Latest news with #PoliceViolence
ABC News
21-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Anti-immigrant protest in the UK turns violent after asylum seeker charged with sexual assault
Anti-immigrant protesters have attacked UK police outside a hotel in south-east of England that houses asylum seekers. Six people were arrested on Sunday (local time) after protesters turned violent, throwing missiles at police officers and damaging police vans, Essex police said. Violence had flared outside the Bell Hotel in Epping on Thursday night after police arrested an asylum seeker on sexual assault charges. "Disappointingly, we have seen yet another protest, which began peacefully, escalate into mindless thuggery with individuals again hurting one of our officers and damaging a police vehicle," Chief Superintendent Simon Anslow said. "I think I speak for all of us — including the people of Epping — when I say we've had enough of your criminality. But our cells, which have been filling up throughout the evening, are ready for you, so don't be in any doubt that this is where you will be sleeping," he said. In one instance, as a woman walked through the crowd, police described "angry and violent scenes" where people tried to reach her, threw missiles at her, and shouted abuse. Police have an order in place until Monday morning (local time) allowing them to arrest anyone wearing face coverings and balaclavas. Protesters on Sunday marched with placards that read: "Save our kids" and "Deport foreign rapists". The disruption began after 38-year-old asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was charged with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity, and one count of harassment without violence. The charges stem from allegations he tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl as she ate pizza at a restaurant in Epping on July 7 and 8. He pleaded not guilty in court on July 10 and was denied bail. An asylum seeker from Ethiopia, he arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel on a small boat at the end of last month. The unrest comes a year after anti-immigration riots rocked the UK in the wake of the fatal stabbings of three young girls in the northern town of Southport. Right-wing agitators, including far-right activist Tommy Robinson, have been sharing posts and videos about the situation in Essex on social media. On July 13 — during a planned protest in the area of The Bell Hotel — two security staff were seriously assaulted by a group of men. Police said they were treating the attack as "racially aggravated". Two days later a man was arrested for shouting racial abuse directed towards the hotel. Police said Thursday's rally was initially peaceful but then turned violent, with protesters throwing missiles at officers and the hotel and smashing police vans and vehicles,. Eight police officers were injured and two men, including a 65-year-old, were arrested. "After carrying out their peaceful protests, members of the Epping community largely dissipated. However, a number of individuals arrived at the scene, intent on causing trouble," Essex police said. Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Hooper said "selfish individuals" behind the violence were mostly "from outside of the area" and had travelled to Epping "intent on causing criminality". Two more men were arrested on July 19, and were charged with violent disorder and criminal damage. As of Sunday night, all protesters had dispersed, although police said officers would remain in the area. A dispersal order is in place to prevent further alleged crime or anti-social behaviour in the area. AFP/ABC
Al Jazeera
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
The Berlin police lied and the lie is now used to justify repression
On May 15, a pro-Palestinian demonstration was held in Berlin to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. What unfolded that day was not only a case of police violence, but a coordinated effort by German authorities, the media, and politicians to turn fiction into fact in order to further criminalise Palestinian protest. According to a public statement issued by the Berlin police , a demonstrator had violently assaulted one of their officers, resulting in serious injury and hospitalisation. The police claimed the officer was dragged into the crowd, deliberately attacked, knocked to the ground, and then trampled or kicked by protesters. The message was clear: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are violent, irrational, and dangerous. But this entire story is a lie. Video evidence, meticulously analysed by Forensis, an independent research agency founded and led by members of Forensic Architecture, has unequivocally disproven every single one of the Berlin police's claims. The footage shows an officer with the number BE24111 written on the back of his uniform jacket advancing into the crowd with colleagues to arrest a protester. As they push people around, BE24111 starts punching protesters in the head and kicking them. He appears to injure himself during this violent fit and retreats with his colleagues. There is no violent mob. No one is dragging him into the crowd. No one knocks him to the ground. No one kicks him. On the contrary, the footage shows demonstrators actively distancing themselves and shielding one another from BE24111's assault. It was the officer, not the crowd, who carried out violence. Despite the truth being uncovered, the damage has already been done. The Berlin Police's false narrative was quickly amplified by media outlets and government officials, unleashing a wave of fearmongering and political opportunism. A police union representative appeared on Welt TV channel and described the demonstrators as a 'gang of murderers' who 'would have killed the officer if they could have'. The tabloid BILD ran a headline reading: 'Jew haters kick police officers' and quoted Stephan Weh of the German Police Union as saying, 'when a colleague is dragged into a crowd and trampled, losing consciousness multiple times, we have to say it's pure luck that he survived the night […] This madness must end before one of our colleagues loses his life at such a gathering.' The Public Prosecutor's Office stated it was 'an attack on the organs of the rule of law' and launched a formal investigation into the incident under charges of 