m finding it difficult to say how common this would be.

 Part of the problem is a lack of consistent standards or definitions across the country. This is from a Reuters investigative piece on deaths and abuse in US jails: ‘Seventeen states have no rules or oversight mechanisms for local jails, according to Reuters research and a pending study by Michele Deitch, a corrections specialist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. In five other low-population states, all detention facilities are run by state corrections agencies. The other 28 have some form of standards, such as assessing inmates’ health on arrival or checking on suicidal inmates at prescribed intervals. Yet those standards often are minimal, and in at least six of the states, the agencies that write them lack enforcement power or the authority to refer substandard jails for investigation.’ (Emphasis mine, full article series can be found here. It contains video footage of torture (beating), some graphic descriptions of racist abuse and miscarriage.)

 What this means for you is that there’s massive variation between jails in the US. The variation affects everything from the structure of the jail itself, to staffing levels, to workplace culture, to oversight, to provision of medical care. Basically some jails are a lot more abusive and dangerous then others.

 It’s also difficult to identify problem facilities because, as the Reuters article points out, a lot of the relevant statistics aren’t released to the public. Reuters came up with their statistics by examining jail records and reporting of deaths or abuse in local newspapers over a period of several years.

 In some of the accounts from US prisoners I’ve read people were allowed to keep wheelchairs. In others they were taken away.

 The cases where wheelchairs were taken were generally reported as part of a wider pattern of torturous neglect. I do not have enough evidence or cases here to say that that’s always the case: I don’t think this proves that prisons or jails which take mobility aids always neglect disabled prisoners. Because I don’t know whether taking a mobility aid, in and of itself, would be reported if it wasn’t happening alongside prisoners being left lying in their cells for days, unable to eat or clean themselves.

 I’ve tried my best to read about disability generally over the years. Because I live in the UK most of what I know about disability is based here. I know about attitudes in Saudi, where I grew up and a little about Cyprus where my family is from.

 Based on what I know about disability generally I’d say that when mobility aids and canes are taken away neglect and abuse are more likely. And I think that would include being left in a cell, having been tear gassed, with no water.

 In terms of physically arresting people with disabilities, well there are problems with abuse of disabled people the world over. I’ve heard stories from a lot of different countries about people being ripped out of wheelchairs, being tackled, being dragged. Unfortunately a lot of people are taught to doubt disability and to treat obviously disabled people with contempt.

 But you should remember that I read about the worst case scenarios. My knowledge is focused on abuse and ideas about what encourages or discourages it. Which can skew the perception of how common these things are. (I really wish I could find some decent statistical data here, the absence is maddening.)

 I think part of the way to approach this is to break it down and figure out how many groups these characters are being passed between. I don’t actually know how the booking in process in the US works. (I’m sorry but the nature of the blog is that I’ve got a lot of broad knowledge, I’m not an expert on every police system in the world.)

 The standard of treatment could easily vary between the people making the arrest and the people actually holding the prisoners.

 And all of this means that I think you’ve got a lot of leeway here. There’s a big range of things that are possible here. So there’s scope to choose how bad it’s going to be.

 You’re already doing that to some extent with the way you’ve planned this out and thought it through. That’s good, it’s important to work within your limits and focus on the elements you’re interested in.

 There will be real cases similar to your story that went a lot worse and there’ll be cases where things went a lot better. No one story can capture everything and that’s OK.

 I think these characters will probably be acutely aware that things could go very badly for them. They’ll probably have heard stories about people of their race, disability and gender being abused or even murdered by police. Use that in the story. Try to bring some of that fear and rage and defiance into the story.

 I’m not sure what kind of cultural weight hunger strike carries in the US. I can link you to my masterpost on starvation which outlines the physical and psychological effects of hunger.

 I also want to leave you my masterpost on solitary confinement, because I’m aware that US jails and prisons often put vulnerable prisoners straight into solitary.

 It’s really clear just from your question that you’ve already put a lot of thought into this and done a fair bit of reading. Keep going.

 You’re probably going to need sensitivity readers. It’s also probably going to take a lot of time, editing and re-reading to get this story as good as you want it to be.

 And it’s going to be hard. Researching this stuff is incredibly exhausting. For the love of gods take breaks. I’ve got a guide to researching difficult topics here. It can be hard to follow the advice there, hell I struggle to sometimes, but you can’t let this stuff poison you.

 I hope that helps :)

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[marinsawakening]

When A Watch Gets Stolen

Fandom: Magic Kaito/DCMK

Wordcount: 4503

Summary: Hakuba Saguru has met more police officers than he cared to count, and was liked by... well, none of them. So when his watch gets stolen, the people working with the KID task force become his suspects, and he launches an investigation. Or: Hakuba is autistic and gets his comfort object stolen. He takes this about as well as you'd expect.

Notes: Written for Autism Acceptance Month. Warnings for self-injurous stimming and a violent meltdown.

///

Hakuba was not well-liked among the KID Task Force, a fact that did not bother him in the slightest. Making friends had never been a priority of his, after all; he was here to catch a thief, and whether or not he got along with a bunch of half-witted officers was of no concern to him.

That is, as long as they left him alone.

His watch was missing.

The latest KID heist had ended with Hakuba on the receiving end of a waterfall of glitter-mixed paint - exceedingly immature, even by KID’s standards, a prank more than a magic trick. Though, he supposed he should’ve seen this coming, after he’d told Kuraba, quote: “If KID can’t even dodge a seven-year-old’s soccer ball, there is no possible reality wherein he could get past a police line to get the drop on me,” in an overt attempt to goad him into recklessness. He had succeeded there, at least, even if he’d still ultimately lost the war.

Either way, Nakamori had offered up the office shower to him, and he’d accepted, gladly washing off as much glitter and paint as possible. Sadly, it turned out the paint doubled as a dye - now, his hair was sparkly pink, and would likely remain as such for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps he’d invite Kuroba and Aoko on a fishing trip. One low blow for another.

And then he excited the shower, tugging lightly at his hair in a last futile attempt to get some of the glitter out, only to find his watch gone.

The rest of his belongings were still there; his button-up, blazer, shoes, pants, underwear, coat, all neatly in place. But in the jacket’s left pocket, where he always put his pocket watch, he found only lint.

He took a deep breath. With forced calm, he checked his other pockets, even though he knew he’d never make such a callous mistake as to misplace something. One thing Hakuba was not was sloppy. He liked everything to be in precisely the right place at the right time, neatly ordered and according to schedule. It provided structure and security. He didn’t like it when those things fell away.

And now his watch was stolen.

A quick sweep of the surrounding area provided little clues, aside from the slightly tilted door handle proving that someone had indeed picked the lock and walked in while he was showering. However, that did not narrow the suspect pool down in the slightest. He was in the middle of a police station, specifically working with the task force of a master thief renowned for dirty tricks; the odds of someone in his immediate vicinity knowing how to pick a lock were disproportionately high.

He could probably rule out Inspector Nakamori. While the man was as dim-witted as they come, he had a clear sense of honor and duty not often seen among officers. It was unlikely he’d stoop to the level of petty bullying; if he had a problem with Hakuba, he’d simply yell it at him, as he’d proven time and time again.

That said, it was exceedingly unlikely that he’d side with Hakuba over someone from his own task force. He was not well-liked, and therefore, he’d receive no help.

Not that he needed it. He was Britain’s youngest detective, rivaled in Japan by only a few. If he couldn’t even deduce who’d stolen his watch, he might as well retire to the country side right now.

He could feel the watch’s absence, as absurd and illogical as it was, taunting him from his pocket. Absently, he scratched his wrist, feeling his nails gauge the skin, leaving red gashes in their wake.

The first order of business would have to be narrowing down the suspect pool. He could hardly do a thorough examination everyone’s desks without getting caught, so he’d have to limit his search to those most likely to have committed the crime.

There was a bang on the door, and Hakuba startled.

“Yo, kid! How long you gonna be in there?” Nakamori’s voice called through the door.

How late was it? Out of habit, he almost reached into his pocket, before remembering the current circumstances and aborting the motion. It was hard to breathe, and his nails dug deeper into his arm.

He forced himself to take a deep breath despite the dam in his chest. Calm down.

“I’ll be right out,” he called back, and went to get dressed.

///

Narrowing down suspects proved to be about as difficult as expected, taken into account that a) no-one in the police station was fond of Hakuba, and b) all cops were varying degrees of bastards. But, finally, he managed to land on three key suspects: Hashimoto Takashi, new to the corps and therefore having something to prove; Fujiwara Akane, who had been accused of theft before, although the charges had been dropped; and Yamamoto Ken, who had been smirking at him for the past three days in an extremely smug fashion.

With the primary suspects nailed down, he went to work.

For some reason, people never even so much as considered the possibility that Hakuba might have some dubiously legal skills. People usually perceived him as an overly rigid rule-follower, and while Hakuba acknowledged he had a tendency to be somewhat inflexible, he was not exactly what you’d call a ‘rule-follower’. The law, while necessarily, was often flawed and illogical, and if the rules made it more difficult for him to do his job, he had no qualms ignoring them.

Regardless, his reputation for being a stickler to the rules meant that no-one had bothered to make any precautions against their desk being lock-picked and their phones being hacked. An oversight, of course; if you’re going to commit a crime, at least have the decency of covering it up properly. Especially if your target is a genius detective.

Neither Hashimoto’s nor Fujiwara’s desk contained anything out of the ordinary, and while both of their texts contained copious amounts of complaining about him, that was not a crime and did not in and off itself implicate them in theft.

Yamamoto’s phone, however, contained some very interesting messages indeed. He was in a small groupchat with some other officers, and he’d been making vague remarks about an ‘upcoming show’ and ‘the best prank in ages’ ever since the day Hakuba’s watch had gotten stolen. He backed up those messages to his own phone; it might prove to be important later.

His desk, however, contained no incriminating evidence, let alone the pocket watch. It should not have come as a surprise, and yet, he had to stop himself from breaking the drawer in two.

He had back-up watches, obviously, other models he could use in emergencies. Right now, a nice brown electric watch sat on his wrists. It was perfectly serviceable and of decent quality, and yet, it felt wrong. Too heavy on his wrist, always somehow managing to be in his line of sight, drawing attention to its obnoxious flickering numbers; every time he saw it, it became harder and harder to push away the panic that always threatened to overwhelm him.

He shoved the drawer closed, careful not to make too much noise. Then, he walked away, his hands shoved in his pocket so that no-one could see the way his nails clawed at the palm of his hands.

///

There was another heist that night. Unusually close to the previous one; KID preferred to have more time to plan out his tricks, but it seemed that dyeing Hakuba’s hair hadn’t needed much preparation. So, another heist.

KID was after the Red Haze this time, a 22 carat Burmese ruby. The owner, an old collector named Nakamura, had been most cooperative with the police, thankfully. Hakuba was crammed together with the rest of the task force in the display room, roughly ten minutes before the start of the heist.

