Those who focus on police reform are asking the wrong questions: Amanda Alexander

2016/07/30 Leave a comment

Agree, police reform is only part of the solutions and approaches:

….Reformers are asking the wrong questions. They have turned to increased police training and altered use-of-force protocols to end this nightmare. Fortunately, some among us demand another way. Young black activists are not just asking, “How do we make cops stop shooting us?” but instead, “What do our communities need to thrive? How do we get free?” They’re not begging for scraps; they’re demanding the world they deserve. If there’s a future for any of us, it’s in asking these questions, demanding fundamental shifts in resources and organizing like hell.

So far reform has brought little outside of multimillion-dollar investments in police departments for body cameras. It remains to be seen whether they will be effective in reducing brutality and deaths. But one thing is clear: We’ve decided that doubling down on investment in the police, rather than the communities they patrol, is the best solution to ending the slaughter of black people.

Ultimately, the real beneficiaries of these reforms are not the residents of Oakland, Chicago and Ferguson, Mo., but San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, cash-strapped cities continue to raise revenue from policing and fining the poor. And because of insufficient social service investment, Americans rely on police to be first responders to crises of mental health, addiction and homelessness. The results are tragic: Half of those killed by police have a disability.

It’s no wonder that mainstream discussions of police reform seem to miss the mark. Yet black movement activists remain bold. Organizers with Black Youth Project (BYP 100) and the Movement for Black Lives held more than 80 actions last week under the banner of #FreedomNow. BYP 100 renewed its demand to “fund black futures,” calling on Americans to divest from the police state and invest in communities to promote economic sustainability.

This call to fund black futures is not a call for reform. Instead, it understands the futility of our current path. It’s ultimately a call to a future where policing will never take us.

And they’re organizing to make it so. In Chicago, Fearless Leading by the Youth demanded – and won – a state-of-the-art trauma centre to serve their community. In Cleveland and Chicago, organizers removed prosecutors who failed to act on police shootings. Advocates are testing alternatives to police –gun-free zones, 911 alternatives, restorative justice – and also fighting for health care and education.

These young people are fighting to do more than breathe, more than reform. From grief and pain, they’re offering a dream of something more.

Source: Those who focus on police reform are asking the wrong questions – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

RCMP’s portrayal of Islam in B.C. terror sting ‘dubious,’ expert says

2016/02/06 Leave a comment

The defence appears to have a point:

Police officers posing as spiritual guides in an undercover terrorism sting offered “dubious” and “eyebrow-raising” interpretations of Islam to a British Columbia man with extremist Muslim views, an Islamic expert says.

Omid Safi, head of Islamic studies at Duke University in North Carolina, told a B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday that the RCMP should have helped John Nuttall overcome his radical ideas, instead of preventing him from reaching out to mainstream, moderate religious leaders.

Mr. Nuttall and his common-law partner, Amanda Korody, were found guilty last summer of plotting to blow up the B.C. Legislature on Canada Day in 2013. Their convictions are on hold while lawyers argue the pair were entrapped by the RCMP.

“I have questions about particular aspects of the ways in which the police seem to have presented themselves as a model of spiritual guides, offering highly dubious interpretations of Islam, putting themselves in a position of authority,” Prof. Safi told the court.

“Those are all things that, to a scholar of Islam, certainly seem to be eyebrow-raising.”

Defence lawyers have depicted Mr. Nuttall and Ms. Korody as impoverished former heroine addicts, living on welfare, who spent most of their time playing video games in their basement suite in Surrey, B.C.

Prof. Safi described Mr. Nuttall’s understanding of Islam as shallow and superficial, informed by rambling and incoherent political grievances.

Transcripts from undercover surveillance recordings reveal Mr. Nuttall was searching for spiritual guidance and that he identified the main undercover RCMP officer as a religious authority and his one true Muslim brother, Prof. Safi said.

“I think that deradicalization – religious guidance from an authentic, certifiable imam with command over issues of Islamic law – would be the proper course of action,” Prof. Safi said when asked what the appropriate police response would be when dealing with a person who harboured extremist views.

In her cross-examination, Crown lawyer Sharon Steele pressed him, asking whether his perspective would differ if this person were in the midst of organizing a violent plot.

“It would only add to the urgency of putting that person in touch with a qualified, scholarly source,” he replied.

Ms. Steele presented Prof. Safi with instances in which Mr. Nuttall called into question the authority of mainstream religious leaders and railed against their views of Islam. She questioned whether this behaviour was an precursor to violence.

“I wish I could tell you that that’s a sign of a jihadist. It’s not. It’s a sign of hotheadedness,” Prof. Safi said, adding that he’s encountered that exact situation dozens of times over his 24 years as a university professor.

“[It’s] hotheaded 18-year-old kids who think that they know everything about the faith getting up and telling a professor of Islamic studies, who has a PhD, you’re preaching a soft, watered-down, Westernized Islam for the infidels.

“What you’re seeing here of course is rude, it’s disrespectful. It’s also absolutely a part of the landscape of modern Islam.”

Source: RCMP’s portrayal of Islam in B.C. terror sting ‘dubious,’ expert says – The Globe and Mail

Filed under Radicalization Tagged with , ,