'dangerous bodily harm' and a 'serious breach of the peace'. The very people assaulted by police may now face criminal prosecution based on events that never happened. Germany's Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt also seized the moment, declaring in the Bundestag: 'An officer at an anti-Israel demo in Berlin was dragged into a crowd by aggressive demonstrators and seriously injured… The police need the best possible equipment and appropriate powers. We will make this clear in the law.' The state is not just spinning falsehoods; it is also bent on using them to legislate repression. This is part of its overall strategy to criminalise pro-Palestinian activism, protest and speech under the guise of fighting extremism. On June 10, less than a month after the incident, the State Office of the Protection of the Constitution, a state security agency, released its 2024 report, in which it categorised multiple pro-Palestinian organisations as 'extremist' groups, including Jewish Voice for a Just Peace, BDS, and Palestine Speaks. This categorisation will likely result in more intense surveillance, potential police raids on group members, and even bans on organisational activities. Other groups have already been proscribed. In May 2024, Palestine Solidarity Duisburg association was banned and its website shut down by the Interior Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia state. Previous to that, in November 2023, the federal government banned the pro-Palestinian group, Samidoun. The state has come after not just groups but also individuals. In April, three European Union nationals and one US citizen were threatened with deportation for their pro-Palestinian activism. A year earlier, Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, a UK-based Palestinian surgeon, was barred from entering the country to speak at an event. My husband and I were placed on a black list after we were supposed to speak at the same event. For a year now, we have been subject to interrogation, harassment, and invasive searches every time we travel outside the country. Various 'symbols' of pro-Palestinian solidarity have also been suppressed. The phrase 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' was officially banned by a Berlin judge in August 2024, for allegedly expressing support for terrorism. Then, in an even more chilling move, the city of Berlin banned all Arabic-language chants at demonstrations in April of this year, effectively criminalising an entire language and silencing entire communities, particularly the Palestinian one, which is the largest in Europe. Meanwhile, police brutality at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Germany has become disturbingly routine. Protesters are regularly kettled, beaten, and arrested without cause or explanation. What once might have seemed exceptional is now standard operating procedure. The fight to end German complicity in genocide is being violently suppressed, both in the streets and in the courts. State-sponsored censorship, racialised policing, and violent erosion of civil liberties are carried out under the false banner of public safety. While the German state continues to claim that it is 'atoning for its past' by cracking down on anti-genocide protests, in Gaza, the genocide is raging at full force. Bombings continue, little children are starving to death, and aid seekers are massacred at aid distribution zones. The Israeli military is pushing forward with plans to create a large concentration camp for Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip in preparation for their ethnic cleansing. Acting to stop this horror has never been more urgent. In these dark times, those who stay silent about the German state's lies and repression must consider carefully what they are acquiescing to. Today, it may be the pro-Palestinian activists and people of conscience who are criminalised, but tomorrow it will be others. German democracy is collapsing, and state repression will not stop at a racialised community of protesters. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
The Guardian
13-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Has America learned anything from the George Floyd uprisings?
Five years ago, the entire world changed when we saw George Floyd's body on the pavement, a knee pressed into his neck – a murder, in broad daylight. Others might have simply witnessed a horrific incident, but Black people saw ourselves, and what it's like to live with a knee on our necks at all times. Because George Floyd wasn't the first – and unless we uproot this system, he won't be the last. The police have gone so far as to remind us of this by killing more people each year since George Floyd. But the uprisings of 2020 didn't erupt because of one killing. They were the breaking point of centuries of violence and neglect. Trayvon Martin. Freddie Gray. Sandra Bland. Oscar Grant. Breonna Taylor. Dreasjon Reed. Ma'Khia Bryant. Ahmaud Arbery. And far too many others whose names never trended. The message was clear: we've had enough. Diversity statements flooded inboxes. DEI initiatives exploded. The country saw its first woman of color as vice-president. We even saw Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leaders make symbolic gestures, such as kneeling in kente cloth. It seemed like maybe, just maybe, we were being heard. But in hindsight, those gestures weren't signs of transformation – they were proof that we weren't being heard at all. We weren't asking for slogans painted on the streets, Pepsi commercials, or Black and brown faces in high places. We were demanding something much deeper: a total transformation of our economy, our politics and our communities. We were demanding the right to live long, healthy lives without the constant threat of poverty, policing, racism or abandonment. Instead, we got a Biden administration, elected in large part because of the largest protest in American history for racial justice, telling us: 'Nothing will fundamentally change.' The so-called allies may have ignored us. But our demands were not ignored by everyone. The oligarchs – and Trump's new regime – didn't ignore us. They heard us loud and clear and prepared for war. Their greatest fear was that our uprisings might become a revolution. And that fear has shaped their response ever since. That's how we entered this new era of authoritarianism and counterinsurgency, on a road paved by Democratic administrations that sought to suppress and co-opt the very movements that put them in power. Police are killing with impunity. 