theintercept--2020-11-26--How the Criminal Justice System Fails People With Mental Illness

thought her eldest son , Cameron Davis , was just going through some early 20s growing pains .
He dropped out of college and quit his job .
He began to lose weight and grow his hair long .
He spent a lot of time in his room , teaching himself to play guitar .
He withdrew from friends and family .
“ He was just a good kid .
He had a genius IQ , just smart , nice to everybody ; loves old people , dogs , the whole thing , ” she said .
“ And then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Durden and her husband thought , Davis was just trying to find himself .
They never considered there might be something else going on .
So , in the fall of 2018 , they packed Davis into his Ford Fiesta with his clothes , guitars and amplifier , some groceries and cash , and waved goodbye as the 23-year-old set off from their home in North Carolina to Stockton , California , where he would stay with his younger brother , Kevin .
Kevin helped Davis settle in and even got him a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , things went sideways .
Davis was fired for ignoring his duties and instead lying in the grass staring at the sky .
He began talking to himself , laughing inappropriately , and became paranoid around Kevin ’ s friends .
It all came to a head late one night in January 2019 , when Kevin called his mother .
Davis was in the background yelling and playing his guitar ; Kevin was worried that the neighbors would call the cops .
He ’ d told Davis that , but he wouldn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said he “ didn ’ t understand what the word ‘ neighbors ’ meant.
” Durden was scared .
Something was seriously wrong .
She convinced Davis to come home so he could be seen at Duke Medical Center .
It had taken him two-and-a-half days to make the cross-country trip to California , so Durden figured she ’ d see him soon .
He never showed up .
Four days later she filed a missing person ’ s report with the Stockton police , and they quickly located Davis in Los Angeles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said he should call his mother .
She again told her son to come home .
More time went by , and on January 24 , she again called the police to file a new report .
Finally , in early February , Durden got a call from a Stockton officer who told her , “ ‘ I found your baby , ’ ” she recalled .
“ And she ’ s like , ‘ He ’ s alive .
And he ’ s in jail.
’ ” On January 28 , 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speeding just outside of Tyler , Texas , in the northeast part of the state .
As the state trooper sat in his vehicle checking Davis ’ s license and registration , Davis hit the gas , touching off a high-speed chase that ended after Davis damaged his car ; no one was hurt .
Davis was arrested , prosecuted , and sent to prison .
Durden was stunned .
Since then , she has struggled to understand a criminal justice system that she feels has aggressively ignored her son ’ s deepening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what she believes prompted him to flee the cops in the first place .
“ Where ’ s the common sense where somebody goes , ‘ There might be something wrong with this kid ’ ?
” How those with mental illness are treated in the system has become a focus in the ongoing calls for criminal justice reform that have increased in volume since the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May .
At least 25 percent of fatal police encounters involve a person with mental illness , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 16 times more likely to be killed during an encounter with police , according to a report from the Treatment Advocacy Center .
“ I ’ ve heard a thousand stories like this , ” Alisa Roth , author of “ Insane : America ’ s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness , ” said of Davis ’ s case .
The criminal justice system — from police contact to prosecution and prison — has been thrust onto the front lines of handling mental health crises and is ill-equipped to do so , Roth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be fixed.
” Highway Patrol Trooper Chaney Wade of the Texas Department of Public Safety was sitting in his car monitoring eastbound traffic on Interstate 20 in Smith County when he clocked Davis going 89 in a 75-mile-per-hour zone .
Reading the police report , it ’ s clear that from the start , Wade sensed that something was off about Davis .
He was mumbling and wouldn ’ t make eye contact .
When Wade asked him who he ’ d been staying with in California , Davis couldn ’ t remember @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took Davis ’ s license and registration back to his car to run it through the computer .
Sitting inside with his window rolled up , Wade could hear loud music coming from Davis ’ s car .
He watched Davis as he rocked his head back and forth .
Then the brake light came on ; Davis looked over his shoulder and just took off .
Wade gave chase .
The whole pursuit , which eventually included several troopers along with officers from other agencies , lasted about 17 minutes , with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at speeds that topped 110 mph .
He got off the highway and ran through a fence before re-entering the interstate going the opposite direction .
Ultimately , damage from hitting the fence disabled Davis ’ s car , which came to a stop in the middle of the highway .
Trooper Kevin Lybrand approached the car , and he too noted that something was off .
