Editor’s note: This week, The Root will examine the many facets of law enforcement and its effects on the black community with our weeklong series Unprotected, Underserved: The Policing of Black America.
Updated: Saturday, May 12, 2018, 10 a.m. EDT: The Alpharetta Police Department released a statement Friday saying that the officer at the center of a police stop where an elderly black woman was dragged from her car has resigned.
RETRACTED (6/12/18):
With the number of lethal and nonlethal shootings, robberies and assaults on the rise in Baltimore, police and government officials are clamoring for ways to make sense of what is happening. But even with public finger-pointing and posturing, there still isn’t a consensus about who should be blamed for the current…
A Brooklyn, N.Y., woman says that officers with the New York City Police Department held her hostage in her apartment for 10 hours while they conducted an investigation of her adult children.
He uses the hashtag #ProtestSeason like it’s a period set aside for hunting demonstrators as if they were deer. The Riverfront Times calls him the “police department’s protest hammer.” He tagged a picture of himself on a Facebook post for his side business with #RiotKing—a protester-given nickname that describes his…
T-Boz wants justice for her mentally ill 25-year-old cousin who was shot 18 times by Peoria, Ill., police after officers said surveillance footage showed him committing armed robbery at the First Mid-Illinois Bank & Trust. But according to the singer, the officers’ stories aren’t matching up and have been changing…
According to the new, reflexively defensive school of thought, it is not fair to call people racist. The proponents of this school of thought say that racist people believe others are inferior, and there is no way of knowing what the angry Caucasians in Charlottesville, Va., toting tiki torches, or people like Donald…
In 1881, British colonial authorities in Trinidad attempted to suppress the Canboulay, a predawn ritual with drumming, horns, dancing and torchlit parades commemorating the end of the sugarcane harvest. When police showed up to stop the procession, revelers fought back and won the right to parade. The so-called …
The mere threat of murder isn’t really enough because inviting a murder squad to your house just because you heard a bump or a chainsaw in the night is hustling backward. Chasing possible murder with probable murder is like chasing Fireball with Honey Jack. No, the ax needs to be embedded in your spleen before you…
For working-class and poor black and brown communities in the United States of America, the concept of safety—particularly when it is dependent on hypermilitarized police forces—is a flimsy, dangerous illusion.
In what may be the greatest protest ever, two Philadelphia police precincts received pairs of underwear from a local activist group Tuesday morning. However, the gifts were not meant to inspire thoughts of romance or affection. Instead, the packages were an ingenious protest designed to highlight a disturbing, but…
Take a deep breath. Can you smell the weed smoke billowing in from Colorado and California? Have you read about the citizens of Maine and Massachusetts who turned into zombies from puffing blunts all day? Have you seen the news reports about the scores of people in Oregon and Nevada who overdosed on marijuana? No.…
Recently surfaced video shows two New York City police officers apparently taunting students from a Brooklyn high school, threatening them with a Taser as they walk down the street.
If a new bill authorizing the use of weaponized drones passes, Connecticut police officers would have the ability to use the flying machines to kill. What could possibly go wrong?
Perhaps the worst thing about America’s mistreatment of black people in this country has nothing to do with the violence inflicted against us or the centuries of historic subjugation we’ve endured. It is the constant disregard for our voices that frustrates us most.
I first met Jacqueline Craig in an investigation room of the Fort Worth (Texas) City Jail the night she was arrested. By the time I arrived at the jail, the video of her encounter with Police Officer William Martin had just begun to go viral and spark outrage all over the country.
A little over a month after the U.S. Department of Justice released findings from a yearlong study that showed the Chicago Police Department has a problem with excessive violence, racial bias and shooting people who did not pose immediate threats, a new analysis of police records shows that a busy West Side district…
Updated Friday, Jan. 27, 2017, 3:30 a.m. EDT: The Fort Worth Police Department has dropped charges against Jacqueline Craig, 46, and her daughter, Brea Hymond, 19, and will not pursue charges against Officer William Martin for the violent Dec. 21 arrests of Craig and her daughters, Dallas News reports.
The full, nearly 30-minute version of the viral video showing an unidentified white Fort Worth, Texas, police officer antagonizing and then arresting a black mother and her two daughters was posted on YouTube on Friday. It does not reveal any new information about the arrests, but it contains graphic and explicit…