2024 was the deadliest year for police violence in more than a decade: 1,375 lives taken. In spite of liberal efforts to make police more accountable with oversight boards, consent decrees and 'community policing', the police have seen their budgets increase by billions of dollars nationally. While we demanded better wages, affordable housing, divestment from fossil fuels, and community-based solutions rooted in healing and care, elected officials, even in some of the nation's most 'progressive' cities, answered with punishment and surveillance. In 2024, when young people wanted their colleges to divest from war and genocide, they were met with brutality and police repression. We wanted peace, and we were met with violence. They continue to meet us with tear gas, armored vehicles and curfews. They are banning books, censoring classrooms and undermining democracy at every turn. Now, in the streets of Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Chicago and all across the country, people are rising up to resist Ice. The people are back outside, losing their fear of standing up to a self-fashioned oligarchic dictator. Some say Trump is borrowing from the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's authoritarian playbook. But the truth is, these tactics weren't borrowed – they were made in America. The United States has long perfected the machinery of repression, exporting it abroad and inspiring apartheid regimes and fascist movements across the globe. What's changing now is the scale – and the widening net of American fascism. The technologies and tactics once used to crush resistance in marginalized communities are being expanded and deployed against anyone who dares to dissent – even white liberals and poor and working-class white communities who once believed Trump would shake the system in their favor. We are not witnessing the arrival of fascism. We are watching it evolve and expand. And let's be clear: this authoritarian turn didn't begin with Trump. It was built – brick by brick – in Democratic strongholds. Our home state of California helped lay the foundation with its prison boom and decades of 'tough on crime' policies, ranging from the Step Act of 1988 to 'counteract gang violence' to the Los Angeles police department's Operation Hammer, which devastated Black communities. Even Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing – a so-called reform initiative – helped entrench modern policing by giving it a friendlier, and in many cases deadlier, face. While Trump didn't create this system, he is accelerating it – weaponizing the bipartisan machinery of policing, surveillance and incarceration into one of the most militarized domestic regimes we've ever seen. Just look at what's in the federal budget: $46.5bn to build border walls through cities and ecosystems $45bn for immigrant detention – enough to quadruple Ice's capacity $15bn for mass deportations, even of unaccompanied children $16.2bn to hire thousands of new Ice and border patrol agents $12bn to reimburse states such as Texas for violent anti-immigrant programs like Operation Lone Star That's more than $130bn for locking people up, tearing families apart and building walls. That kind of money could cancel student debt. End homelessness. Fully fund universal childcare. But that's not where their priorities lie. Because this was never about public safety – it's about control. And now, with Trump promising to eliminate consent decrees – those rare federal checks on violent police departments like Minneapolis's – it's clear what direction they're headed: more fear, fewer rights, less oversight and more power in the hands of the few. But, after the largest protest movement in modern American history, how can so much money go towards punishment? What happened from 2020 to now? Some say it was effective counter-organizing. Others suggest that it was the backlash against racial justice movements gaining ground. Here, it's also important to assert another part of the story, animated by liberals and exploited by conservatives: copaganda. The state doesn't just expand power through budgets – it does it through stories. In the book Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, we're reminded that police departments aren't just enforcers; they're storytellers. They spend millions shaping public narratives: crime is everywhere, cops are heroes, the system is broken but fixable. Grassroots organizers are scraping together funds for one communications hire, if that. Police departments, on the other hand, run full-blown media operations. The New York City police department spent more than $4.5m in 2023 on its public information office alone, with staff dedicated to managing press, cutting footage and shaping public opinion. The LAPD has its own media relations division with more than 25 PR officers. Ice and Customs and Border Protection pay multimillion-dollar firms to launder their image. These agencies aren't waiting for a crisis. They're controlling the narrative before it even happens. Sign up to Fighting Back Big thinkers on what we can do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. From our opinion desk. after newsletter promotion And corporate media? Too often, they act as stenographers. Repeating police press releases. Airing body-cam footage edited by the departments themselves. That's not journalism. It's marketing. Copaganda is how initiatives such as Proposition 36 passed in California, when liberal media played right into the hands of the powerful, manipulating votes for a 'smash and grab' crime wave that is overblown. The Yes on Prop 36 coalition spent a combined $16m on ads and organizing to get Californians to undo decades of progressive criminal justice reform. We lost progressive district attorneys. Police budgets continued to grow. And somehow, even with all of this, our streets are no safer because of it. Because we know that the punishment bureaucracy does not keep us safe. But we saw something else, too. In the middle of collapse, when the system failed us here in Los Angeles through the climate catastrophe of the fires, and five years before that with Covid, it