As he stood there with his gun drawn , Lybrand wrote in his report , Davis just sat in the car , shaking his head to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Lybrand ’ s commands and lay face down on the asphalt .
Davis was booked into the Smith County jail on a charge of evading “ arrest or detention , ” a third-degree felony .
Lybrand asked Davis why he ’ d fled .
“ He stated that he was ‘ just chillin ’ , trying to get back home , ’ ” he wrote .
When Durden was finally able to talk to Davis on the phone , she asked him the same question .
“ Cameron just described it as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Something told him , ‘ You have to go , and you have to go fast , ’ and Cameron said it was like he couldn ’ t control the car and he could not control his actions .
He just knew he had to go.
” Inside the jail , Davis ’ s behavior began to deteriorate , Durden said .
He would walk around naked and steal people ’ s food , she recalled , but then didn ’ t remember doing any of it .
It appears that someone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what it was ( though it isn ’ t clear from the available records how he was diagnosed ) and Davis was prescribed Geodon , an antipsychotic treatment for schizophrenia .
Durden and her husband hired an attorney in Texas , Robert Perkins , and they hoped Davis would be released .
Soon , they realized that was not in the cards : The state was seeking a six-year prison sentence for what would be Davis ’ s first criminal offense .
Durden and her daughter , Mackenzie , each wrote letters that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judge and prosecutors , laying out what had happened with Davis and begging for leniency .
“ I realize that this letter is lengthy , ” Durden wrote .
“ It is difficult to stop writing when you are fighting for your child ’ s life.
” She implored them to allow Davis to come home to North Carolina for treatment .
“ Cameron is ill , and it is doubtful that he would even survive a prison sentence.
” Ultimately , Davis accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to four years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been inside , things have gotten worse .
Although prisoners have a right to mental health care , Davis hasn ’ t gotten access , says Durden .
And he ’ s lost good-time credit that could see him released early .
Without access to medication , he hasn ’ t been able to follow the rules ; if he can ’ t follow the rules , he loses time credit .
Durden fears Davis will end up serving all four years .
She worries about how much damage will have been done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , at times , whether he ’ ll make it at all .
“ Sadly , that story is anything but unique , ” said Miriam Krinsky , a former federal prosecutor who is now the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution .
“ I have seen that scenario play out far too many times .
I saw it in my days as a prosecutor , I saw it when I was working on law enforcement reform.
” The nation lacks a robust , and accessible , mental health care system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are churned through the criminal justice system in alarming numbers .
The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics has reported that more than half of those incarcerated in the nation ’ s jails and prisons have a mental illness .
County jails have become the largest mental health provider in most states , including California , Illinois , New York , and Texas .
“ The fact that our jails are the largest mental health institutions in the nation is just shameful , ” Krinsky said .
Roth , who talked to hundreds of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country while researching her book about how the criminal justice system treats mental illness , agrees .
It ’ s a problem that warrants “ stepping back ” to interrogate the origins of the dysfunction and how that has impacted countless individual cases .
And the system should seek to understand what ’ s behind the actions of people like Davis before deciding to arrest , prosecute , or incarcerate them , she said .
“ It seems to me that in most cases , if not all cases , we should be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ‘ What ’ s behind this ?
’ ” Among the most common ways in which the criminal justice system has tried to reform its treatment of people with mental illness is through the introduction of crisis intervention and de-escalation trainings for police .
The Crisis Intervention Team model was developed in Memphis in 1988 after police fatally shot 27-year-old Joseph Dewayne Robinson , who was in the middle of a mental health crisis , brandishing a knife and threatening suicide .
As police repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He was shot eight times .
The idea of the so-called Memphis Model is to provide specialty training to a group of officers who could respond to mental health calls , de-escalate any tension , and route a person to partners in the community ’ s mental and public health systems for evaluation and treatment , diverting them whenever possible from the criminal justice system .
Where police are concerned , it ’ s a model that embraces two core components .
First , the tactical side , or how cops spot and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis .
“ This is the information that tells officers , don ’ t rush forward ; don ’ t shout verbal commands .
You need to go slow , you need to modulate your tone , ” said Seth Stoughton , a former Tallahassee police officer-turned-law professor at the University of South Carolina , where he studies policing and its regulation .
“ Building rapport with someone who is in a mental health crisis is critical to effective communication.
” The second component is at least as crucial : “ Now that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible with someone who ’ s in a mental health crisis , what do you do ?
” Stoughton said .