He was panicking. He didn’t know why, but he was panicking. It was a struggle to get his breath under control, his fingers itched with the need to move, and when he turned to check the time the sense of wrongness was so profound it strangled him.

“Hey, Hakuba,” Yamamoto whispered. He bit his tongue to stop himself from yelling. He hadn’t noticed him get so close. Sloppy. Unusually sloppy.

He tried to focus on Yamamoto, but everything seemed hazy. He didn’t know how many minutes they had until the start of the heist, and he couldn’t bring himself to check. He needed to focus on Yamamoto. It might be important.

Yamamoto’s next words filtered through like he was underwater. “Guess what I have?”

In his hands was Hakuba’s pocket watch.

It took him one, two, three seconds to process what he was seeing, before he made a grab for it.

He missed. Through the fog, he realized that was strange, and then he remembered Yamamoto was tall; tall enough to keep anything out of Hakuba’s reach. It didn’t stop him from trying to get at it, jumping in an attempt to reach the chain, and that didn’t seem like something he should be doing, there might be laughing from above the water, but it didn’t matter, there was only one thing that mattered and it -

Was broken on the ground, shattered to little pieces.

Yamamoto was grinning, and ugly, smug smile, and the laughing had gotten louder. Hakuba stared at the remains of his watch, and someone was saying something, but the words were absolutely meaningless, he couldn’t understand them, couldn’t process anything except pain and panic and broken gears and a wide smirk -

Something was wrong. Distantly, he recognized this. His throat hurt, open and screaming, the sounds around him too loud, there were lights on now even though they weren’t before, his body was moving on its own, his hands making contact with something and doing it again and again and again, until he was pulled back by other hands, and still he was screaming and screaming and screaming -

A pair of hands pulled him along, and he tried to claw on them but it didn’t seem to be doing anything, the texture of their skin was off, somehow, but he couldn’t place it, and the lights were off now, and there was quiet. The hands let go, and he tried to follow them, because he needed to hit something, to scratch and hurt something, it was the only thing calming him right now, so he turned to himself, scratching and hitting and screaming. The pain felt real, at least.

And slowly, he calmed down.

There was no new input, nothing to exacerbate his current state, just him and his movements and his pain, and so steadily, the panic sunk and his head grew clearer.

It really was quiet. He wasn’t in the display room anymore; instead it was a smaller one, with a large bed in the corner and soft carpet under his hands. Probably Nakamura’s bedroom. Strange. They hadn’t been allowed in here, nor had they any reason to enter, for that matter. He shouldn’t be here. How had he gotten here?

Then he noticed a bright white blur among the darkness and - ah. The heist had started, then. Sadly, Hakuba was in no state to play mind games, and had no energy to arrest anyone, and so, he just sat back against the wall, closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.

“You okay?” KID asked, something like worry in his voice. Fuck, this was embarrassing.

Not trusting himself to talk, Hakuba waved a hand. Not the most efficient method of communication, but it would have to do for now. Thankfully, KID seemed to get the message, because he shut up and let Hakuba figure himself out in the calm.

After a precise 300 seconds (he counted), he felt well enough to speak.

“As much as I can be after a meltdown,” he finally replied, proud of himself for not flinching back at the sound of his own voice. “Don’t you have a gem to steal?”

“Already did.” KID flashed the Red Haze between his fingers, and ah, yes, perhaps Hakuba should have suspected that. Not that he was up to doing anything about it. Speaking was enough of a challenge right now. “What was that, detective? You do not strike me as the type to lose control.”

Hakuba rubbed his face with one hand and petted the carpet with the other. It really was soft, and he could use some grounding right now. “A meltdown, in the context of neurodiversity, is a way autistic people react to an overload of stress, sensory input, fear, or other negative emotions. They are uncontrollable and can be quite extreme. I am not the type of ‘lose control’, but my brain does not always cooperate with me.”

KID cocked his head. “You’re autistic.”

“Yes. And I would appreciate not finding that rumor spread through the school tomorrow, Kuroba.”

“I am not this Kuroba person you seem to know, but if I were, I’m sure I’d be offended by the insinuation I’d betray your trust for a cheap laugh.”

“Well, just in case, you should know I have a 20000 word essay on why you likely have ADHD, and I am not afraid to use it.”

“Wait, you have a - Nevermind, I’ll steal it later.” KID waved his hand. “Either way, I’m assuming removing you from the source of the stressor was the right course of action?”

“It was, although I would advice against grabbing people if at all possible.” And then, through gritted teeth and with a near insurmountable loss of pride: “Thank you.”

“Don’t think too hard about it, detective.” KID threw the Red Haze into the air, catching it with nimble fingers before tossing it at Hakuba. “You can have the ruby back.”

“How gracious.”

KID shrugged. “Saves me the trouble of returning it later. And besides, stealing is no fun with your critics incapacitated.”

He gave one of his patented, overly dramatic bows, and with a “Take care, detective,” he was gone, vanishing out a window Hakuba hadn’t even noticed yet.

It was another half hour before he could bring himself to make the trek back to the task force.

///

As expected, there was a talk, afterwards.

Nakamori’s desk was messy, paperwork and candy wrappers strewn indiscriminately across the bureau, the only clean corner containing a picture of him and Aoko. Hakuba also noted another three pictures of her taped to his laptop. It seemed like the kind of thing Aoko might like to know, just to remind her that her father did, indeed, care.

Nakamori himself sat back in his desk, looking tired and annoyed in equal measure, rubbing his temples.

They’d been here for an hour now, Nakamori interrogating him on what happened under the guise of ‘wanting to hear his side of the story’. Hakuba hadn’t bothered to explain anything. It wouldn’t help, anyway.

“You know I can’t let you get away with this, right?” Nakamori asked. “If you refuse to give me any damn explanation, I’m going to have to report this to your father. Probably gonna have to do that anyway.”

Hakuba’s fingers curled around the chair’s arm, but he said nothing.

“Yamamoto might press charges.”

He snorted. As if his father would let that happen. Couldn’t have his precious reputation damaged by a criminal son.

Nakamori glared. “You think this is funny? You broke his fucking jaw, Hakuba.”

“And?”

It was the first thing he’d said all hour, and he wasn’t sure why he’d opened his mouth. His fingers were rasping against the wood, and there was something hot in his chest. Anger, he recognized. He’d been angry for days, perhaps even longer, and he was still too out of it to hold back this long. Great.

Well, if he was on his way out anyway, might as well make it a show.

“And?” Nakamori repeated, incredulous. “Do I need to tell you why you should feel guilty for breaking a man’s jaw? Really?”

“Guilty? I should feel guilty?” And oh yeah, he was angry, hot and boiling and it spilled over into his words. “Yamamoto steals my watch with the express purpose of using it to humiliate and hurt me in front of his friends - if not the entire task force - during a Kaitou KID Heist, and I should feel guilty for retaliating?”

Nakamori blinked and opened his mouth to say something, but Hakuba continued on, bulldozing over his next words. “Am I supposed to feel sorry that his plan had some unforeseen negative consequences? He knew perfectly well that I would not react calmly to him smashing my pocket watch, and this was, in fact, the whole entire reason he decided to do it in the first place, and now I’m supposed to feel sorry that I reacted somewhat stronger than he planned? With all due respect, Inspector Nakamori, fuck off. He reaped exactly what he sowed.”

Nakamori leaned forward, blowing out a deep breath through his nose. “Even if what you say is true, which I highly doubt, considering the fact that I’ve known Yamamoto for years and he has never done anything like that, that isn’t a damn reason to get into a fistfight. You should have come to me -”

“And what? What would you have done?” Hakuba’s hand slammed on the desk, and Nakamori flinched back, startled. “I come to you and say ‘Inspector Nakamori, my watch has been stolen’, and what would you do?”

“I would have launched an investigation -”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Hakuba cut him off. “You would have rolled your eyes and told me that I probably just lost it, that it’s just a watch, that I don’t need to be so melodramatic or make any false accusations. So then I would have decided to do my own investigation, which is exactly what I did anyway, and I would have found evidence that Yamamoto was likely responsible.”

Nakamori opened his mouth, but Hakuba ignored him. “So then I try again, and I come to you with the evidence, but it’s not watertight, so once again, you just roll your eyes. You tell me that you will talk to Yamamoto, after which you call me back into the office to say that Yamamoto denied the accusations and you feel inclined to believe him due to the fact that you’ve ‘known him for years’, and you tell me once again not to make any false accusations.”

He took a deep breath. “And then tonight happens, and it goes the exact same way it did now, and you will tell me that I reacted too strongly and that I will be removed from the case, as you are doing right now.”

Hakuba sat back, and went through the effort of looking Nakamori straight in the eyes. “Tell me, Inspector, exactly what would have changed if I had come to you? Why should I have bothered?”

A silence fell as he stared down Nakamori, the ticking of the clock louder than it ought to be.

Nakamori broke first. “You have evidence?”

“Text messages illegally obtained, not admissible in court,” Hakuba confirmed. “I’ll send them to you, in case you’re interested in maintaining your facade of objectivity.”

Hakuba stood up. “In the meantime, I will be expecting my official dismissal by Friday. I can see myself out.”

And just like that, he walked away.

///

He spent the next day finding ways he could circumvent the task force’s grip on the KID case. Sneaking into heists might be difficult, but it would not be impossible. Probably. Hopefully.

(Hakuba wasn’t that good at disguises, or at least, not at KID’s level, which is what the security around the heists was counting on. He may actually have to ask Kuroba for tips, but that would be an absolute last resort. He did still have a sliver of pride left.)

Either way, he could definitely hack into their database and read their reports, but it wouldn’t be the same. This case had just gotten significantly harder.

At 4AM, he finally fell asleep at his bureau. When he woke up, he found the carefully hidden physical copy of his KID/Kuroba ADHD essay stolen (to be expected and no disaster; he still had numerous digital copies he could print at any moment) and a brand new pocket watch on his pillow. It was silver, with little movable doves decorating the case.

Hakuba spent precisely eleven minutes and fourteen seconds playing with them, and he smiled.

///

By Friday, he did not receive his dismissal, as he had expected. Instead, he received another invitation to talk to Nakamori.

Strange. Perhaps Nakamori wished to deliver the news in person.

Either way, come Monday, he showed up at the task force once more. As he walked to Nakamori’s office, people kept their distance, whispering from the sidelines. Hakuba didn’t care. It wasn’t like he’d have to work with these people again.

He sat in the exact same chair he’d sat last week, and noted, with some perverse pride, that his nails had made little indents in it.

Nakamori was not usually that difficult to read; he wore his heart on his sleeve and was not afraid to speak his mind. That made him easier to deal with than most other people, and although his loud nature grated on Hakuba, it was something he’d always, on some level appreciated.

