Aguilar's dismissal came after months of escalating tension between his office and the Police Accountability Board on the one side, and the City Council, Berkeley Police Department leadership and other city administrative agencies on the other. Most recently, in December, Aguilar sued BPD Chief Jen Louis in an attempt to get records related to a complaint against the police. This week, a judge denied Aguilar's petition, saying Aguilar had not had the authority to file it in the first place.
The plaque from Heritage Toronto will "salute" the community's courage, Mayor Olivia Chow told a news conference at The 519, a city agency located in Toronto's gay village. "The bathhouse raids were a horrid mistake and a serious stain on Toronto's reputation, a scar a community feels to this day, 45 years later," Chow said. "It was wrong. It was shameful. And we remember."
The staff writers Emily Witt and Ruby Cramer discuss the situation in Minneapolis, a city effectively under siege by militaristic federal agents. "This is a city where there's a police force of about six hundred officers [compared] to three thousand federal agents," Witt points out. Cramer shares her interview with Mayor Jacob Frey, who talks about how Minneapolis was just beginning to recover from the trauma of George Floyd's murder and its aftermath,
Mayor Mamdani swept into Gracie Mansion on the promise of ending widespread corruption around policing and street safety. He can do both by laser-focusing his efforts on eliminating the prevalent abuse and forgery of parking placards. Mamdani has a rare chance to permanently halt this dangerous and criminal practice, and, in doing so, radically alter the balance of power in New York City. For the past decade, under the handle @placardabuse, we've documented how a large contingent of car drivers misuse their parking privileges -
There is an "epidemic of everyday crime", the Home Secretary says, such as shoplifting and phone theft. It reminds Shabana Mahmood of the years when she worked on the till in her parents' corner shop, with a cricket bat under the counter ready to deter shoplifters who stole, time and again. While overall crime has been going down in recent years those types of offences have been going up, matched by rising public anxiety.
Oakland leaders have declined for the second time to reappoint two incumbents to the Police Commission, the civilian body overseeing the Oakland Police Department. At the City Council meeting Tuesday night, all but two council members - Carroll Fife and Noel Gallo - voted to reject the nominees submitted by the Police Commission Selection Panel in December: Ricardo Garcia-Acosta, chair of the commission, and Omar Farmer, an alternate commissioner. The commissioners' terms expired in October, but both have continued to serve in a holdover capacity.
It was nearly a decade ago that Oakland voters overwhelmingly agreed in the ballot boxes that the city needed citizen oversight of the police department. Many hoped at the time that the newly established watchdog body would eventually take the reins from federal officials who have maintained control of the Oakland Police Department for now over two decades. But the commission comprised of seven volunteer members still seems to be struggling to gain footing within Oakland's complex bureaucratic tangles.
I hope this is a one-off, but the new San Mateo County Sheriff, Ken Binder, waited nine days to tell the public that a woman had been threatened and a man was assaulted at the San Carlos Caltrain station. On Dec. 23, a man hassled a woman waiting for a train about her clothing. He then threatened to throw her on the tracks, according to the DA's office.
"She is dead because of them. A 72-year-old grandma, never been in trouble with the law. For her to die in the back of the police car? There are a lot of questions, and they are not answering anything," says Riche Ramirez, Yolanda's eldest son. Riche said the holidays have been tough for the family, since this is the first time without her.
A medical examiner's report concluded Johnson 52, died of a prone-restraint-induced cardiac arrest, with methamphetamine use being a "contributing factor." Prone restraint refers to the face-down position officers kept Johnson in while attempting to handcuff him in his apartment. It can restrict breathing and can also lead to metabolic acidosis. Across the United States, it's been linked with several other in-custody deaths and many police agencies have since stopped using it.
A police force has reportedly admitted it unlawfully arrested two parents in front of their nine-year-old daughter after they complained about her school on WhatsApp. Rosalind Levine and her partner, Maxie Allen, said they were held at a police station for 11 hours over the complaints about their daughter's primary school. The pair claimed they had been arrested and detained in January by six uniformed officers on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property.
The controversial system of police and crime commissioners is to be abolished by the government, the Guardian has learned. Under the system, introduced under the Conservatives, all 43 police forces covering local areas across England and Wales had to answer to an elected official. The system, introduced in 2012, was supposed to boost the accountability and performance of police forces.
Karen Read attorney Alan Jackson is back on the warpath in his quest to "pull back the curtain" on policing in Massachusetts, and this time Boston's top cop is in the hot seat. "Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox has been caught in a lie - and not a small one," Jackson wrote in a blistering letter to Mayor Michelle Wu Monday, calling for a disciplinary review over Cox's remarks about a former officer who testified during Read's second trial.
Milliman was convinced that Elser had stolen a package off someone's stoop. As evidence, Milliman had obtained records compiled by Flock, a controversial police surveillance startup that's taking the United States by storm. As a display of the department's technological panopticon, Milliman noted the woman had driven through Bow Mar "20 times the last month." "Like I said, we have cameras everywhere in that town," the officer reiterated.
A government plan to give anonymity to firearms officers in England and Wales facing criminal charges will damage public confidence in policing and fuel online misinformation, a coalition of editors, journalists and media lawyers have said. In a letter to the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, seen by the Guardian, the group warned the measure would make officers empowered to use lethal force less accountable than ordinary members of the public.