The model requires that police “ be comfortable making the decision that they aren ’ t going to make an arrest for someone ’ s behavior , ” he said .
“ Even if that behavior satisfies the elements of a crime , they are instead going to submit that person for psychiatric evaluation , for example.
” The Texas DPS has long provided crisis intervention training to its sworn personnel — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state training records ( Wade has taken at least 48 hours of crisis intervention training over his 18-year career ; Lybrand at least 16 hours over a four-year career ) .
Included in Texas ’ s current training materials is dashcam video of a DPS trooper who has pulled over a man for speeding .
The man doesn ’ t have identification , and though he says he ’ s headed to San Antonio , based on where he said he started and where he is pulled over , he ’ s way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of the car right away and talks with him on the side of the road ; he soon learns the man is a military veteran dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder .
He keeps the conversation calm and , after calling for backup , drives him to a hospital .
While Stoughton hasn ’ t evaluated the details of Davis ’ s case , he said that sometimes what he hears police say is that “ ‘ when there ’ s a crime we have the duty to arrest , ’ and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not actually true , ” he said .
“ They have tremendous discretion in whether or not to make an arrest to deal with a particular issue or whether or not to deal with that issue in an alternative way , even when they have the clear legal authority that would allow them to make an arrest.
” Reframing the way law enforcement sees these interactions and their outcomes is what good training tries to do .
When someone ’ s behavior is the result of a mental health issue , “ you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make an arrest for that because , really , that may not help the person , ” he said .
“ It may not help society.
” A related issue is that many agencies focus on crisis intervention “ training ” and forget that CIT actually stands for crisis intervention “ team.
” In addition to well-trained police working in partnership with mental health experts and providers , “ one of the team members has to be the local prosecutor , ” he said .
“ It should be standard.
” Krinsky agrees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ series of “ exit ramps , ” so that people whose behaviors are prompted by crisis are dealt with outside the criminal justice system .
“ The problem is , in the first instance , we don ’ t have adequate alternatives and we think of law enforcement as the auto response when people are in crisis , ” she said .
The first off-ramp , she says , is to get police out of the equation — to have trained civilians deal with as many mental health-related calls as possible , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Streets program in Eugene , Oregon , known as CAHOOTS , which has been in operation for more than three decades .
Amid the ongoing protests over police violence , the CAHOOTS model has gained considerable national attention , and a number of jurisdictions across the country are now talking with the organization about ways to adapt its strategy , including officials in Austin and Houston .
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Peter DeFazio have introduced the CAHOOTS Act , which would allow Medicaid to pay for these programs .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ earliest stage fail , we “ need to ensure that DAs have the wisdom to understand when people need help and not punishment , ” Krinsky said .
“ The DA ’ s job is not to be on autopilot where every case that comes before them has to be charged and , if charges are filed , every punishment has to be the max .
That ’ s not what their job is about ; it ’ s not about notches on a belt .
It ’ s about what is the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promote the well-being and safety of your community ?
” There are many ways prosecutors can do this , she says .
In Seattle , for example , the elected prosecuting attorney , Dan Satterberg , was a principle architect of his county ’ s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program , which proactively seeks to divert people toward services and away from the criminal justice system .
As state ’ s attorney of Chittenden County , Vermont , T.J. Donovan , now the state attorney general , partnered with local social services to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conviction rates for nonviolent offenses prompted by drug addiction and mental illness .
“ Ideally , the prosecutor is a partner in reforming the process , ” she said , “ so it doesn ’ t get to their doorstep.
” For his part , Jacob Putman , the elected Smith County , Texas , district attorney , said he could see how Davis ’ s actions could have been motivated by a mental health crisis .
“ I can certainly see that ’ s one way to look at it , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t see that as the only possible explanation .
“ I guess I ’ ve had lots of evading cases where it was never really known why they evaded , right ?
I mean , people pull over and then take off.
” Putman said his office would have needed more information to determine if Davis ’ s offense had actually been caused by a mental health crisis before considering a lesser punishment ; if someone had brought them a psychological evaluation that explained how his mental health influenced his offense and offered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certainly be something we consider.
” Putman did not personally try the case but said there is no record in the file that the family ’ s letters were given to the state ; he said those letters might have been useful in determining punishment .
Putman ’ s office doesn ’ t have any formal policy or diversion program that outlines how to address offenses that may be motivated by mental health issues and instead says individual prosecutors make those determinations on a case-by-case basis — so , for example , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of success , it might be less likely that prosecutors would consider diversion a worthy goal .
