Eugene Ellison, a 67 year old black male, was shot to death by two police officers who entered his home without a warrant on December 9, 2010. Mr. Ellison was the father of a Little Rock Police Department police officer.
See the Laux Law Group’s letter (below) to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting an investigation of the Eugene Ellison case.
Continue reading Eugene Ellison | Request for DOJ Investigation of Little Rock Police
Police say they have no evidence of foul play in the hanging death of black teenager Lennon Lacy. But in a case with disturbing racial overtones, his family are left with haunting questions. Continue reading Teenager’s mysterious death evokes painful imagery in North Carolina | The Guardian
By Kyle Wagner
Last Wednesday, we launched an impossibly ambitious project: cataloguing every police-involved shooting in America over the last three years. After one week, we’re further along than we could have imagined. Continue reading Deadspin #Police-#Shooting Database Update: We’re Still Going
A Gawker article caught my eye this weekend. It is entitled: “What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings.” In it, I expected to learn about different state and national agencies and watchdog groups that do just that. Much to my dismay, no one really does. That is, with the exception of two or three reporters who’ve recently started, no one really does. Continue reading Tracking Police-involved Killings in the US
Sometimes a single story has a way of standing in for everything you need to know. In the case of the up-arming, up-armoring and militarization of police forces across the country, there is such a story. Not the police, mind you, but the campus cops at Ohio State University now possess an MRAP; that is, a $500,000, 18-ton, mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle of a sort used in the war in Afghanistan and, as Hunter Stuart of the Huffington Post reported, built to withstand “ballistic arms fire, mine fields, IEDs and nuclear, biological and chemical environments.” Sounds like just the thing for bouts of binge drinking and post-football-game shenanigans.
Continue reading The Criminalization of Everyday Life | BillMoyers
African-Americans and white people struggled together during the civil rights era. We need that once again.
By Peter Edelman
Last week we celebrated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the greatest and most important advance in civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The week before we marked the horrible murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi, as part of a remembrance of the 1964 Freedom Summer.
We have to remember all of it. So many American children growing up today – even college and graduate students – know nothing of it. They have probably heard of Dr. King, but that’s about it.
We have to remember the murders and the lynchings just as we have to remember the Holocaust. History does repeat itself. There is no certain immunization against going backwards, but the best chance of preventing retrogression is to remember, to be vigilant, and to be ready to act when we see signs of it appearing. Continue reading It’s Time for a New Multiracial, Cross-Class Movement | Talk Poverty
