department of justice
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Disturbing Video Footage Shows Another Father Pleading, ‘I Can't Breathe’ Before Dying in Jail
Michael Sabbie, 35, was found dead in his jail cell July 22, 2015, and news reports suggested that he died in his sleep. A medical examiner deemed his death “natural” because of his obesity and heart-muscle damage, implying that the tragedy was unavoidable. However, a recently released video suggests otherwise, the Huffington Post reports. Sabbie was being…
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5 Reasons Why DOJ Probes of Police Shootings Have No Teeth
It’s become a routine American pastime: the spotlight of a federal Justice Department probe into grisly police killings of unarmed black people. Once you’ve seen those pixelated smartphone or half-working body-camera videos spreading like brushfire on social media, it’s safe to expect next an announcement from the U.S. attorney general. Like the iconic bat signal for…
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U.S. Justice Department Says Poor Defendants Can’t Be Held If They Can’t Afford Bail
The U.S. Justice Department said that holding defendants in jail because they can’t afford to make bail is unconstitutional—the first time the government has taken such a position before a federal appeals court, reports NBC News. On Thursday, Loretta Lynch’s DOJ filed a friend of court (amicus) brief in federal court saying that mandating inmates pay…
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DOJ to End Use of Private Prisons
The Department of Justice says it will stop using private prisons, saying that the facilities are less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than government-run prisons, the Washington Post reports. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates made the announcement Thursday in a memo that instructed officials to decline to renew contracts with private prisons…
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From Mike Brown To Simone Biles: How Yesterday Exemplified Black America’s Complicated Relationship With America
“Complicated” has become a convenient catch-all to describe romantic relationships that seem to defy explanation. So much so that “it’s complicated” has become a popular way to synopsize them completely; distilling months, even years of context down to two words. It’s also frequently misused, as many — and perhaps even most — of the relationships…
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Justice Department Releases Long-Awaited Report on Baltimore Police Department
On Wednesday morning the Department of Justice released its long-awaited report (pdf) based on its investigation of the Baltimore Police Department, concluding that “there is reasonable cause to believe that BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law.” Among the findings listed in the report, the DOJ concluded…
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#WeWontBeSilent: 2 Things the DOJ Can Do Now to Stop Police Violence
Two more black men became a hashtag on Twitter last week: Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. It’s a modern marker of our times, of an unnatural death publicly witnessed through a cellphone-camera lens. They were both killed by police officers for dubious reasons: They owned guns in states where carrying guns publicly is legal, but…
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DOJ Will Not File Charges in Death of Kendrick Johnson
The Department of Justice will not be filing any charges in the 2013 death of Georgia high schooler Kendrick Johnson, whose body was found in a rolled-up wrestling mat at his school, with officials saying there was “insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges,” 11Alive reports. According to the report, Johnson’s family met with the DOJ…
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The Worst Part Of The DOJ's Report On Ferguson
We know that the Department of Justice will continue to investigate the Ferguson Police Department. And, if Ferguson doesn’t adhere to whichever changes the DOJ orders them to make, they will face some type of consequence. We know we’ll use the empirical evidence of the systematic racism in Ferguson to continue to fuel our own…