In Davis ’ s case , Putman said he doesn ’ t think a four-year prison term was extreme .
In fact , he said , after learning that a doctor who evaluated whether Davis was competent to aid in his defense found “ what appeared to be signs of a mental illness , ” prosecutors dropped their initial recommendation , which was six years in prison .
“ I don ’ t think it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the offense was , ” he said .
“ When it comes to mental health , obviously the majority of people with mental health issues are not violent and don ’ t typically put the public in danger.
” Here , he said , regardless of the motivation , Davis ’ s offense put people at risk .
“ I guess that was why it was for prison time and not probation or something like that .
It was just a very , very dangerous set of events.
” Still , Putman says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whole has not served people with mental illness .
“ I want to be first on the list of DAs who think the jail should not be our mental health treatment center .
That is a big travesty of our criminal justice system , that we don ’ t have a robust mental health system that should be dealing with these kinds of cases , ” he said .
“ And I think everybody involved in the criminal justice system would be happy to see that .
I ’ d much rather people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ setting than arrested.
” Perkins , Davis ’ s defense attorney , says he ’ s convinced his client ’ s behavior was caused by mental illness — there were the police reports , the finding of mental illness by the competency evaluator , and the letters he says he did show to the prosecutor — but he couldn ’ t convince the state that getting Davis treatment instead of locking him up was the just outcome .
“ What you do is you end up doing the best you could possibly do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Unfortunately , Cameron Davis is not the first nor will he be the last person that ’ s in this particular situation.
” Prison is not a good setting for addressing mental health issues , which is why diversion is key “ for supporting the mental health of people with mental disorders and substance use disorders , ” Dr. Nathaniel Morris , a forensic psychiatry fellow at the University of California , San Francisco wrote in an email to The Intercept .
“ Jails and prison are generally not therapeutic places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we should strive to connect people with treatment or rehabilitation services , rather than jail or prison cells , whenever possible.
” The prison environment is highly stressful , with people limited to small and often overcrowded spaces .
There are shortages of medical personnel , including psychiatrists , lack of access to a broad spectrum of drugs , and constraints on counseling , among other structural issues , he wrote .
So even though incarcerated people have a right to mental health care , there are a range of impediments to access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ care is “ horrible , ” says Gary Cohen , one of several legendary parole attorneys in the state .
“ I mean , in order to get mental health treatment , you literally need to be banging your head against a wall or talking in tongues because the system views these offenders as manipulative .
That ’ s the presumption — ‘ oh , they ’ re faking this crap.
’ ” To get care , you have to be a “ gentle pest in terms of dealing with the unit health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ higher ups , ” he said — a tall order for the incarcerated population .
And that has a range of implications , including on the ability of a person to earn parole .
In Texas , parole eligibility is calculated based on a formula that takes into account calendar time served — also known as flat time — and good-time credit , which is earned through good behavior and compliance with prison rules .
The more compliant a person is , the more good time they accrue , which in turn shaves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person eligible for parole .
When a person won ’ t — or can ’ t — follow the rules , they lose the ability to earn good-time credit and are more likely to serve their flat-time sentence .
For people dealing with mental illness , this can set up an impossible situation : They can ’ t comply with rules because they ’ re dealing with an illness that needs treatment , but they can ’ t get the medical treatment they need to comply with the rules .
“ A lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conform to all the minutia of the agency rules and regulations , so they end up in this horrible cycle where , because of a mental disorder or mental condition , they ’ re unable to control their behavior , and they ’ re treated as basically just knuckleheads rather than people with a disease , ” Cohen said .
On paper they look defiant , even though their behavior is a direct result of their mental health issues , “ but the system doesn ’ t recognize it as such.
” This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fallen into , Durden said .
He ’ s gotten in trouble , been beaten up , sent to solitary , and has been unable to access mental health care ( he hasn ’ t received any mental health medications since he was detained in the Smith County jail ) .
He ’ s also been shuffled among prison units across Texas ; he ’ s been moved three times since the summer of 2019 .
And another move is pending “ for his safety , ” Durden was told , the result @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cellmate .
For nearly two years now , Durden has struggled with grief and regret .
What if she ’ d just flown out to California and brought Davis home ?
Or what if she ’ d gone to Texas to advocate for him in person ?
Would things have worked out differently ?