Today, however, Hakuba couldn’t get a good read on him. He was sitting straight in his chair, unusually professional, and his face was blank. Or, maybe the expression on it was just too subtle for Hakuba to read. That was a distinct possibility too.

Either way, it was unsettling. Hakuba reached into his coat pocket and traced the doves on his new watch.

“So,” Nakamori started. “I called your father.”

Naturally.

“He explained that you’ve gotten into fights with officers before, and basically threatened to end my career if I decided to remove you from the case.”

Hakuba closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Expected, but no less annoying.

“Not that I give a shit about any of that. Not the first time my job has been in peril, and it won’t be the last. I wish them good fucking luck trying to find a replacement for me.”

Hakuba barely managed to hold back a laugh. Nakamori had proven time and time again to be by far the most suited to leading the task force, and KID had proven time and time again he wouldn’t tolerate anyone else. Nakamori was right to be unafraid. His father had no power here.

“But the fact that this apparently wasn’t the first time you snapped and decked a guy did make me curious, so I did a bit of digging.” Hakuba’s surprise must have shown on his face, because Nakamori shot him an irritated glare. “Don’t look so shocked, you’re not the only detective in the room. There’s a reason I got this job in the first place.”

Hakuba inclined his head, contrite, and Nakamori continued. “Anyway. I did some digging, and found out that this is pretty routine for you. You work with the police, you deck a guy, you get about as fired as a high school detective can get, rinse and repeat. Kind of a weird pattern, considering the massive stick up your ass. Since it seemed out of character for you to just attack someone for no reason, I assume that all instances of that were caused by similar situations as this one?”

“Does it matter?” he scoffed.

“It does, actually.” Nakamori leaned forward on his desk. “You seemed pretty certain I wouldn’t have done a damn thing for you, and to be honest, you were right. I don’t like you. I do like Yamamoto - or I did, at least. It would’ve been way easier for me to just wave you off, so I probably would’ve.”

Hakuba sat back, blinking. Well. At least he admitted it.

“And I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what happened with the others, too.”

Nakamori looked at him, and a beat too late, Hakuba realized he was expected to answer. He nodded. “Yes, although I fail to see how this is relevant.”

Nakamori rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s relevant because it explains why you didn’t come to me in the first place, and it’s relevant because it shows that this situation is as much my fault as it is yours.”

Hakuba’s hand slid off the watch, the doves’ cool metal replaced by cotton under his fingers. “What?”

Nakamori glared. “I said, it’s my fault as much as it’s yours. As leader of the task force, it’s my job to take these kinds of matters seriously, and I wouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have made you feel like you can’t turn to me for help, and I definitely shouldn’t have been playing favourites, and I’m sorry for that. I should have done better, and I’ll try to do so in the future.”

Hakuba opened his mouth. Closed it again. Repeated the process. He should be saying something, but he was at a loss for words.

“Stop imitating a fish, dipshit,” Nakamori snapped. “Either way, you still broke a guy’s jaw, and I can’t let that slide. Although I can’t suspend you, considering the fact that you’re not actually an officer, I’m removing you from the case for the next three months and refusing you access to the heists. Also, if you pull a stunt like this again, I’ll be kicking you out properly. Just come to me next time, and I promise I’ll take your concerns seriously. No more vigilante justice, understood?”

“What about Yamamoto?” he managed to ask.

“Your evidence was obtained illegally, and not something that would hold up in court anyway, so therefore, it’s not something I can use to level any serious charges against him. However, his messages did imply rather heavily that your accusations were valid. Although your retaliation was far too extreme, childish bullying in the manner displayed by Yamamoto is not something that I’ll tolerate in my task force. As such, I requested for him to be transferred to another department. Hopefully that, and his time in the hospital, will teach him to behave in the future.”

Nakamori leaned back in his chair. “Now, I’ll ask you again: no more vigilante justice, understood?”

Although this barely felt real, Hakuba nodded. “Understood.”

“Good.” Nakamori waved a hand. “Now get out of here, and don’t let me see you for another three months.”

Outside, Baaya was waiting with the car. He watched he houses flash by as she drove him home, still somewhat dazed. He’d have to jump through some hoops for the next three months, but he wasn’t removed from the case permanently. Someone other than him had faced consequences. Nakamori had taken responsibility and apologized.

There was a new watch in his pocket, and surprisingly, it did not feel like such a bad thing.

[melnchly-a]

i was debating posting this but here are a range of things to think about re: police and reform. 

i’m seeing a lot of “abolish the police” posts, and while i know exactly where that’s coming from, it’s also a simple-seeming answer to a deep and complex problem, and one that’s likely to cause more problems than you’re likely thinking. (in the absence of police, it’s likely - - though certainly not guaranteed - - that those who can afford it will invest more heavily in private security for businesses/personal protection/etc, whether that need is warranted or not. in the event of situations occurring that would have required police presence, you would likely see more federal law enforcement/military presence. worst-case, imagine a country led by someone like our current president where the only option is to send in federal agents and believe me, you don’t want that.) neither do you probably actually want to call for a mass exodus of police of their own volition. i can tell you right now the ones you want out wouldn’t be leaving. you’d be left with departments entirely composed of people with no qualms about excessive force. you WANT those people staying on the force, and you WANT them to have the resources they need to report on fellow officers when needed. 

it’s also just not likely to happen in any widespead way. not in our current society. if you want to create real change, there are other things that need to be addressed, campaigned for, and fixed. things which will not be fixed if we’re trying to focus on overly simple answers for deeply complex problems.

this isn’t to disagree with the notion of reallocating funding to benefit schools/public services/etc. i think that’s entirely necessary. but there’s more to the story than simply cutting funding. 

police need to address and apologize for excessive use of force and abuse over the history of policing. if not for individual officers who may or may not have participated, than for the historical precedent as a whole. pretending there isn’t a problem isn’t a help to anyone. 

as i’ve said multiple times in the past, police unions and those who negotiate with them make it notoriously difficult for departments to get rid of officers with complaints against them. the department in minneapolis is headed by a black chief of police who had sued his own department based on issues of race in the past. he should have been able to get rid of officers like c.hauvin with no issues and yet....obviously, that man was still on the force. there need to be ways for a.) departments to fire problem officers without someone over their heads reinstating them and b.) ways for officers to report on their fellow officers without repercussions. i can tell you right now that those methods don’t currently exist in any wide-spread or efficient/effective form.

body cams, dash cams, and other oversight tools need to a.) be “sold” more effectively to the police as measures of protecting BOTH themselves AND the citizens they serve. there ALSO need to be real consequences for tampering with these, turning them off, etc.

police need more training and they need higher-quality recruits. understaffed departments lead to issues you’ll see in places like flint, where it can take three hours or more for police to respond to a call. not because they’re (most of the time) doing anything wrong, but because there aren’t enough of them in comparison to the total population. this could include decisions like requiring college or college-like degrees, but that would also mean higher pay for police officers. which i realize isn’t a popular idea at the moment, but is a fact of those requirements. (furthermore, many city police in small to mid size cities, not to mention suburban police, don’t have adequate crowd-control training. this is not an excuse for the way police have been handling crowds in recent days, but it is something that has come up in discussions. many of them are reacting with excessive crowd-control measures where lesser measures were needed.) this training should absolutely include recognizing police brutality in the past, the racism in the system as a whole, recognition and response to explicit and implicit bias, recognizing mental health issues, etc. training is a problem every law-enforcement officer i’ve spoken to in the last few weeks, in an attempt to understand what’s happening, has brought up. the people i’ve spoken to have dedicated their lives to establishing mental health education for police, who have actively removed aggressive or racist officers in the past, etc. they’re just as frustrated and angry with the reactions police are displaying as you and i are. and they’re actively doing things to try to help. unions, government, etc make that more difficult than it should be. 

many police, particularly in large cities, don’t live in the cities/neighborhoods they’re policing. (many smaller, particularly suburban, departments require that their officers live in the town they work in.) sometimes this is because they can’t afford to (nypd officers start at around  $42,500/year - about $3,541/month or  $885/week BEFORE tax -  in a city where the median rent for a studio apartment sits at about  $2,700/month. these officers can obviously make more as they spend more time on the force, but that’s the stated starting salary according to their website. the salary after 5 1/2 years is $85,292). this means they don’t know the areas/people/etc they’re policing, are more likely to make snap judgments based on false information, etc. it wouldn’t solve everything, but rules for employment regarding residency could mean better policing in cities and their neighborhoods. 

for a profession that includes seeing things like scenes of murders, assaults, suicides, and wellness checks that lead to decomposing bodies, mental health care for police is abysmal. i mean it’s....bad in the u.s. in general, but it’s notoriously bad for active-duty military, veterans, and first responders...including police. this isn’t to mention that officers who self-report mental health problems are often put on leave rather than given the resources they need. this means compounded stress, trauma, etc, going unaddressed in a highly dangerous and stressful profession.

police DO handle more than they likely SHOULD be handling, including things like wellness checks, nonviolent domestic disputes, etc. more often than not, they’re doing so without specialized training for those situations. these should absolutely be divided out into unarmed (or lightly armed, i.e. with pepper spray etc), specially trained units. you’re still going to want armed police units to exist in the u.s. - - i can tell you for a fact that in my fairly quiet suburban hometown ALONE there have been active shooter/barricade/hostage situations that could not be deescalated without use of force, despite attempts to do so.

qualified immunity needs reform. you can read more about that here. this allows not only for officers to get away with police brutality, but for all public officials to get away with a wide range of crimes. 

we need to campaign for citizens to be integrated into police oversight. police are paid by taxpayer dollars, and they are meant to serve and protect the people. again, this is an issue for your local government and police unions. when you’re communicating with gov’t officials, make it clear that you want something like this implemented. 

and, yes, there need to be strong and immediate consequences for excessive use of force. 

i’m not saying any of this to make it seem like police brutality or the racism inherent in the law enforcement and justice systems doesn’t exist. it does, and it needs to be addressed. what i am saying is that addressing that is a more complex problem that requires deeper thought for successful reform. Black people, particularly men, are at leas 3x more likely to experience police brutality, and that needs to end. 

tl;dr, some things to be aware of, petition for, etc: 

charging and convicting police brutality as a crime (with the understanding that this means it should be treated as any crime in a court of law)

holding all first responders accountable for their actions.

allowing and enabling officers to respond to police brutality they’re witnessing, including training on how to intervene, better reporting methods, policies that would not punish them for reporting, etc 

reform in police unions

better police training in general

national standards for police training (believe it or not, these don’t currently exist)

better mental health care and mental health policies for police and other first responders 

citizen involvement, including in oversight

voting in state and local elections for officials who have plans to respond to these issues, and who are actively listening to their constituents 

reallocation of funding so that the funding is more equally spread to education and community support

Some Sources/ Further Reading: 

“How to reform American police, according to experts” from Vox

Police officer salary and benefits, NY Gov

“Adopt minimum national police use-of-force standards and train cops for interaction” USA Today

“‘An Impossible Situation’: How Chief Arradondo Has Struggled To Change The Minneapolis Police Department” CBS Minnesota

“What We Should Expect of the Police: Experts Weigh In On Recent Police Violence,” Center for American Progress

Police Reform, The Flip Side

The Center for Policing Equity

[sugarytea]

Failing Jeffrey

I just watched a video on YouTube called Failing Jeffrey about the Jeffery Baldwin case in Canada. Damn related videos. I just wanted to bawl. Those poor kids. The comment section is disabled so I can't vent there so here is my shout into the void.

