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This spreadsheet lists 1,000+ cases of alleged police brutality amid George Floyd protests
The videos raise serious legal and moral questions about police crowd-control tactics.
09 June, 2020
via @Whitney_hu on Twitter
- The publicly accessible Google Sheet lists more than 1,000 incidents of alleged police misconduct.
- Each entry is organized by city, and most contain a link to a video.
- From tear gas to rubber bullets, the videos highlight the extensive powers police are given in certain situations.
<p>Activists have been compiling videos of violent clashes between protestors and police in the two weeks since George Floyd was killed by officer Derek Chauvin. Hundreds of these videos appear on a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1YmZeSxpz52qT-10tkCjWOwOGkQqle7Wd1P7ZM1wMW0E/htmlview?pru=AAABcql6DI8*mIHYeMnoj9XWUp3Svb_KZA#" target="_blank">Google spreadsheet</a> that currently lists more than 1,000 incidents of alleged police misconduct. Many of the scenes are surreal.</p><p>In Minneapolis, a video shows police marching down a mostly empty residential street and screaming "get inside!" to a handful of residents standing on a porch. When the group doesn't go inside, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9wiuvmyKV8&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">police shoot them</a> with pepper bullets.</p><p>In San Diego, police said they witnessed a woman swing a sign at an officer on a motorcycle. It's unclear whether she did. <a href="https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/police-investigating-controversial-protest-arrest-caught-on-video/?taid=5edd5d85412e96000189f79e&utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter" target="_blank">But what a video does show is several cops arresting a woman at gunpoint</a>, putting her inside an unmarked van, and telling her concerned friends: "If you follow us, you will get shot."</p><p>In Austin, 16-year-old Edwin Ayala attended a protest. He stood alone on a grassy hill, about a dozen yards away from police and other protestors. As Ayala stood still, an officer on the street raised his gun and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDDRlEeL1x4&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">shot a bean-bag bullet at the boy's head</a>. Ayala collapsed instantly and was <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/brad-levi-ayala" target="_blank">hospitalized</a>.</p>
<div id="46c06" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7228ba4ca4427c3a8fdf2167d93177a6"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1268386210373918725" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Hi. You're probably seeing this pinned tweet because cops are rioting nationwide and I'm trying to keep track
I'm… https://t.co/Smsc5G1NmQ</div> — T. Greg Doucette (@T. Greg Doucette)<a href="https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/statuses/1268386210373918725">1591241812.0</a></blockquote></div><p>The project is led by T. Greg Doucette, a criminal defense lawyer in North Carolina who produces the <a href="https://www.fsckemall.com/" target="_blank">podcast Fsck 'Em All</a>, which covers police conduct. In late May, he started posting videos of clashes between protestors and police to social media. Soon, people began sending him videos to post.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"I think 'avalanche' is probably an understatement," Doucette told <a href="https://time.com/5849839/police-brutality-george-floyd-protests-spreadsheet/" target="_blank">TIME</a>. "I've got close to 2,000 messages that I haven't even been able to open yet."</p><p>Doucette and his colleagues try to verify each video, such as by checking whether the media has covered an incident, or highlighting when videos show an incident from an additional vantage point. Most entries also contain commentary, such as: "police shoot out a dog walker's eye for sport."</p>
<div id="ab490" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="afaf47fc1f6fece98f1f6b5fc5a0e4f8"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1269637221868601346" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">A Bronze Star recipient protested in Columbus and was pepper sprayed, tear gassed, run into by a bicycle cop and in… https://t.co/4QYOnXZhgp</div> — Tyler Buchanan (@Tyler Buchanan)<a href="https://twitter.com/Tylerjoelb/statuses/1269637221868601346">1591540077.0</a></blockquote></div><p>One of the people helping with the project is Jason Miller, a mathematician in California. Miller told TIME:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"[As] I've grown up and matured, I've moved out of Minneapolis and I've reflected on my relationship with race. I've seen how the culture in Minneapolis was not a healthy culture. [...] I wanted this information to be freely distributed, and free for people to see."</p><p>To be sure, it's not always clear what's happening in these videos, or what provoked a clash. What's more, it's likely that cops <em>technically </em>aren't breaking any laws in some of these incidents. After all, most police in the U.S. are given the power to use pepper spray, tear gas, batons, and non-lethal bullets against civilians who are "unlawfully" assembled.