The letters he writes break her heart .
Sometimes when they arrive , she hesitates to open them .
“ I would just lay it there and just stare at it for a couple of days .
I had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to read it , because you don ’ t know what ’ s inside , ” she said .
“ Is it good ?
Is it bad ?
Is it horrible ?
Sometimes a little bit of all of it.
” She constantly wonders why things have turned out this way .
Why didn ’ t anyone in the system understand that Davis was ill and needed help ?
Maybe , she thinks , it ’ s just that no one cared .
She says she talked to the warden at one of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ times , ” imploring him to get Davis some help .
“ After hearing me tell him the whole story , on more than one occasion , and me bawling my head off , he ’ s like , ‘ Well , sounds like Cameron needs to make better choices.
’ I ’ m like , seriously ?
That ’ s what you just got from all this ?
” She says it ’ s like they just don ’ t “ want to learn , I don ’ t think they want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she ’ s realized just how big the problem is .
“ I didn ’ t know that this was a problem until it happened to my family , ” she said .
“ Where was the common sense in this whole thing ?
Yes , we want law enforcement to have more training in mental health , that would be wonderful .
But it didn ’ t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together at the time of Cameron ’ s incident .
You know what I ’ @ @ @ @

At first, Michelle Durden thought her eldest son, Cameron Davis, was just going through some early 20s growing pains. He dropped out of college and quit his job. He began to lose weight and grow his hair long. He spent a lot of time in his room, teaching himself to play guitar. He withdrew from friends and family.
“He was just a good kid. He had a genius IQ, just smart, nice to everybody; loves old people, dogs, the whole thing,” she said. “And then he just got weird.”
Perhaps, Durden and her husband thought, Davis was just trying to find himself. They never considered there might be something else going on. So, in the fall of 2018, they packed Davis into his Ford Fiesta with his clothes, guitars and amplifier, some groceries and cash, and waved goodbye as the 23-year-old set off from their home in North Carolina to Stockton, California, where he would stay with his younger brother, Kevin.
Kevin helped Davis settle in and even got him a job at a vineyard. But soon, things went sideways. Davis was fired for ignoring his duties and instead lying in the grass staring at the sky. He began talking to himself, laughing inappropriately, and became paranoid around Kevin’s friends. It all came to a head late one night in January 2019, when Kevin called his mother. Davis was in the background yelling and playing his guitar; Kevin was worried that the neighbors would call the cops. He’d told Davis that, but he wouldn’t stop, Durden recalled. Davis said he “didn’t understand what the word ‘neighbors’ meant.”
Durden was scared. Something was seriously wrong. She convinced Davis to come home so he could be seen at Duke Medical Center. It had taken him two-and-a-half days to make the cross-country trip to California, so Durden figured she’d see him soon. He never showed up. Four days later she filed a missing person’s report with the Stockton police, and they quickly located Davis in Los Angeles. A cop there stopped him and said he should call his mother. She again told her son to come home. More time went by, and on January 24, she again called the police to file a new report.
Finally, in early February, Durden got a call from a Stockton officer who told her, “‘I found your baby,’” she recalled. “And she’s like, ‘He’s alive. And he’s in jail.’”
On January 28, 2019, Davis had been pulled over for speeding just outside of Tyler, Texas, in the northeast part of the state. As the state trooper sat in his vehicle checking Davis’s license and registration, Davis hit the gas, touching off a high-speed chase that ended after Davis damaged his car; no one was hurt. Davis was arrested, prosecuted, and sent to prison.
Durden was stunned. Since then, she has struggled to understand a criminal justice system that she feels has aggressively ignored her son’s deepening mental health crisis, which is also what she believes prompted him to flee the cops in the first place. “Where’s the common sense where somebody goes, ‘There might be something wrong with this kid’?”
How those with mental illness are treated in the system has become a focus in the ongoing calls for criminal justice reform that have increased in volume since the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May. At least 25 percent of fatal police encounters involve a person with mental illness, and individuals with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during an encounter with police, according to a report from the Treatment Advocacy Center.
“I’ve heard a thousand stories like this,” Alisa Roth, author of “Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness,” said of Davis’s case. The criminal justice system — from police contact to prosecution and prison — has been thrust onto the front lines of handling mental health crises and is ill-equipped to do so, Roth said. “It all needs to be fixed.”