WWWWTTTTFFFF! How is the Catholic Children's Aid Society still in operation after what happened? And after googling it seems like they are still as shitty as before. The case is decades old by the way. Just like. TF. How can you just give children away to convicted abusers. It didn't even require digging. It was in their own record. Just. TF. They took no accountability, no oversight was established, caseworkers involved were not fired, so it's not even like they were cleaning up behind doors - they just continued to operate as usual. WTF.

The grandparents (the main abusers) are obviously evil and I'm glad they're in jail. The parents also piss me off though. During the entire interview they showed zero feelings towards their son. Obviously they were shitty parents in the first place and that's why their kids were taken away and given to the abusive grandparents in the first place. But the complete lack to feeling towards their son is just mind boggling. You can tell they only cared about how they are being viewed and they don't actually care about the kids. "How am I supposed to move on when people keep on throwing it in my face?" - are you kidding, woman? You're a poor excuse of a human being. And why are they still having more children? I want to say thankfully the new children are also taken away, but given how incompetent the agency is who knows if they are being put into good hands. Considering she said she doesn't remember any abuse growing up, I imagined she has repressed memories herself and was maybe one of the "good kids" (The grand parents separated out kids to be abused and kids who could have a "normal" life.) who didn't get the brunt end of the abuse and perhaps even had to participate in abusing the "bad kids" to survive. I understand she is a product of her traumatic past, but ... don't propagate it?

Jeffery was just under six when he died. Can you imagine a little kid never knowing what it's like to be loved and care for in his entire, short, life? Never been fed a full portion of food, never had access to water, never had his boo boos kissed, never been cuddled and told he's sweet and smart and handsome and just the best thing in the world. Never went down a slide. Never played on a playground. Just ... never played. He went from shitty parents to shitty grandparents with "oversight" from a shitty agency in a house full of other shitty adults who never thought to call the police. He had no chance. He was 20 pounds when he died. That's just ... my brain can't even process that. Colm was still an infant when he was 20 pounds, and this kid was almost 6.

I just ... cannot compute.

The thing is, other than the grandparents being put away, none of the failures have been addressed, let alone remedied, and I feel like tragedies as such are bound to happen again. It's just... argh...

Arghhh. Sorry for my bad language. I just needed to vent.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A Lump of Coal in the Internet’s Stocking: FCC Poised to Gut Net Neutrality Rules

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

In a new proposal issued last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set out a plan to eliminate net neutrality protections, ignoring the voices of millions of Internet users who weighed in to support those protections. The new rule would reclassify high-speed broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service” (remember, the FCC is forbidden from imposing neutrality obligations on information services). It would then eliminate the bright-line rules against blocking, throttling, and pay-to-play (as well as the more nebulous general conduct standard) in favor of a simplistic transparency requirement. In other words, your ISP would be free to set itself up as an Internet gatekeeper, as long as it is honest about it.

This is a bad idea for many, many reasons. Here are a few.

Net Neutrality Has Been a Pillar of the Open Internet

The FCC’s decision to gut net neutrality protections isn’t just partisan business as usual; it’s a withdrawal from over a decade of work to protect Internet users from unfair practices by Internet service providers. While the FCC’s approach has changed over the years, its goal of promoting net neutrality did not. Two years ago, it finally adopted legally enforceable rules, most prominently bright-line prohibiting ISPs from blocking, throttling, and creating Internet “fast lanes” that would favor some sites and content over others. But, as the saying goes, “elections have consequences.” One consequence of the 2016 election is that the FCC has new leadership that feels free not just to change the rules, but to get rid of them altogether.

Ushering in a Pay-To-Play Internet

Because the draft order repeals net neutrality rules altogether, it allows ISPs to block or throttle lawful content, or give the highest-paying websites and apps a better ability to reach customers’ devices, or to favor Internet traffic from the ISPs’ own subsidiaries and business partners, all without any legal repercussions. It paves the way for an Internet that works more like cable television, where wealthy insiders decide which speakers can reach a broad audience. A pay-to-play Internet means that smaller sites and apps, or startups without major funding, will be forced to negotiate with multiple ISPs to avoid their content being buried, degraded, or even blocked.

The FCC’s decision to gut net neutrality protections isn’t just partisan business as usual; it’s a withdrawal from over a decade of work to protect Internet users from unfair practices.

The draft order claims that “latency-sensitive” applications will benefit from paying to connect to you faster and more reliably, while other apps and sites will continue to work as they do today. But without rules, nothing will require ISPs to give the same quality of service even to apps that pay the same amount, let alone those that can’t afford it. Content from an ISP’s business affiliates or favored partners will be able to get a fast lane no matter how much another website or app is willing to pay. The order justifies its conclusions by cherry-picking some economic analyses that support them, while ignoring the harms to free speech that flow from paid prioritization.

Weirdly, the proposal acknowledges the fears of “non-profits and independent and diverse content producers” who spoke up this year to say that pay-to-play Internet access is harmful. But it dismisses these concerns, saying that these speakers “may be less likely to need [quality-of-service] guarantees.” Not surprisingly, it doesn’t explain why non-profits and independent content producers don’t need the same access to Internet subscribers as major media companies do.

FCC or FTC?

The FCC’s proposal attempts to paper over its abdication of regulatory responsibility by insisting, mistakenly, that the Federal Trade Commission can adequately protect Internet subscribers. The idea is that ISPs have to be forthcoming about their practices, and if those practices harm consumers or competition, the FTC (and/or private antitrust lawyers) can hold them accountable.

The most basic problem with this theory is that it doesn’t actually forbid unfair data discrimination practices. If a company is forthright about its intent to sell your private data, block competitors’ content, or throttle competing apps, then the FTC will do nothing. And unlike clear net neutrality rules provided under Title II telling ISPs and the public what is and is not forbidden, the FTC only acts on a case-by-case basis after harm has occurred. The agency has no power to issue rules that prevent that harm in the first place. Finally, ISPs have been working hard to defang the FTC in court, with some success. Recently, AT&T won a case in federal appeals court establishing that it was immune to FTC oversight because it operated a telephone service. Though the decision has been vacated pending further proceedings, ISPs now stand a good chance of getting both the FCC and the FTC out of the picture, leaving customers without an advocate in the federal government.

What is worse, even the transparency rules have been pared back, on the assumption that customers don’t really need detailed information about network performance. But those metrics are crucial to identifying non-neutral practices. And the draft order suggests that the FCC won’t even enforce the transparency rules in any meaningful way. Without the ability to double-check how ISPs are behaving, we'll be left taking their word for it. That obviously would make it very difficult to persuade the FTC that the companies are saying one thing while doing another.

The Antitrust Head Fake

Net neutrality is sometimes thought of as a competition problem: if users could vote with their wallets and switch providers, ISPs would be more likely to respect their preferences. Following this line of thinking, the new proposal insists that antitrust lawyers (at the FTC and in private practice) can police anticompetitive behavior.

Unfortunately, this won’t work. Antitrust enforcement is in such dire shape when dealing with regulated industries like ISPs that the FTC itself warned Congress about it years ago. Thanks to two Supreme Court decisions (one of which involved Verizon), the courts are likely to deny access to antitrust remedies so long as the industry is regulated by a sector-specific statute and agency. The intent behind the rulings was to ensure that expert agencies administrating sector-specific laws handle disputes rather than generalized knowledge courts. In this instance, the expert agency and statute are the FCC and the Communications Act. Notably, the new proposal ignores these Supreme Court decisions.

Curiously, the new proposal ignores the current competition problem. It insists that the ISP market is competitive, even though a majority of Americans have only one choice of ISPs for high-speed broadband access of 100 mbps and up.  That lack of choice isn’t a problem, the proposal suggests, because monopolies that face competition in some areas will act like they face competition everywhere.  Even the evidence that shows that people rarely switch providers is treated as a sign of customer loyalty to the regional monopoly. Those times when Comcast refuses to cancel your cable subscription? Proof that the cable company is aggressively competing for your dollars.

At the core of the FCC’s contorted vision of the competitive landscape is the effort to lower our expectations by examining only the broadband market of 25 mbps downstream and 3 mbps upstream, which are relatively slow speeds today. Even at that level, the FCC found the market to be “moderately concentrated,” which, under the Department of Justice’s own guidelines, can be a source of “significant competitive concerns and often warrant scrutiny.” In fact, the FCC’s view of the competitive landscape directly contradicts the DOJ’s finding that large ISPs have the power and intent to stifle online competition—a stance the DOJ took just last week in its lawsuit to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner.

Tech Giants Aren’t Going to Protect the Open Internet Either

The new proposal’s final justification for abandoning neutrality rules is that tech companies will police ISPs for us. In other words, ISPs won’t engage in unfair discrimination because Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and others will exert their own pressure against it.

This argument misunderstands a fundamental purpose of network neutrality: ensuring that the Internet remains an open field so that the titans of today can be disrupted by the startups of tomorrow. Google and Facebook aren’t going to do that for us; it is not their job to protect the interests of users, much less future competitors. That is why literally thousands of small businesses (including small ISPs, which the FCC completely ignored) have asked the FCC not to abandon its responsibility to navigate the public interest in the Internet. They have no reason to believe the biggest corporations will act on behalf of everyone else.

Their skepticism is justified. Think back to when Google and Verizon tried to sell the public on a deal that allowed them to favor their own products.  Or when Facebook endorsed AT&T’s antitrust-violating merger with T-Mobile that would have raised prices on everyday wireless consumers. Or Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings’ suggestion (later withdrawn) that the company would be walking back their fight for network neutrality. Each of these were major decision points for Internet policy and all of them were crafted to serve their shareholder interests (which is expected since that is the first responsibility of a corporation).

There are many more flaws in the FCC’s proposal, which we will discuss in future posts (for example, the FCC’s continuing confusion about how the Internet works). But the key takeaway is this: the FCC is repealing, not replacing, principles and rules that have been crucial to the growth of the Open Internet.

That means the fight for net neutrality moves into a new phase – and we’ll need your help.

The best way to help right now is to contact Congress. But don’t stop there – we’ll need some offline noise to protect online speech. Activists are planning protests around the country and in DC – if there’s one in your area, come out and make your voice heard.

And if the FCC nonetheless continues to ignore public outcry and the public interest, we’ll have a new front: the courts. The proposed rules have any number of legal flaws, and we will be happy to point them out to a judge. The FCC may be abandoning its role in protecting the Internet, but we won’t.