</p><p>The Austin Police Department's <a href="https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Current_APD_Policy_Manual_2017-1.5_issued_7-20-2017.pdf" target="_blank">handbook</a>, for example, says that officers can use modified 12-gauge shotguns to shoot civilians with bean-bags if they need to "de-escalate a potentially deadly situation." (You can watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDDRlEeL1x4&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">an officer shooting Edwin Ayala</a> in the head and decide for yourself whether that officer faced a "potentially deadly situation.")</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzM4MTYwMC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5ODQwNjQ4MH0.mT7C5yxFG1F-hb4JbqWTnZwLkTbhJgrdDzYi-YE8HUY/img.jpg?width=980" id="1b1a3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5441e6a6266eb4ca289d34a35c468ffc" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="George Floyd protestors in New York City" />Current And Former Mayor De Blasio And NYC Gov't Staffers Call On Mayor For Police Reform
Stephanie Keith / Getty
<p>It's also worth mentioning that hundreds of police officers <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/nypd-292-officers-injured-floyd-protests" target="_blank">have been injured</a> during protests and riots in recent weeks. In St. Louis, four officers were shot and one <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/charges-filed-in-murder-of-retired-st-louis-police-captain-david-dorn/article_3e95441e-4126-520b-9c41-fbbcbf889e6c.html" target="_blank">former police captain was killed</a>. In Oakland, two Federal Protective Service officers were shot during a protest; one was critically injured, the other died. And in New York City, nearly <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/nypd-292-officers-injured-floyd-protests" target="_blank">300 officers have been injured so far</a>, according to the NYPD. (It's unclear how extensive those injuries are.)</p> <p>Still, no police handbook calls for officers to pursue extralegal revenge on civilian crowds. And it seems safe to say that no public official would argue that police — no matter the circumstance — should be permitted to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpTCjIa4_C4&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">deliberately cover up their body cameras</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk9jMDK2ppk&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">pepper-spray protestors from behind as they're walking away</a>, or <a href="https://twitter.com/DonovanFarley/status/1269701897377603584/photo/2" target="_blank">chase down and beat reporters</a> for documenting the protests. </p> <p style="margin-left: 20px;">"What we're taught in school is that all power comes from the people; the people elect their representatives, the representatives hire the bureaucrats, the bureaucrats hire the cops" Doucette told TIME. "They're supposed to be at the bottom of the rungs of power, and instead we've inverted that upside down— where the police are openly declaring war on their own citizens, and the politicians are simply sitting there, diddling their phones, not doing anything."</p>
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Excessive police fines substantially decrease public safety, study reveals
Handing out tickets might be distracting police departments from working on more serious crimes.
26 September, 2018
Flickr user Tanenhaus
- Recent research uncovered that the more a city's police department collects fines and fees, the less effective they are at solving crimes.
- In cities where violent crimes are not solved, trust in the police goes down. As a result, citizens report fewer crimes to the police, causing a vicious cycle.
- To address this, cities need to focus less on fining those who break minor laws and focus more on violent/property crimes.
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<p>For those of you who've traveled through the U.S. on a road trip before, this is probably a familiar experience. The miles are slipping by, and you're zooming along at a comfortable 70 miles per hour. A speed-limit sign zips by: 35 miles per hour. Suddenly, a Crown Victoria with blue and red flashing lights and a siren pulls out of a side street concealed by the trees. Minutes later, you've earned yourself a $90 ticket and some points on your car insurance.</p><p>Sure, regulating speed is important, but some cities in America seem hell-bent on applying the squeeze. It might ruin your day, but for the city, it's a great way to drum up some extra revenue. But, it turns out that police departments that focus on collecting fines and fees for the city also do a worse job at solving crimes.</p>
Keeping their eyes on the money
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODY2MzUxOS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDQwOTgzOH0.XLQxxgktynh3GPhniye5cyAbarWq-ERFXRXcac1YlN0/img.jpg?width=980" id="bfa68" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ba9d1e2c60d1e20442d9fb4bf606e23d" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />The revenue from fines and fees like parking tickets are used to bump up the city's budget.