A framed photograph of Cameron Davis is displayed in Michelle Durden’s living room in Jacksonville, N.C., on Nov. 16, 2020. Photo: Ben Alper for The Intercept
Anything but Unique
Highway Patrol Trooper Chaney Wade of the Texas Department of Public Safety was sitting in his car monitoring eastbound traffic on Interstate 20 in Smith County when he clocked Davis going 89 in a 75-mile-per-hour zone.
Reading the police report, it’s clear that from the start, Wade sensed that something was off about Davis. He was mumbling and wouldn’t make eye contact. When Wade asked him who he’d been staying with in California, Davis couldn’t remember his brother’s name. Wade took Davis’s license and registration back to his car to run it through the computer. Sitting inside with his window rolled up, Wade could hear loud music coming from Davis’s car. He watched Davis as he rocked his head back and forth. Then the brake light came on; Davis looked over his shoulder and just took off. Wade gave chase.
The whole pursuit, which eventually included several troopers along with officers from other agencies, lasted about 17 minutes, with Davis weaving in and out of traffic at speeds that topped 110 mph. He got off the highway and ran through a fence before re-entering the interstate going the opposite direction. Ultimately, damage from hitting the fence disabled Davis’s car, which came to a stop in the middle of the highway.
Trooper Kevin Lybrand approached the car, and he too noted that something was off. As he stood there with his gun drawn, Lybrand wrote in his report, Davis just sat in the car, shaking his head to the music. Eventually, Davis complied with Lybrand’s commands and lay face down on the asphalt. Davis was booked into the Smith County jail on a charge of evading “arrest or detention,” a third-degree felony. Lybrand asked Davis why he’d fled. “He stated that he was ‘just chillin’, trying to get back home,’” he wrote.
When Durden was finally able to talk to Davis on the phone, she asked him the same question. “Cameron just described it as this feeling,” she said. “Something told him, ‘You have to go, and you have to go fast,’ and Cameron said it was like he couldn’t control the car and he could not control his actions. He just knew he had to go.” Inside the jail, Davis’s behavior began to deteriorate, Durden said. He would walk around naked and steal people’s food, she recalled, but then didn’t remember doing any of it. It appears that someone in the jail recognized this behavior for what it was (though it isn’t clear from the available records how he was diagnosed) and Davis was prescribed Geodon, an antipsychotic treatment for schizophrenia.
Durden and her husband hired an attorney in Texas, Robert Perkins, and they hoped Davis would be released. Soon, they realized that was not in the cards: The state was seeking a six-year prison sentence for what would be Davis’s first criminal offense. Durden and her daughter, Mackenzie, each wrote letters that they asked Perkins to deliver to the judge and prosecutors, laying out what had happened with Davis and begging for leniency. “I realize that this letter is lengthy,” Durden wrote. “It is difficult to stop writing when you are fighting for your child’s life.” She implored them to allow Davis to come home to North Carolina for treatment. “Cameron is ill, and it is doubtful that he would even survive a prison sentence.”
Ultimately, Davis accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to four years in prison. Since he’s been inside, things have gotten worse. Although prisoners have a right to mental health care, Davis hasn’t gotten access, says Durden. And he’s lost good-time credit that could see him released early. Without access to medication, he hasn’t been able to follow the rules; if he can’t follow the rules, he loses time credit. Durden fears Davis will end up serving all four years. She worries about how much damage will have been done to his mental health in the interim and, at times, whether he’ll make it at all.
A stack of letters and drawings Cameron Davis sent to his mother, Michelle Durden, from prison in Texas, photographed in Jacksonville, N.C., on Nov. 16, 2020. Photo: Ben Alper for The Intercept
Letters from Davis that Durden shared with The Intercept paint a disturbing picture. Sometimes his handwriting is neat and ordered and his thoughts are cogent. He talks about books, poetry, and songwriting, and how much he misses having his guitar. At other times his handwriting is erratic, and his thoughts scattered. He writes about people stealing his thoughts and how everyone is constantly making fun of him. “I am fucking tired of people disappearing and teleporting and them making my shit disappear like magic tricks,” he wrote in one letter.
“The fact that our jails are the largest mental health institutions in the nation is just shameful.”
“Sadly, that story is anything but unique,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor who is now the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution. “I have seen that scenario play out far too many times. I saw it in my days as a prosecutor, I saw it when I was working on law enforcement reform.” The nation lacks a robust, and accessible, mental health care system, and people experiencing mental health crises are churned through the criminal justice system in alarming numbers. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics has reported that more than half of those incarcerated in the nation’s jails and prisons have a mental illness. County jails have become the largest mental health provider in most states, including California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. “The fact that our jails are the largest mental health institutions in the nation is just shameful,” Krinsky said.