TAKE ACTION

TELL CONGRESS: DON’T SELL THE INTERNET OUT

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/lump-coal-internets-stocking-fcc-poised-gut-net-neutrality-rules

[xtruss]

Minnesota’s Decades-Long Failure to Confront Police Abuse

— By Ricardo Lopez | June 10, 2020 | The New Yorker

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, in Minnesota, long-dismissed charges of systemic racism have been revived in a place that sees itself as one of the country’s most progressive states.Photograph by John Stanmeyer / VII / Redux

On July 7, 2016, Mark Dayton made a statement that no modern governor of Minnesota had uttered before, helping shift public opinion on the still-nascent Black Lives Matter movement. Dayton said that a black man who was killed the previous night by police would be alive if he were white. An officer in a suburb of St. Paul had shot Philando Castile, a thirty-two-year-old school-cafeteria worker, killing him during a routine traffic stop. “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don’t think it would have,” Dayton said at a press conference. “I’m forced to confront, and I think all of us in Minnesota are forced to confront, that this kind of racism exists and that it’s incumbent upon all of us to vow that we’re going to do whatever we can to see that it doesn’t happen, doesn’t continue to happen.”

The governor’s statement gave hope to black political leaders and local activists that their decades-old experiences of systemic racism had finally penetrated the state’s largely white upper echelons of political power. Castile’s death prompted the first widespread calls in modern Minnesotan history for the state legislature to pass wide-ranging policing reforms. The state’s handful of black lawmakers—a total of three in the State House and Senate at the time—began leading conversations in the legislature about the need for significant changes in local law enforcement. Four months later, in November, 2016, the effort foundered after Republicans, bolstered by Donald Trump’s candidacy for President, reclaimed control of the State Senate and expanded their House majority. Downplaying the need to reform police, Republicans introduced legislation to crack down on Black Lives Matter demonstrations, including allowing cities to sue protesters to recover the costs of policing their demonstrations.

Four years later, the state finds itself in a painful and familiar place. On Memorial Day, the police killing of George Floyd, like that of Castile, was captured on video and posted online. Floyd’s murder touched off the largest mass demonstrations against police brutality and systemic racism in the United States in a quarter century. More than ten thousand demonstrators have been arrested in dozens of cities.

The turmoil in Minneapolis challenges the myth of Minnesotan exceptionalism, the widely held belief that the state’s innovative spirit and progressive policies have created a shining example for how other states should run. The Twin Cities region has long been described as a paradox. Minneapolis-St. Paul and its surrounding suburbs are home to more than 3.4 million people and one of the wealthiest metropolitan areas in the country, with good schools, verdant parks, well-paying jobs, and a low cost of living that all, theoretically, add up to a high quality of life. But academics, political leaders of color, and activists say this has primarily been true only for white Minnesotans. The state remains one of the least diverse in the country, and the Twin Cities metropolitan area has grown more racially segregated since the turn of the twenty-first century, despite a history of welcoming refugees and immigrants from East Africa, Vietnam, and Central America.

Off and on for the last decade, I’ve worked as a journalist in Minnesota, first as an intern for the St. Paul Pioneer Press during summer of 2010, before my senior year in college. For two months, I lived on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota campus, blocks from Cedar-Riverside, a largely Somali-American neighborhood. After growing up in Las Vegas, Nevada, one of the country’s most diverse cities, and graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2011, I reported for three years in Los Angeles, mostly covering business and the California economy for the Los Angeles Times. Eager to return to Minnesota, I took a job with the Star Tribune to cover state politics and government in 2014. The wide range of cultures represented here, as well as the beautiful summers, attracted me. I was sold on the promise of Minnesota.

But the longer I’ve lived here the more glaring the state’s racial blind spots have become, even among the most progressive-minded white Minnesotans. As many transplants learn, Minnesotans are tough to befriend. If you’re a person of color who grew up in less white environments, you might suddenly notice your race affecting how others treat you. During a press conference in 2015, a former State Senate majority leader responded to a question I posed by asking, “How long have you been here?” Capitol dwellers told me that I didn’t “look like a political reporter.” Once, a person seemingly lost in the complex mistook me for a janitor as I left work late one night and walked to my car. The moment caught me so off guard I barely had a chance to fully register what about my appearance—other than my skin tone—would have prompted it. The regularity of moments like these, some obviously racially rooted, others less so, made the Capitol’s gilded and marbled corridors feel like an uninviting and intimidating place to be a person of color.

Nonetheless, I endeavored to shed light on the experience of nonwhite Minnesotans through political reporting. I explored the various ways in which people of color, particularly black Minnesotans, have been historically excluded from the levers of power in state politics and government. Candidates of color, even those running as Democrats, face institutional hurdles from a political structure that favors white incumbents, for reasons ranging from lack of access to donors to the threat of political ostracism if they run against Party-endorsed candidates.

The demographic changes that have already occurred in other parts of the country arrived only recently in Minnesota. In 1990, Minnesota was ninety-four per cent white; three decades later, whites make up eighty-four per cent of the population. Even as people of color have arrived, they have failed to acquire political power commensurate to their numbers. Last year, the Minnesota legislature swore in its most diverse body ever. Yet lawmakers of color hold only twenty-one of the two hundred and one seats. All together, they could fit in a high-school classroom. Ninety per cent of the members of the legislature remain white. In recent years, the relationship between communities of color and the state’s largely white media have deteriorated, too. On January 22nd, black activists on a citizen advisory committee tried to bar journalists from covering a public meeting, citing the historical representation of their communities in the state’s media. The episode subsided after city leaders said that they would urge members of the advisory body that they should follow the requirements of the state’s public-meeting law.

Since the nineteen-sixties, black residents have been demanding a wide-ranging overhaul of law-enforcement agencies, including community policing, civilian oversight, improved training, and stronger accountability. Instead, policies enacted by G.O.P. governors and lawmakers have exacerbated mistrust of the police. In 1999, Rich Stanek, a former Minneapolis police captain and State House Republican, led a successful effort to revoke a law requiring Minneapolis and St. Paul police officers to live in the cities in which they worked. Nearly twenty years later, in 2015, about twenty-two per cent of St. Paul police officers called the capital city home, and, this year, roughly seven per cent of Minneapolis officers live in the city; many commute from largely white suburbs, such as Anoka, and exurbs, like the neighboring city of Hudson, Wisconsin.

When Democrats last took full control of the Minnesota government, in 2013, they enacted a series of progressive milestones, including the legalization of same-sex marriage, the passage of a tax on the wealthy, and the boosting of the minimum wage with future increases tied to inflation. Still, ambitious reforms championed by legislators of colors, ranging from policing to education, struggled to gain broad support—no major police reforms were enacted. Joe Soss, a University of Minnesota professor who studies poverty and racial inequality, said that progressive policies championed by Democrats failed to address bias. “What you had were generous policies that helped white people buy homes, help protect white people, invest in white communities, and lifted them up higher than people who were left out,” Soss told me. “When it comes to power in the state and in the Twin Cities, people of color have continued to be very marginalized.”

Two police shootings created public pressure for reforms. In 2015, a Minneapolis police officer killed Jamar Clark, a twenty-four-year-old African-American who worked for a local trucking firm. An officer claimed that Clark tried to take his weapon and, in the ensuing struggle, another officer shot Clark. Some witnesses said Clark was handcuffed at the time. Weeks of protests ensued. The Hennepin County Attorney, Mike Freeman, ruled the shooting justified and declined to press charges. In 2016, Philando Castile informed the officer who pulled him over, Jeronimo Yanez, that he had a handgun, which he had a license to carry, but Yanez panicked and fired seven shots at Castile. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was in the car with her four-year-old daughter, broadcast his final moments on Facebook Live. Reynolds said Castile was reaching for his wallet, not his gun. Yanez was later acquitted of all charges by a jury.

In 2016, the Minneapolis Police Department issued a new policy that officers had a duty to intervene when they saw a colleague use excessive force. The department also rewrote its use of force policy to prioritize the “sanctity of life,” and made changes in its hiring practices. The former Minneapolis mayor Betsy Hodges appointed Medaria Arradondo as the force’s first black police chief, in 2017. Arradondo enacted some reforms, but partisan division in the legislature blocked the passage of significant reforms statewide.

After decades of being protected by the political power of police unions, the Minneapolis P.D. faces growing public support for drastic change, including a complete dismantling of the department. In a series of speeches on Sunday, nine of the thirteen members of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to start the process of “dismantling” the city’s police force, without offering specifics. The pronouncement came after some council members said that police retaliated against them after criticizing the force. In a Twitter thread, the Third Ward councilman Steve Fletcher accused Minneapolis police of intentionally slowing 911 response times in his ward after he proposed cutting their budget.

Republicans continue to be skeptical of calls for wide-ranging reform. This January, four months before Floyd’s killing, Senate Republican leaders criticized an uptick in homicides in downtown Minneapolis and in crime on its light-rail trains, saying that those trends had caused residents to fear the Twin Cities. Senate Republicans proposed hiring more police officers, despite calls from black activists to instead focus efforts on reforming the departments. After Floyd’s killing, Senate Republicans dismissed claims of systemic racism, ahead of a potential special legislative session this month, in which police reform will be on the table. “It’s not a difficult question to say that there’s racism,” the G.O.P. Senate majority leader Paul Gazelka, said four days after Floyd’s killing. “To say it is everywhere, if that’s how you’re defining systemic, I’m not so sure I would go that far.”

Public attitudes about police in the state compound the challenge. A majority of Minnesotans back police in the state, according to public-opinion surveys, but strikingly different views exist along racial lines. A Star Tribune poll, in 2016, found that six in ten black Minnesotans believed police were more likely to use deadly force against a black person than someone who is white, nearly twice the rate of whites. The same poll found that a majority of Minnesotans also viewed the Black Lives Matter movement unfavorably. “You have this idea that Minnesota is a great place, but it’s only a really great place for white people,” Lena K. Gardner, an organizer with Black Lives Matter Minneapolis at the time, told me in 2016. “And then you have this Minnesota Nice which says we can’t really have open, honest, and frank discussions because they’re awkward, they’re uncomfortable, and conflict is a bad thing.”

Floyd’s death in broad daylight, on a busy Minneapolis street with multiple witnesses pleading with officers to let him breathe, reopened wounds left from earlier shootings. It’s possible Floyd’s death could prove different. People of color have recently begun to acquire more political power in the state. Those public officials include the Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a black Detroit native and longtime activist in Minneapolis. As a congressman from Minneapolis, from 2007 through 2019, Ellison played a key role in helping navigate the response of the state’s political establishment to Jamar Clark’s murder, in 2015. In the hours after Clark’s death, Ellison united different factions of the black community, and his stature in the mayor’s office helped him broker a sit-down between Governor Mark Dayton and the family of the victim, helping to ease tensions.