Flickr user Charleston's TheDigitel
<p>A recent study published in <em><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1078087418791775" target="_blank">Urban Affairs Review</a></em> took a look at the correlation between how much money cities collected through police departments and how well those police departments solved crimes. About 80% of U.S. cities get some portion of their revenue from the fines and fees levied by police departments. The worst 6% of these cities relied on fines and fees for as much as 10% of their revenue. If you were hoping to figure out which cities to avoid on your next road trip, the study regrettably did not name them.</p><p>The researchers found a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/09/24/want-your-police-department-to-collect-more-fines-it-will-solve-fewer-crimes/?utm_term=.5283551976da" target="_blank">startingly correlation</a>: for every 1% of a city's budget that was derived from police fees and fines, 6.1% fewer violent crimes and 8.3% fewer property crimes were solved.</p><p>To reach this conclusion, the researchers looked at three different data sets.</p><ol><li>The Census of Governments, which collects data on the budget compositions of the roughly 90,000 local governments in the U.S., including how much of their budget comes from fines and fees</li><li>The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data, which collects statistics on violent crimes (like murder) and property crimes (like car theft or burglary) as well as how many of those crimes have been solved</li><li>The Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, which contains data on the size of police forces, their budget, the various roles of a city's police officers, and other statistics on local law enforcement</li></ol> <p>Looking through these data sets and examining the relationships within, the researchers came up with a few different explanations for why collecting more fines lowered crime clearance rates. </p>Why levying fines lowers efficacy
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODY2MzY2MS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzQyMTIwM30.R0LePsS6RhestMPRGrpV6DScjDtXPLyfzUOFl6fSkzk/img.jpg?width=980" id="e7f7e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="22d5dc2dc125dce7334bcc1518f60485" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Part of the reason why more fines issued means fewer crimes solved is that fining people takes up a significant chunk of a police officer's time.
Joshua Lott/Getty Images
<p>First, aggressively enforcing laws that accrue fines and fees (like setting up speed traps) can use up the time officers would otherwise use to solve crimes. Importantly, smaller cities—those with less than 28,010 citizens—had the strongest relationship between higher revenue collection and lower crime-solving rates.</p><p>This is because larger cities generally have specialized police forces, where some officers specifically enforce laws that generate city revenue and other officers pursue violent crime or property crime. Smaller cities don't have this luxury. Generally, their police officers do every kind of job a police officer might do. So, when the city puts a greater emphasis on collecting revenue, the officers have less time to do their work.</p><p>The study also offered another explanation. Research shows that the <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002716211431818" target="_blank">more negative interactions</a> there are with police officers, the less a population trusts those officers. Traffic stops are by far the most common type of interaction between the general public and the police. Not only are these inherently unpleasant interactions between the police and a citizen, but the increased rate of traffic stops also increases the likelihood that something will go wrong. </p><p>With less trust between a population and its police, 911 is called less frequently, making it more difficult to solve crimes. What's more, this leads to a vicious cycle—research has also shown that a higher rate of unsolved violent crimes <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/1/14777612/trump-crime-certainty-severity" target="_blank">leads to less trust</a> in the police. </p>Who’s getting squeezed?
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODY2Mzc5OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNDQ1OTU4NX0.KrnhJlTCrmgeq9E43WnPg16LH-sBnCrAsUDEyS6gq2o/img.jpg?width=980" id="062cc" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5a7a9d7d5ad70ba598ddf737cb2df3d5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />The study found that African-American and poor communities tended to be fined the most.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
<p>Since we're talking about broken police practices in America, it'll come as no surprise that rich, white folk aren't the ones getting screwed. The study noted that "cities with a higher number of African-Americans, less-educated residents, lower tax revenues, and lower […] representation of minorities [in local government] tend to collect a greater share of revenues from fines and fees." Every 10% increase in the population of African-Americans in a city was also associated with a 1.1% lower rate of crime clearance. So, the more African-Americans in a city, the more likely police are to extract fines and fees from its residents and the less likely they are to work on solving crimes. This explanation also fits well with the well-studied fact that many African-American communities in U.S. cities <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/09/29/the-racial-confidence-gap-in-police-performance/" target="_blank">have very little trust in the police.</a></p><p>It's important to note that this study didn't establish causality. Just because a police department with higher rates of fine and fee collection has lower rates of crime clearance doesn't mean the first causes the second; they're just related figures. For instance, the authors noted that higher crime rates might discourage people from moving to the city, driving down the property values. Since a city gets most of its revenue from property taxes, the city might have no choice but to aggressively fine its residents.</p><p>Ultimately, however, the effect is the same: relatively law-abiding citizens get taxed for breaking minor laws, while violent criminals and thieves get away with their crimes. If we want to fix crime in America and for our cities to prosper, police departments and city governments need to focus less on squeezing their residents for every penny and more on solving crimes that truly damage our cities.</p>
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Why Good Cops Must Speak Out About ‘Bad Apples’
Former tennis pro James Blake makes a case for transparency in police departments.
