Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday criticized law enforcement‘s slow response to violent brawls that broke out between pro-Palestinian protesters and counter demonstrators on the UCLA campus Tuesday night.
“The limited and delayed campus law enforcement response at UCLA last night was unacceptable – and it demands answers,” Newsom said in a statement. “As soon as it became clear that the state assistance was needed to support a local response, our office immediately deployed CHP personnel to campus.”
This came after a source in the encampment told the Daily Bruin that at least five protestors have been injured.
But for hours, UCLA administration stood by and watched as the violence escalated. LAPD did not arrive on the scene until slightly after 1 a.m. – once Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass sent them in for assistance at Block’s request.
Daily Bruin reporters on the scene were slapped and indirectly sprayed with irritants. Despite also being students, they were offered no protection.
The world is watching.
(28.06.2023)
Thanks to a law that Israel inherited from the British Mandate dictatorship, the interior minister holds the power to disband a municipality. The minister is barred from using it in the year preceding local elections. But once those elections are over later this year, this government can depose as many mayors and local and regional council heads as it wants. It can eliminate city council members and replace them with government loyalists.
The interior minister can easily find a pretext for “faulty performance” in any locale. And what will the deposed mayors do then? The Supreme Court will be unable to deem the decision to fire them “unreasonable,” because this standard will no longer be available.
(today)
The new law certainly does damage to Israel’s democracy — for example, it opens the door to corruption — but whether the court will determine it denies the democratic nature of the state is very much an open question.
A more plausible scenario is that the Supreme Court will wait it out to see if other components of the proposed overhaul will pass, especially those dealing with judicial appointments, weakening the independence of legal counsels within government ministries, and limits on judicial review of legislation.
Thanks to a law that Israel inherited from the British Mandate dictatorship, the interior minister holds the power to disband a municipality. The minister is barred from using it in the year preceding local elections. But once those elections are over later this year, this government can depose as many mayors and local and regional council heads as it wants. It can eliminate city council members and replace them with government loyalists.
The interior minister can easily find a pretext for “faulty performance” in any locale. And what will the deposed mayors do then? The Supreme Court will be unable to deem the decision to fire them “unreasonable,” because this standard will no longer be available.
Canada’s federal and provincial governments’ COVID-19 policies were unprecedented. These interventions into Canadians’ lives, our families, businesses, and communities were, and to great extent remain, significant. In particular, these interventions impacted the physical and mental health, civil liberties and fundamental freedoms, jobs and livelihoods, and overall social and economic wellbeing of nearly all Canadians.
These circumstances demand a comprehensive, transparent, and objective national inquiry into the appropriateness and efficacy of these interventions, and to determine what lessons can be learned for the future. Such an inquiry cannot be commissioned or conducted impartially by our governments as it is their responses and actions to the COVID-19 which would be under investigation.
Head of the Federation of Local Authorities, himself a member of the ruling Likud, Haim Bibas said the rift in Israeli society had nearly crossed the point of no return.
„We call on the prime minister to immediately halt his legislative push to overhaul the judiciary and reinstate ousted defense minister Gallant,“ he said. Netanyahu must recalibrate his path and enter immediate dialogue to bring about a broad agreement and preserve the unity of the country,“ he said.
(search results)
The Los Angeles City Council voted to enact a city-wide vaccination mandate, requiring all city workers to be vaccinated or file medical or religious exemptions by December 18. The deadline was extended to December 18 after a plan was approved by City Council Tuesday.
According to Escobar, 74% of LAFD members are vaccinated, including him, but if it does not change to 100% by the December 18 deadline, the department could lose 800 to 900 firefighters. He said though he is vaccinated, he believes it is morally and ethically wrong to base employment on vaccinations.
The Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up to date results.
The measure, which was passed on Wednesday, orders all members of the Portland Police Department to stop giving or receiving „operational support“ from officers representing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Marshal Service, Federal Protective Service and Customs and Border Protection, according to local news reports. Under the resolution, police are also banned from overseeing demonstrations alongside federal officers.
Despite unanimous support Friday, the amendment faces a number of bureaucratic obstacles before voters can vote on it in November.
The City Council has passed legislation forcing the NYPD to explain how it uses facial recognition and other surveillance technologies to track New Yorkers.
The Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act was first introduced in March 2017 and had picked up 38 council sponsors ahead of today’s vote. If signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, the measure would require the NYPD to report and evaluate its surveillance technologies and would compel the department to create a “surveillance impact and use policy.”
The Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act already has enough co-sponsors to win the two-thirds support needed to override veto from the mayor, who has opposed the bill.
The unanimously passed ordinance, which still needs to be approved by the mayor, bans any search warrant that does not require police to announce themselves and their purpose at the premises. It requires any Louisville Metro Police Department or Metro law enforcement to knock and wait a minimum of 15 seconds for a response.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer vowed to pass the ban as “soon as it hits my desk.”
(04.06.2020)
As the city budget process begins, Streetsblog has been asking Council members to put an actual figure on their vague demands for cuts as part of the #defundTheNYPD movement, but none has provided a target number, citing ongoing budget negotiations.
“We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does,” they said, reading off a prepared statement. “We’re committed to engaging with every willing community member in the City of Minneapolis over the next year to identify what safety looks like for you.”
Their words — delivered one day after Mayor Jacob Frey told a crowd of protesters he does not support the full abolishment of the MPD — set off what is likely to be a long, complicated debate about the future of the state’s largest police force.
In the wake of George Floyd’s killing, some cities are asking if the police are being asked to do jobs they were never intended to do. Budgets are being re-evaluated.
Non-reformist reforms seek abolition as an end goal, and include defunding and demilitarizing the police — a demand that has long been considered politically impossible but has entered mainstream discourse over the last week and is reflected in the letters sent Friday.
The letter to police chiefs asks them to help curb the power of police unions. “Making sure that unions aren’t as powerful so that you can keep bad apples on the force, and prevent robust oversight and disciplinary action,” Medwed said.
Step one by removing police officers who may carry the same “gang member mentality”
The LAPD will receive a $120 million increase in funding under Garcetti’s budget, which was adopted by default Monday after the City Council declined to review it by the June 1 deadline. More city money will be dedicated to policing than any other service this budget year. If you added up the budgets for housing, streets, and transportation, then tripled the sum, it still would not match the city’s LAPD budget.
„Today we intrdcd a motion to cut funding to the LAPD, as we reset our priorities in the wake of the murder of #GeorgeFloyd & the #BlackLivesMatter call that we all support to end racism. This is just one small step. We cannot talk about change, we have to be about change,“ Martinez tweeted.
NOTE: DenDekker, Simotas, and Lentol are all in the top 10. All face challengers in increasingly-leftist districts.
„I‘ve been looking at state finance disclosures for candidates in New York and I was noticing a lot of police money, law enforcement money taken by Democrats claiming to be against it,“ he said. „I was making this spreadsheet. Then (the death of) George Floyd happened — so many people responded and it got, like, a hundred likes in a couple hours? So people wanted to see this.“
Since sharing his „Who‘s Taking Cop Money?“ Google spreadsheet on Twitter on May 29, eight Democrats — including a state senator, state assembly members and New York councilmembers — have vowed to donate their police-funded contributions to bail funds or criminal justice reform organizations.