Five years later, Ellison now helms the prosecution of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds. On Wednesday, Ellison elevated charges to second-degree murder for Chauvin, and charged three other officers involved—Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane—with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. The rare prosecution marks a victory for black activists who have long mistrusted the Hennepin County Attorney, Mike Freeman, who has repeatedly declined to prosecute officers who used lethal force. Five years ago, Ellison’s appointment to the role would have been unheard of.

Governor Tim Walz is also the second Democratic governor in the last five years to surround himself with a diverse administration, building on the progress black leaders made with his predecessor, Dayton. In recent days, Walz and his administration have acknowledged and decried systemic racism. In an unprecedented action, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights last week announced a civil-rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department, the largest law-enforcement agency in the state, to determine if it has used “systemic discriminatory practices towards people of color.” On June 8th, the agency finalized a court-approved agreement with the city of Minneapolis banning chokeholds by police.

Walz, a Nebraska native and former congressman who represented Minnesota’s rural First Congressional District, chose the former Minnesota House member Peggy Flanagan to be his lieutenant governor, making her the highest ranking Native American woman holding executive office. “What is clear is that tragedies like the one that happened to George Floyd do not emerge from a few isolated bad actors, but from patterns of misconduct,” Flanagan said.

Major changes this year seem unlikely. Republicans retain control of the State Senate, and Senators have said that the prospects of major reforms being enacted during a special legislative session this summer are small. As in 2016, the passage of significant reforms will depend on the outcome of the 2020 election. If Democrats can hold the Minnesota House and win back the Senate this fall, next year’s legislature could enact laws and programs squarely centered on the racism that people of color in Minnesota have long pointed out. In a matter of days, Floyd’s death has forced a societal reckoning on racism that is shaking many progressive’s views of their liberal home state. Activists say that the country—and Minnesota—should heed voices previously shut out of the political power structure, even if it means finally confronting a difficult reality: that for black Minnesotans, and other people of color, the state was never the utopia it has been billed as.

I want to believe we are on the precipice of systemic change, but my decade of reporting in the capitol makes me pessimistic. Minnesota’s work starts with, once and for all, giving credence to the marginalized voices whose expertise, ideas, and truths have been excluded from its largely white institutions. Without that recognition, we may find ourselves here again, lamenting the glaring racial disparities that white Minnesotan political leaders have spent years decrying, without reflecting on the roles that they, too, have played in perpetuating them.

[endenogatai]

Europe sets out plan to boost data reuse and regulate “high risk” AIs

European Union lawmakers have set out a first bundle of proposals for a new digital strategy for the bloc, one that’s intended to drive digitalization across all industries and sectors — and enable what Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has described as ‘A Europe fit for the Digital Age‘.

It could also be summed up as a ‘scramble for AI’, with the Commission keen to rub out barriers to the pooling of massive European data sets in order to power a new generation of data-driven services as a strategy to boost regional competitiveness vs China and the U.S.

Pushing for the EU to achieve technological sovereignty is key plank of von der Leyen’s digital policy plan for the 27-Member State bloc.

Presenting the latest on her digital strategy to press in Brussels today, she said: “We want the digital transformation to power our economy and we want to find European solutions in the digital age.”

The top-line proposals are:

AI

Rules for “high risk” AI systems such as in health, policing, or transport requiring such systems are “transparent, traceable and guarantee human oversight”

A requirement that unbiased data is used to train high-risk systems so that they “perform properly, and to ensure respect of fundamental rights, in particular non-discrimination”

Consumer protection rules so authorities can “test and certify” data used by algorithms in a similar way to existing rules that allow for checks to be made on products such as cosmetics, cars or toys

A “broad debate” on the circumstances where use of remote use of biometric identification could be justified

A voluntary labelling scheme for lower risk AI applications

Proposing the creation of an EU governance structure to ensure a framework for compliance with the rules and avoid fragmentation across the bloc

Data

A regulatory framework covering data governance, access and reuse between businesses, between businesses and government, and within administrations to create incentives for data sharing, which the Commission says will establish “practical, fair and clear rules on data access and use, which comply with European values and rights such as personal data protection, consumer protection and competition rules” 

A push to make public sector data more widely available by opening up “high-value datasets” to enable their reuse to foster innovation

Support for cloud infrastructure platforms and systems to support the data reuse goals. The Commission says it will contribute to investments in European High Impact projects on European data spaces and trustworthy and energy efficient cloud infrastructures

Sectoral specific actions to build European data spaces that focus on specific areas such as industrial manufacturing, the green deal, mobility or health

The full data strategy proposal can be found here.

While the Commission’s white paper on AI “excellence and trust” is here.

Next steps will see the Commission taking feedback on the plan — as it kicks off public consultation on both proposals.

A final draft is slated by the end of the year after which the various EU institutions will have their chance to chip into (or chip away at) the plan. So how much policy survives for the long haul remains to be seen.

Tech for good

At a press conference following von der Leyen’s statement Margrethe Vestager, the Commission EVP who heads up digital policy, and Thierry Breton, commissioner for the internal market, went into some of the detail around the Commission’s grand plan for “shaping Europe’s digital future”.

The digital policy package is meant to define how we shape Europe’s digital future “in a way that serves us all”, said Vestager.

The strategy aims to unlock access to “more data and good quality data” to fuel innovation and underpin better public services, she added.

The Commission’s digital EVP Margrethe Vestager discussing the AI whitepaper

Collectively, the package is about embracing the possibilities AI create while managing the risks, she also said, adding that: “The point obviously is to create trust, rather than fear.”

She noted that the two policy pieces being unveiled by the Commission today, on AI and data, form part of a more wide-ranging digital and industrial strategy whole with additional proposals still to be set out.

“The picture that will come when we have assembled the puzzle should illustrate three objectives,” she said. “First that technology should world for people and not the other way round; it is first and foremost about purpose The development, the deployment, the uptake of technology must work in the same direction to make a real positive difference in our daily lives.

“Second that we want a fair and competitive economy — a full Single Market where companies of all sizes can compete on equal terms, where the road from garage to scale up is as short as possible. But it also means an economy where the market power held by a few incumbents cannot be used to block competition. It also means an economy were consumers can take it for granted that their rights are being respected and profits are being taxed where they are made”

Thirdly, she said the Commission plan would support “an open, democratic and sustainable society”.

“This means a society where citizens can control the data that they provide, where digit platforms are accountable for the contents that they feature… This is a fundamental thing — that while we use new digital tools, use AI as a tool, that we build a society based on our fundamental rights,” she added, trailing a forthcoming democracy action plan.

Digital technologies must also actively enable the green transition, said Vestager — pointing to the Commission’s pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Digital, satellite, GPS and sensor data would be crucial to this goal, she suggested.

“More than ever a green transition and digital transition goes hand in hand.”

On the data package Breton said the Commission will launch a European and industrial cloud platform alliance to drive interest in building the next gen platforms he said would be needed to enable massive big data sharing across the EU — tapping into 5G and edge computing.

“We want to mobilize up to €2BN in order to create and mobilize this alliance,” he said. “In order to run this data you need to have specific platforms… Most of this data will be created locally and processed locally — thanks to 5G critical network deployments but also locally to edge devices. By 2030 we expect on the planet to have 500BN connected devices… and of course all the devices will exchange information extremely quickly. And here of course we need to have specific mini cloud or edge devices to store this data and to interact locally with the AI applications embedded on top of this.

“And believe me the requirement for these platforms are not at all the requirements that you see on the personal b2c platform… And then we need of course security and cyber security everywhere. You need of course latencies. You need to react in terms of millisecond — not tenths of a second. And that’s a totally different infrastructure.”

“We have everything in Europe to win this battle,” he added. “Because no one has expertise of this battle and the foundation — industrial base — than us. And that’s why we say that maybe the winner of tomorrow will not be the winner of today or yesterday.”

Trustworthy artificial intelligence

On AI Vestager said the major point of the plan is “to build trust” — by using a dual push to create what she called “an ecosystem of excellence” and another focused on trust.

The first piece includes a push by the Commission to stimulate funding, including in R&D and support for research such as by bolstering skills. “We need a lot of people to be able to work with AI,” she noted, saying it would be essential for small and medium sized businesses to be “invited in”.

On trust the plan aims to use risk to determine how much regulation is involved, with the most stringent rules being placed on what it dubs “high risk” AI systems. “That could be when AI tackles fundamental values, it could be life or death situation, any situation that could cause material or immaterial harm or expose us to discrimination,” said Vestager.

To scope this the Commission approach will focus on sectors where such risks might apply — such as energy and recruitment.

If an AI product or service is identified as posing a risk then the proposal is for an enforcement mechanism to test that the product is safe before it is put into use. These proposed “conformity assessments” for high risk AI systems include a number of obligations Vestager said are based on suggestions by the EU’s High Level Expert Group on AI — which put out a slate of AI policy recommendations last year.

The four requirements attached to this bit of the proposals are: 1) that AI systems should be trained using data that “respects European values and rules” and that a record of such data is kept; 2) that an AI system should provide “clear information to users about its purpose, its capabilities but also its limits” and that it be clear to users when they are interacting with an AI rather than a human; 3) AI systems must be “technically robust and accurate in order to be trustworthy”; and 4) they should always ensure “an appropriate level of human involvement and oversight”.

Obviously there are big questions about how such broad-brush requirements will be measured and stood up (as well as actively enforced) in practice.

If an AI product or service is not identified as high risk Vestager noted there would still be regulatory requirements in play — such as the need for developers to comply with existing EU data protection rules.

In her press statement, Commission president von der Leyen highlighted a number of examples of how AI might power a range of benefits for society — from “better and earlier” diagnosis of diseases like cancer to helping with her parallel push for the bloc to be carbon neutral by 2050, such as by enabling precision farming and smart heating — emphasizing that such applications rely on access to big data.

Artificial intelligence is about big data,” she said. “Data, data and again data. And we all know that the more data we have the smarter our algorithms. This is a very simple equation. Therefore it is so important to have access to data that are out there. This is why we want to give our businesses but also the researchers and the public services better access to data.”

“The majority of data we collect today are never ever used even once. And this is not at all sustainable,” she added. “In these data we collect that are out there lies an enormous amount of precious ideas, potential innovation, untapped potential we have to unleash — and therefore we follow the principal that in Europe we have to offer data spaces where you can not only store your data but also share with others. And therefore we want to create European data spaces where businesses, governments and researchers can not only store their data but also have access to other data they need for their innovation.”

She too impressed the need for AI regulation, including to guard against the risk of biased algorithms — saying “we want citizens to trust the new technology”. “We want the application of these new technologies to deserve the trust of our citizens. This is why we are promoting a responsible, human centric approach to artificial intelligence,” she added.

She said the planned restrictions on high risk AI would apply in fields such as healthcare, recruitment, transportation, policing and law enforcement — and potentially others.

