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How Decades Of Bans On Police Chokeholds Have Fallen Short

Monika Evstatieva Tim Mak

June 16, 2020 |

NPR |

Radio |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States

One of the key police reforms sought after the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, bans on chokeholds and other neck restraints, has failed to curb abuses in some of the nation’s largest police departments because of lax enforcement and easily found loopholes in such policies. Despite existing bans, some as old as 30-40 years, multiple people in those cities have died when neck restraints were used during their arrests with few repercussions. Lack of effective training and disagreements over such tactics’ efficacy are among other reasons experts say the practice persists.

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Can implicit bias training help cops overcome racism?

Candice Wang

June 15, 2020 |

Popular Science |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Implicit racial bias has solid scientific grounding, and training programs to make police officers aware of it and overcome its effects in their work have been widely embraced. But it is hard to measure whether such training reduces police brutality and racially disparate law enforcement. And there are many ways in which such programs fail, in part by force-feeding entire police departments a message they resist. There are ways to cure these flaws, including by making it voluntary and letting its lessons ripple out more organically in a police department.

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Two Countries Dismantled Their Police to Start Fresh. It Worked—Up to a Point.

Yaroslav Trofimov

June 13, 2020 |

Wall Street Journal |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Ukraine

Georgia and Ukraine offer cautionary advice to Americans whose mass protests seek structural changes in policing, even abolishing entire police forces. The same was true in those two countries. But, in both cases, initial successes at replacing corrupt police forces ended up reversed or at least limited by backsliding, as other parts of government and society resisted the changes.

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The City that Really Did Abolish the Police

Katherine Landergan

June 12, 2020 |

Politico |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Camden, New Jersey

A decade after Camden crime and police relations hit bottom, and five years after President Obama lauded its new police department as a model for reform, the city's successful reboot of its police force offers both encouragement and cautionary notes for a radical makeover of a police department. Excessive force rates and homicides have both dropped. A toothless disciplinary system has been replaced. But, while residents agree conditions have improved, they point to a number of changes still needed after the entire department was replaced.

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The Camden Police Department Is Not A Model For Policing In The Post-George Floyd Era

Brendan McQuade

June 12, 2020 |

The Appeal |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Camden, New Jersey

Hailed as an example of a successful, radical makeover of a police department, Camden's policing actually represents only a slight shift, from mass incarceration to its close cousin, mass supervision through surveillance and a continued reliance on broken-windows-style over-policing. Much of the city's reform consists of slick rebranding; for example, hot spots policing turns into "guardian zones," but the effect on residents is similar. Policing and conditions have improved, but not for the reasons that police reformers would like to think.

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This is how the Police Advisory Commission should work in Philadelphia

Charles D. Ellison

June 10, 2020 |

The Philadelphia Citizen |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Truly independent citizen review boards can serve as an effective check on police misconduct if they are structured properly, but too many cities are like Philadelphia, where a lack of power and resources means they serve mainly as window dressing. The history of the Philadelphia Police Advisory Commission shows how initial efforts by community groups to establish real oversight fizzled through political gamesmanship and limits on the panel’s power to investigate and discipline. More promising models exist in Phoenix, Denver, and St. Louis.

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Major Labels Are Donating Millions for Racial Justice. That Isn't Enough

Drew Schwartz

June 10, 2020 |

Vice |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

In the aftermath of George Floyd's death, the 'big three' major record labels - Sony, Warner, and Universal have taken meaningless actions to address the racial inequity in the music industry. Donations, diversity panels, and statements of support fail to address the lack of diversity among executive leadership, or the lack of ownership and power the artists have over their own music, nor do they address the lack of diversity in the types of artists being invested in or the lack of professional support for black artists. Their gestures are only paying lip service to racial justice.

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Europe offers creative ways to fight domestic violence during Covid-19. Why not bring them to Philadelphia?

Roxanne Patel Shepelavy

June 09, 2020 |

The Philadelphia Citizen |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia’s domestic violence shelters filled during the pandemic, emergency funding ran dry, and officials offered victims little recourse if they were trapped at home with their abusers. These gaps in protection could be remedied by copying what has been done in Spain and France, where pharmacists were enlisted to turn coded language – a request for a particular kind of mask – into a call for help, and pop-up counseling centers at supermarkets and funding for emergency shelter and counseling organizations expanded to keep pace with a spike in incidents.

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Training Police to Step In and Prevent Another George Floyd

Matt Vasilogambros

June 05, 2020 |

Stateline |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, New Orleans, Louisiana

While most police-reform ideas focus on top-down imposition of standards, peer intervention puts the burden on individual police officers to prevent misconduct. Grounded in studies of bystanders’ behavior in the face of abuses by others, the method first was adopted by the New Orleans Police Department in light of widespread misconduct following Hurricane Katrina and has been credited with that department’s “remarkable progress” in shifting its culture. Now its use is spreading nationwide.

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Philly police should adopt this ethics program that reformed NOLA force

Larry Platt

June 04, 2020 |

The Philadelphia Citizen |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, New Orleans, Louisiana

Eight years after the New Orleans Police Department served as a model of how not to police, its Ethical Policing Is Courageous (EPIC) program has done more to dismantle the “blue wall of silence” than any other reforms. Citizen complaints and horrific examples of brutality have gone down while citizen satisfaction has risen. Now the training of officers in “peer intervention” is spreading nationwide, empowering street officers schooled in the use of peer pressure to stand up to misconduct without fear of retaliation.

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