14 July, 2017
What is the "blue wall of silence"? It's a term for when the police department says either nothing wrong or nothing at all about the discrepancies of a fellow police officer. If taken to extreme lengths, this silence allows police officers the ability to do pretty much do whatever they want providing that there isn't evidence to the contrary. In tennis professional James Blake's case, a few years ago, just before a U.S. Open media day, he was tackled outside of a Manhattan hotel by a police officer in a case of alleged mistaken identity. Four other police officers stood by the arresting officer and maintained that Blake had been in custody no more than a couple of minutes. They hadn't counted on security footage from the hotel that proved that James Blake had been in custody for nearly 15 minutes—even after showing them evidence of his identity with his U.S. Open credentials. With so many cases of police brutality in the news, it's easy to see why James' case is relevant. Should police stand up for themselves or the truth? James Blake is the author of Ways of Grace: Stories of Activism, Adversity, and How Sports Can Bring Us Together.
CSI: How Refined Is Your Visual Intelligence?
Are you detective material? This visual intelligence test will make you think twice about accuracy and just how much details matter.
06 December, 2016
Amy Herman’s visual intelligence tests and exercises are best done with a friend, because every time they unveil something about perspective that you didn’t expect. Herman created and teaches a course called The Art of Perception to doctors, intelligence analysts and the NYPD, and while her lessons are entertaining for individuals looking to have their minds blown, they are immensely relevant for businesses and even more so for criminal investigations.
<p>Here she uses one of Rene Magritte’s artworks to demonstrate the dangers of assumptions – both in observations, but also in communicating those observations. Her example from a real criminal investigation in Texas will spark an awareness of the different ways people see identical objects and our varying understandings of exactly the same words. Fine-tuning our visual intelligence makes us more careful, considered, and accurate – something so important when lives and money are at stake. </p>
<p>Amy Herman is the author of <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780544381056"><i>Visual Intelligence:Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life</i></a>.</p><p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780544381056"><img height="150" src="%5Cr%5Cnhttps://s3.amazonaws.com/edge-misc-assets/Book+Covers/Amy+herman.jpg" width="225"></a></p>
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Race Is More Than a Myth: It’s an Institutional Reality
Journalist Jelani Cobb considers the impact of Obama’s presidency on race in America. Did he make good on the promise of change that got him elected?
15 November, 2016
As President Obama leaves the White House, the post-mortems on his term and predictions on his legacy are starting to emerge. Particularly, what did Obama do for race politics in America – did he turn out to be the beacon hope liberals saw, or the expensive liability handing out reparations and redistributing power, as some conservatives feared?
<p>Journalist Jelani Cobb notes that, in hindsight, the former was naïve and the latter paranoid. Obama proved to be somewhat moderate and often reluctant to directly engage in issues of race, but the gesture of having an African American in the highest office in the country brought race to the foreground in a way that no one anticipated. Even if he lacked direct action himself, Obama’s presidency reverberated and mobilized grassroots activists; it gave confidence to the black and liberal communities, which had previously been publicly insecure and unsupported. Perhaps Black Lives Matter would have emerged under a white president – it’s impossible to say. But with Obama in office, the movement carried (and still carries) a relevance and received a national platform that made people outside just the affected community take note. Symbolically, if not substantively, Obama’s race legacy is colossal.</p>
<p>The national conversation about race is happening, but there’s a lot missing from it, says Cobb. He notes that when we talk about race it’s in an emotional context, expressed as a cultural mythology or a social anxiety stemming from mistrust between communities, and that it could potentially all be solved by just looking at each other as humans. It would almost be easier if it was just a case of mistaken approaches between individuals; individual viewpoints can change in an instant – with one book, a good teacher, a single interaction. Systemic repairs takes much longer. </p>
<p>The issues at the root of racial tension today are the byproducts of institutionalized racism like slavery, segregation, economic discrimination – all of which happened willfully and intentionally to serve one party’s interests, not by some accident of misunderstanding. Cobb points to the events in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014: "It wasn’t simply a matter of implicit bias or stereotypes or… well-intentioned individuals whom happen to have arrested or pulled over more African Americans than whites. We saw that there was an institutional structural approach to particular communities that were being fleeced by a police department. And so we can find those kind of dynamics again and again and again."</p>
<p>Jelani Cobb is a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jelani-cobb">staff writer</a> at <i>The New Yorker</i>. His latest book is <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780802717399"><i>The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress</i></a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780802717399"><img height="150" src="%5Cr%5Cnhttps://s3.amazonaws.com/edge-misc-assets/Book+Covers/Jelani+Cobb+2010" width="225"></a></p>
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