“We will be particularly careful with sectors where essential human interests and rights are at stake,” she said. “Artificial intelligence must serve people. And therefore artificial intelligence must always comply with people’s rights. This is why a person must always be in control of critical decisions and so called ‘high risk AI’ — this is AI that potentially interferes with people’s rights — have to be tested and certified before they reach our single market.”

“Today’s message is that artificial intelligence is a huge opportunity in Europe, for Europe. We do have a lot but we have to unleash this potential that is out there. We want this innovation in Europe,” von der Leyen added. “We want to encourage our businesses, our researchers, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, to develop artificial intelligence and we want to encourage our citizens to feel confident to use it in Europe.”

Towards a rights-respecting common data space

The European Commission has been working on building what it dubs a “data economy” for several years at this point, plugging into its existing Digital Single Market strategy for boosting regional competitiveness.

Its aim is to remove barriers to the sharing of non-personal data within the single market. The Commission has previously worked on regulation to ban most data localization, as well as setting out measures to encourage the reuse of public sector data and open up access to scientific data.

Healthcare data sharing has also been in its sights, with policies to foster interoperability around electronic health records, and it’s been pushing for more private sector data sharing — both b2b and business-to-government.

“Every organisation should be able to store and process data anywhere in the European Union,” it wrote in 2018. It has also called the plan a “common European data space“. Aka “a seamless digital area with the scale that will enable the development of new products and services based on data”.

The focus on freeing up the flow of non-personal data is intended to complement the bloc’s long-standing rules on protecting personal data. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in 2018, has reinforced EU citizens’ rights around the processing of their personal information — updating and bolstering prior data protection rules.

The Commission views GDPR as a major success story by merit of how it’s exported conversations about EU digital standards to a global audience.

But it’s fair to say that back home enforcement of the GDPR remains a work in progress, some 21 months in — with many major cross-border complaints attached to how tech and adtech giants are processing people’s data still sitting on the desk of the Irish Data Protection Commission where multinationals tend to locate their EU HQ as a result of favorable corporate tax arrangements.

The Commission’s simultaneous push to encourage the development of AI arguably risks heaping further pressure on the GDPR — as both private and public sectors have been quick to see model-making value locked up in citizens’ data.

Already across Europe there are multiple examples of companies and/or state authorities working on building personal data-fuelled diagnostic AIs for healthcare; using machine learning for risk scoring of benefits claimants; and applying facial recognition as a security aid for law enforcement, to give three examples.

There has also been controversy fast following such developments. Including around issues such as proportionality and the question of consent to legally process people’s data — both under GDPR and in light of EU fundamental privacy rights as well as those set out in the European Convention of Human Rights.

Only this month a Dutch court ordered the state to cease use of a blackbox algorithm for assessing the fraud risk of benefits claimants on human rights grounds — objecting to a lack of transparency around how the system functions and therefore also “insufficient” controllability.

The von der Leyen Commission, which took up its five-year mandate in December, is alive to rights concerns about how AI is being applied, even as it has made it clear it intends to supercharge the bloc’s ability to leverage data and machine learning technologies — eyeing economic gains.

Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, visiting the AI Intelligence Center in Brussels (via the EC’s EbS Live AudioVisual Service)

The Commission president committed to publishing proposals to regulate AI within the first 100 days — saying she wants a European framework to steer application to ensure powerful learning technologies are used ethically and for the public good.

But a leaked draft of the plan to regulate AI last month suggested it would step back from imposing even a temporary ban on the use of facial recognition technology — leaning instead towards tweaks to existing rules and sector/app specific risk-assessments and requirements.

It’s clear there are competing views at the top of the Commission on how much policy intervention is needed on the tech sector.

Breton has previously voiced opposition to regulating AI — telling the EU parliament just before he was confirmed in post that he “won’t be the voice of regulating AI“.

While Vestager has been steady in her public backing for a framework to govern how AI is applied, talking at her hearing before the EU parliament of the importance of people’s trust and Europe having its own flavor of AI that must “serve humans” and have “a purpose” .

“I don’t think that we can be world leaders without ethical guidelines,” she said then. “I think we will lose it if we just say no let’s do as they do in the rest of the world — let’s pool all the data from everyone, no matter where it comes from, and let’s just invest all our money.”

At the same time Vestager signalled a willingness to be pragmatic in the scope of the rules and how they would be devised — emphasizing the need for speed and agreeing the Commission would need to be “very careful not to over-regulate”, suggesting she’d accept a core minimum to get rules up and running.

Today’s proposal steers away from more stringent AI rules — such as a ban on facial recognition in public places. On biometric AI technologies Vestager described some existing uses as “harmless” during today’s press conference — such as unlocking a phone or for automatic border gates — whereas she stressed the difference in terms of rights risks related to the use of remote biometric identification tech such as facial recognition.

“With this white paper the Commission is launching a debate on the specific circumstance — if any — which might justify the use of such technologies in public space,” she said, putting some emphasis on the word ‘any’.

The Commission is encouraging EU citizens to put questions about the digital strategy for Vestager to answer tomorrow, in a live Q&A at 17.45 CET on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — using the hashtag #DigitalEU

Do you want to know more on the EU’s digital strategy? Use #DigitalEU to share your questions and we will ask them to Margrethe Vestager this Thursday. pic.twitter.com/I90hCR6Gcz

— European Commission (@EU_Commission) February 18, 2020

Platform liability

There is more to come from the Commission on the digital policy front — with a Digital Services Act in the works to update pan-EU liability rules around Internet platforms.

That proposal is slated to be presented later this year and both commissioners said today that details remain to be worked out. The possibility that the Commission will propose rules to more tightly regulate online content platforms already has content farming adtech giants like Facebook cranking up their spin cycles.

During today’s press conference Breton said he would always push for what he dubbed “shared governance” but he warned several times that if platforms don’t agree an acceptable way forward “we will have to regulate” — saying it’s not up for European society to adapt to the platforms but for them to adapt to the EU.

“We will do this within the next eight months. It’s for sure. And everybody knows the rules,” he said. “Of course we’re entering here into dialogues with these platforms and like with any dialogue we don’t know exactly yet what will be the outcome. We may find at the end of the day a good coherent joint strategy which will fulfil our requirements… regarding the responsibilities of the platform. And by the way this is why personally when I meet with them I will always prefer a shared governance. But we have been extremely clear if it doesn’t work then we will have to regulate.”

Internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton

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[rolandfontana]

Why I Helped Bail Someone Out This Week

This week, my wife Grace and I participated with a group of volunteers in the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights “mass bailout” project. Several colleagues have asked me why I, a former probation commissioner once responsible for supervising some 30,000 New Yorkers, joined the controversial project.

Public safety is obviously a concern of mine, along with equity and fairness. So I believe an even-handed explanation is in order.

Vincent Schiraldi

The widespread use of money bail is a subject of growing debate. Should people accused but presumed innocent of crimes be jailed, released on their own recognizance, released under supervision, or required to post bail?

And what role should personal wealth have in who is jailed and who goes free?

In New York State, courts can only consider an individual’s likelihood of appearance in determining whether to set bail and at what amount. This is where it gets tricky. A million dollars’ bail is prohibitive for most defendants—as even $1,000 or $2,000 can be.

Not so for a wealthy defendant accused of serious sex crimes like Harvey Weinstein who was immediately able to post $1 million bail and be released.

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Presumably, the bail set on the defendants that RFK is bailing out is to assure their appearance, not to detain.

If judges want to detain someone accused of a serious crime, they can remand them.

As such, understanding how often defendants released before trial appear in court is crucial in assessing the viability of the RFK bailout.

Three-quarters of those incarcerated in NYC jails are held pretrial.

Even though New York City has a very high rate of pretrial release compared to other jurisdictions, three-quarters of those incarcerated in our city’s jails are held pretrial.

Yet, when defendants are released, they almost always faithfully appear. Ninety-six percent of people accused of felonies who are released pretrial appear either at their assigned court date or within 30 days of it. Their four percent failure to appear rate is half the eight percent failure rate of persons accused of misdemeanors.

To aid decision-makers, persons accused of crimes in New York City are scored on a risk assessment instrument that recommends release or detainment. Yet, even those not recommended for release appear eight out of ten times at their scheduled court dates, and nine out of ten times within a month.

Skin in the Game

Some have raised concerns that high appearance rates only happen because defendants or family members have “skin in the game” via bail. Several non-profit bail funds in New York City bail out people accused of misdemeanors with whom they have no relationship. By forming a personal bond and accessing social services for those they bail out, these organizations achieve court appearance rates of around 90 percent.

So the vast majority of people released from jail pretrial appear initially or soon thereafter; people accused of felonies appear more frequently than those accused of misdemeanors; and people bailed out by strangers at a bail fund have high appearance rates.

Even though public safety is not a legally authorized consideration in setting bail in New York, it is obviously on people’s minds. Queens District Attorney Richard Brown deemed the bailout “clearly a threat to public safety.” Critics also included Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance and New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill.

While people are unable to commit crimes in the community during their incarceration, this must be weighed against the impact jail has on their likelihood to offend upon release.

The Arnold Foundation reports that as little as 48 hours in pretrial detention increases post-release rearrests. The Center for Court Innovation found that individuals sentenced to New York City jails have a greater likelihood of rearrest in every risk category when compared to a similar population of defendants not jailed.

As we consider the public safety impact of bailing out youth, several factors are important to take into account. Youth are particularly susceptible to abuse in adult correctional facilities.

Rikers jail complex, New York City. Photo by Formulanone via Flickr

Rikers Island has a long and troubled history of violence and abuse in its adolescent units. As far back as 1972, the city’s jail oversight body, the Board of Correction, wrote that, “the [adolescent] facility is the worst prison in the city.” Four decades later, when the U.S. Department of Justice investigated Rikers Island, their 2014 report decried a “deep-seated culture of violence” in the adolescent unit.

This has a profound impact on young people who are incarcerated. National research reveals that youth under age 18 are 400 percent more likely to be sexually assaulted in adult jails and 36 times more likely to commit suicide than youth in juvenile facilities. Even in juvenile facilities, one out of eight youth reported being sexually assaulted in the previous year.

Youth are especially damaged psychologically by incarceration.

Even though 16- and 17-year-olds were recently moved out of Rikers Island into facilities run jointly by the Department of Correction and Administration for Children’s Services, youth are particularly vulnerable to the negative influences of other peers in correctional settings and are especially damaged psychologically by incarceration.

This heightens the importance of using community-based supervision and treatment approaches in lieu of incarceration.

The city, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and non-profit organizations have already enacted a raft of reforms to safely reduce the number of youths and adults confined pretrial, ranging from reducing court delays, to assessing risk, to online credit card bail payment, to expanded supervised pretrial release. That is partly why, in a city of 8.6 million residents, there were only 86 16- and 17-year-olds in our jails on July 9, 2018.