wasn't the police who kept us safe. It was us. Regular, everyday people. We showed up. We cooked for each other. We ran mutual aid. We protected elders. We de-escalated conflict. We passed out masks and sanitizer. We built safety while the state built walls. That wasn't just survival. It was vision. Some of that vision is still being built. In Oakland, the local community justice group CURYJ launched the Youth Power Zone, a community-designed hub offering workforce development, healing spaces, and leadership for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted youth. It's what public safety looks like when it's rooted in love, not punishment. In Los Angeles, grassroots formations such as CAT 911 (Community Alternatives to 911) were leading trainings on how to de-escalate conflict, treat bullet wounds, administer aid to people overdosing and keep our neighbors safe. Across California, the Crises Act is funding community-based emergency responders who show up for people in mental health crises, without a badge or a gun. It's a life-saving alternative to 911, and proof that we don't need armed police to keep people safe. These aren't theories. They're happening. And they deserve full public funding – not just pilot grants, but sustained resources that match the scale of the need. George Floyd left his house on 25 May expecting to come home. Breonna Taylor was going to wake up the next morning beside her beloved partner. When the SEIU leader David Huerta was abducted by Ice during the LA immigration raids on 6 June, he was fully expecting to go home that evening. Mahmoud Khalil was expecting to be there for the birth of his son. The system made sure they didn't. That wasn't just a tragedy. It was a reflection of what this country is designed to do to Black people. To poor people. To immigrants. To anyone deemed disposable, or a threat to the established order. Everyone is disposable under imperialism. This current administration does not care if you are a poor immigrant who wants to find work, a first responder, a father just trying to get by, an Ivy League graduate student or a labor leader for one of the largest unions in the country. If you are in the way of the order of things, you are a problem, a threat, a target. They go out of their way to remind us that we are less than human. All of us. We don't just need better laws; we need a different foundation. One rooted in care, not cages. In justice that heals, not just punishes. Because justice without care is just control by another name. The uprisings of 2020 were a rebellion. The question now is: will we do the revolutionary work? Organizing is so important in this moment. We've seen everyday people stand up to Ice and prevent deportations. We've seen students demand accountability from their institutions. We've seen school teachers defend their students, unions go on strike and abolitionist organizers building wherever they are. The powers that be are afraid, and they should be. This means we have to fight. It means we have to go outside. It means we must resist them. They can't kill a resistance. You can't kill an idea. That means not just resisting state violence but taking responsibility for building the world we actually want. It means feeding people. Holding space for healing. Creating alternatives to policing. Protecting trans kids. Fighting fascism in our schools and streets. And refusing to let our elected officials trade our lives for talking points. We have to organize. Fund community safety. Back mutual aid. Tell better stories. And keep fighting like our lives depend on it – because they do. 2020 wasn't the end. It wasn't just a flashpoint. It was the beginning of a new era. The messy birth of the world we want to create, and the death of the current one. The people haven't stopped fighting. Whether it's students standing up to police repression, neighbors running mutual aid, community members defending immigrants against Ice or organizers building community safety from the ground up, we're still here. Still resisting. Still building. And we haven't lost our belief that another world is possible, even when the system slides deeper into fascism. Eric Morrison-Smith is executive director of the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color. Dr David Turner III is assistant professor of Black life and racial justice in the department of social welfare at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs
The Hill
26-02-2025
- The Hill
Police killings set record in 2024, but with smallest increase in years: Report
The number of people killed by police in the U.S. reached a new record in 2024, but the increase wasn't as dramatic as it has been in recent years, according to an analysis released Tuesday. The Mapping Police Violence found that at least 1,365 people were killed by law enforcement last year — a slight uptick from the 1,329 civilians who died at the hands of police in 2023. The project from police reform advocacy group Campaign Zero has been tracking police killings in the country since 2013. May 2024 was recorded as the second deadliest month since the group began tracking the killings, with 136 killed by officers. That number follows closely behind August 2023, which had a record 137 deaths. In August 2024, the fifth deadliest month, about 125 people were killed by law enforcement, according to the report. The number of annual deaths attributed to police officers has climbed steadily since 2020 — the same year a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, fueling Black Lives Matter protests and other demonstrations around the country. The per capita increase from 2023 to 2024 was less than half a percent, while the per capita number jumped 6.5 percent from 2022 to 2023. The project counts as police killings any 'incident where a law enforcement officer (off-duty or on-duty) applies, on a civilian, lethal force resulting in the civilian being killed whether it is considered 'justified' or 'unjustified' by the U.S. Criminal Legal System.' The annual report also found that Black people are nearly three times as likely than white people to be killed at the hands of police in 2024. There is no formal government tracking of officer-involved deaths nationally. The Mapping Police Violence report is compiled from media reports and thousands of hours of research from the project's analysts.