Of those detained, it is important to note that the vast majority of youth do not end up being sentenced to state prison, either because their cases are dismissed, they are acquitted or they receive relatively short local jail sentences or probation. According to NYC data, 55 percent of 16-18-year-olds were released within 10 days, and only 4 percent were transferred to state prison.

So most of those bailed out by RFK would be released soon anyway, generally within a few months. The more serious cases are often remanded and therefore are unable to be bailed out by RFK.

So, to summarize, jail makes most people more, not less likely to reoffend; youth who are being bailed out are especially vulnerable during incarceration; and most of those being bailed would be out soon anyway.

Rapper Common is one of the high-profile supporters of the mass bailout project. Photo by Luigi Novi courtesy Wikipedia

RFK is working with several of New York’s most highly-respected non-profit organizations to assist in the safe reentry of those they bail out. The Fortune Society, Friends of Island Academy and the Osborne Association regularly provide reentry planning for people returning from city jails and have been collaborating with RFK to help those being bailed out.

RFK has also established a “welcome center”—for now at the Fortune Society but soon to be relocated near the entrance to Rikers Island—where those released can be reoriented to the community and receive items like a Metro card and a cell phone so they can be reminded of their court dates.

New York Pushes the Reform Envelope

Since the mid-1990s, New York City has emerged as a national criminal justice reform leader, cutting its incarceration rate by more than half, while crime has continued to plummet. That has allowed Mayor Bill de Blasio to announce the planned closure of Rikers Island, something unthinkable even a few years ago.

We did not get here by being cavalier with jail releases, but by experimenting with a range of reforms in one of the most vibrant and thoughtful justice communities in the country. That work positions us now as both the safest and least-incarcerated big city in America, something in which we should take great pride.

The RFK mass bailout is pushing that envelope.

Like experiments before it, it is not without risk or imperfections, but it has been done thoughtfully and with a strong data and theoretical backing. The bailout will soon provide additional data on how effective and fair bail is as a public policy, if we have the wisdom to assess it fairly.

I chose to join rather than criticize from the sidelines because I truly believe that in America, we need to separate wealth from liberty. Our system of money bail badly fails to do so, contributing to an environment in which 96.6 percent of the adolescents we confined on July 9, 2018 were youth of color and more than half are diagnosed as mentally ill.

That is an appalling reality that demands bold but reasoned action, not equivocation.

And that is why I helped bail someone out this week.

Vincent Schiraldi, co-director of the Columbia University Justice Lab and a Senior Research Scientist at the Columbia University School of Social Work, served as NYC Commissioner of Probation between 2010-2014. He welcomes comments from readers.

Why I Helped Bail Someone Out This Week syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[neptunecreek]

A Lump of Coal in the Internet’s Stocking: FCC Poised to Gut Net Neutrality Rules

In a new proposal issued last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) set out a plan to eliminate net neutrality protections, ignoring the voices of millions of Internet users who weighed in to support those protections. The new rule would reclassify high-speed broadband as an “information service” rather than a “telecommunications service” (remember, the FCC is forbidden from imposing neutrality obligations on information services). It would then eliminate the bright-line rules against blocking, throttling, and pay-to-play (as well as the more nebulous general conduct standard) in favor of a simplistic transparency requirement. In other words, your ISP would be free to set itself up as an Internet gatekeeper, as long as it is honest about it.

This is a bad idea for many, many reasons. Here are a few.

Net Neutrality Has Been a Pillar of the Open Internet

The FCC’s decision to gut net neutrality protections isn’t just partisan business as usual; it’s a withdrawal from over a decade of work to protect Internet users from unfair practices by Internet service providers. While the FCC’s approach has changed over the years, its goal of promoting net neutrality did not. Two years ago, it finally adopted legally enforceable rules, most prominently bright-line prohibiting ISPs from blocking, throttling, and creating Internet “fast lanes” that would favor some sites and content over others. But, as the saying goes, “elections have consequences.” One consequence of the 2016 election is that the FCC has new leadership that feels free not just to change the rules, but to get rid of them altogether.

Ushering in a Pay-To-Play Internet

Because the draft order repeals net neutrality rules altogether, it allows ISPs to block or throttle lawful content, or give the highest-paying websites and apps a better ability to reach customers’ devices, or to favor Internet traffic from the ISPs’ own subsidiaries and business partners, all without any legal repercussions. It paves the way for an Internet that works more like cable television, where wealthy insiders decide which speakers can reach a broad audience. A pay-to-play Internet means that smaller sites and apps, or startups without major funding, will be forced to negotiate with multiple ISPs to avoid their content being buried, degraded, or even blocked.

The FCC’s decision to gut net neutrality protections isn’t just partisan business as usual; it’s a withdrawal from over a decade of work to protect Internet users from unfair practices.

The draft order claims that “latency-sensitive” applications will benefit from paying to connect to you faster and more reliably, while other apps and sites will continue to work as they do today. But without rules, nothing will require ISPs to give the same quality of service even to apps that pay the same amount, let alone those that can’t afford it. Content from an ISP’s business affiliates or favored partners will be able to get a fast lane no matter how much another website or app is willing to pay. The order justifies its conclusions by cherry-picking some economic analyses that support them, while ignoring the harms to free speech that flow from paid prioritization.

Weirdly, the proposal acknowledges the fears of “non-profits and independent and diverse content producers” who spoke up this year to say that pay-to-play Internet access is harmful. But it dismisses these concerns, saying that these speakers “may be less likely to need [quality-of-service] guarantees.” Not surprisingly, it doesn’t explain why non-profits and independent content producers don’t need the same access to Internet subscribers as major media companies do.

FCC or FTC?

The FCC’s proposal attempts to paper over its abdication of regulatory responsibility by insisting, mistakenly, that the Federal Trade Commission can adequately protect Internet subscribers. The idea is that ISPs have to be forthcoming about their practices, and if those practices harm consumers or competition, the FTC (and/or private antitrust lawyers) can hold them accountable.

The most basic problem with this theory is that it doesn’t actually forbid unfair data discrimination practices. If a company is forthright about its intent to sell your private data, block competitors’ content, or throttle competing apps, then the FTC will do nothing. And unlike clear net neutrality rules provided under Title II telling ISPs and the public what is and is not forbidden, the FTC only acts on a case-by-case basis after harm has occurred. The agency has no power to issue rules that prevent that harm in the first place. Finally, ISPs have been working hard to defang the FTC in court, with some success. Recently, AT&T won a case in federal appeals court establishing that it was immune to FTC oversight because it operated a telephone service. Though the decision has been vacated pending further proceedings, ISPs now stand a good chance of getting both the FCC and the FTC out of the picture, leaving customers without an advocate in the federal government.

What is worse, even the transparency rules have been pared back, on the assumption that customers don’t really need detailed information about network performance. But those metrics are crucial to identifying non-neutral practices. And the draft order suggests that the FCC won’t even enforce the transparency rules in any meaningful way. Without the ability to double-check how ISPs are behaving, we'll be left taking their word for it. That obviously would make it very difficult to persuade the FTC that the companies are saying one thing while doing another.

The Antitrust Head Fake

Net neutrality is sometimes thought of as a competition problem: if users could vote with their wallets and switch providers, ISPs would be more likely to respect their preferences. Following this line of thinking, the new proposal insists that antitrust lawyers (at the FTC and in private practice) can police anticompetitive behavior.

Unfortunately, this won’t work. Antitrust enforcement is in such dire shape when dealing with regulated industries like ISPs that the FTC itself warned Congress about it years ago. Thanks to two Supreme Court decisions (one of which involved Verizon), the courts are likely to deny access to antitrust remedies so long as the industry is regulated by a sector-specific statute and agency. The intent behind the rulings was to ensure that expert agencies administrating sector-specific laws handle disputes rather than generalized knowledge courts. In this instance, the expert agency and statute are the FCC and the Communications Act. Notably, the new proposal ignores these Supreme Court decisions.

Curiously, the new proposal ignores the current competition problem. It insists that the ISP market is competitive, even though a majority of Americans have only one choice of ISPs for high-speed broadband access of 100 mbps and up.  That lack of choice isn’t a problem, the proposal suggests, because monopolies that face competition in some areas will act like they face competition everywhere.  Even the evidence that shows that people rarely switch providers is treated as a sign of customer loyalty to the regional monopoly. Those times when Comcast refuses to cancel your cable subscription? Proof that the cable company is aggressively competing for your dollars.

At the core of the FCC’s contorted vision of the competitive landscape is the effort to lower our expectations by examining only the broadband market of 25 mbps downstream and 3 mbps upstream, which are relatively slow speeds today. Even at that level, the FCC found the market to be “moderately concentrated,” which, under the Department of Justice’s own guidelines, can be a source of “significant competitive concerns and often warrant scrutiny.” In fact, the FCC’s view of the competitive landscape directly contradicts the DOJ’s finding that large ISPs have the power and intent to stifle online competition—a stance the DOJ took just last week in its lawsuit to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner. 

Tech Giants Aren’t Going to Protect the Open Internet Either

The new proposal’s final justification for abandoning neutrality rules is that tech companies will police ISPs for us. In other words, ISPs won’t engage in unfair discrimination because Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and others will exert their own pressure against it.

This argument misunderstands a fundamental purpose of network neutrality: ensuring that the Internet remains an open field so that the titans of today can be disrupted by the startups of tomorrow. Google and Facebook aren’t going to do that for us; it is not their job to protect the interests of users, much less future competitors. That is why literally thousands of small businesses (including small ISPs, which the FCC completely ignored) have asked the FCC not to abandon its responsibility to navigate the public interest in the Internet. They have no reason to believe the biggest corporations will act on behalf of everyone else.

Their skepticism is justified. Think back to when Google and Verizon tried to sell the public on a deal that allowed them to favor their own products.  Or when Facebook endorsed AT&T’s antitrust-violating merger with T-Mobile that would have raised prices on everyday wireless consumers. Or Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings’ suggestion (later withdrawn) that the company would be walking back their fight for network neutrality. Each of these were major decision points for Internet policy and all of them were crafted to serve their shareholder interests (which is expected since that is the first responsibility of a corporation). 

There are many more flaws in the FCC’s proposal, which we will discuss in future posts (for example, the FCC’s continuing confusion about how the Internet works). But the key takeaway is this: the FCC is repealing, not replacing, principles and rules that have been crucial to the growth of the Open Internet.

That means the fight for net neutrality moves into a new phase – and we’ll need your help.

The best way to help right now is to contact Congress. But don’t stop there – we’ll need some offline noise to protect online speech. Activists are planning protests around the country and in DC – if there’s one in your area, come out and make your voice heard.

And if the FCC nonetheless continues to ignore public outcry and the public interest, we’ll have a new front: the courts. The proposed rules have any number of legal flaws, and we will be happy to point them out to a judge. The FCC may be abandoning its role in protecting the Internet, but we won’t.

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