Roth, who talked to hundreds of people at jails and prisons across the country while researching her book about how the criminal justice system treats mental illness, agrees. It’s a problem that warrants “stepping back” to interrogate the origins of the dysfunction and how that has impacted countless individual cases. And the system should seek to understand what’s behind the actions of people like Davis before deciding to arrest, prosecute, or incarcerate them, she said. “It seems to me that in most cases, if not all cases, we should be able to step back and say, ‘What’s behind this?’”
Michelle Durden holds a stack of letters sent by her son Cameron Davis from prison in Texas, in Jacksonville, N.C., on Nov. 16, 2020. Photo: Ben Alper for The Intercept
Removing Police From the Equation
Among the most common ways in which the criminal justice system has tried to reform its treatment of people with mental illness is through the introduction of crisis intervention and de-escalation trainings for police.
The Crisis Intervention Team model was developed in Memphis in 1988 after police fatally shot 27-year-old Joseph Dewayne Robinson, who was in the middle of a mental health crisis, brandishing a knife and threatening suicide. As police repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife, he became agitated and moved toward them. He was shot eight times. The idea of the so-called Memphis Model is to provide specialty training to a group of officers who could respond to mental health calls, de-escalate any tension, and route a person to partners in the community’s mental and public health systems for evaluation and treatment, diverting them whenever possible from the criminal justice system.
Where police are concerned, it’s a model that embraces two core components. First, the tactical side, or how cops spot and interact with people in a mental health crisis. “This is the information that tells officers, don’t rush forward; don’t shout verbal commands. You need to go slow, you need to modulate your tone,” said Seth Stoughton, a former Tallahassee police officer-turned-law professor at the University of South Carolina, where he studies policing and its regulation. “Building rapport with someone who is in a mental health crisis is critical to effective communication.” The second component is at least as crucial: “Now that you have interacted hopefully as positively as possible with someone who’s in a mental health crisis, what do you do?” Stoughton said.
The model requires that police “be comfortable making the decision that they aren’t going to make an arrest for someone’s behavior,” he said. “Even if that behavior satisfies the elements of a crime, they are instead going to submit that person for psychiatric evaluation, for example.”
The Texas DPS has long provided crisis intervention training to its sworn personnel — including Wade and Lybrand, according to state training records (Wade has taken at least 48 hours of crisis intervention training over his 18-year career; Lybrand at least 16 hours over a four-year career). Included in Texas’s current training materials is dashcam video of a DPS trooper who has pulled over a man for speeding. The man doesn’t have identification, and though he says he’s headed to San Antonio, based on where he said he started and where he is pulled over, he’s way off course. The trooper gets him out of the car right away and talks with him on the side of the road; he soon learns the man is a military veteran dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. He keeps the conversation calm and, after calling for backup, drives him to a hospital.
Michelle Durden holds a photograph of her son Cameron while sitting on her porch in Jacksonville, N.C., on Nov. 16, 2020. Photo: Ben Alper for The Intercept
In many ways, the training offers a striking contrast to the way Davis’s stop was handled. And it highlights a flaw in the approach toward intervention that many police agencies have taken: Training everybody in these techniques doesn’t mean that every officer will apply them in their work in any uniform way. “The folks who are already interested in doing it the right way are going to take advantage of the knowledge and skills they get from CIT training to make sure they do it the right way,” Stoughton said. “The agency has to create the structure that tells officers, this is the right way to do it, and here’s why,” he added. “And if you don’t want to do it that way, then you are doing it wrong and there are consequences for that.”
When someone’s behavior is the result of a mental health issue, “you have to think real hard before you make an arrest for that because, really, that may not help the person. It may not help society.”
While Stoughton hasn’t evaluated the details of Davis’s case, he said that sometimes what he hears police say is that “‘when there’s a crime we have the duty to arrest,’ and that’s bullshit. That’s not actually true,” he said. “They have tremendous discretion in whether or not to make an arrest to deal with a particular issue or whether or not to deal with that issue in an alternative way, even when they have the clear legal authority that would allow them to make an arrest.” Reframing the way law enforcement sees these interactions and their outcomes is what good training tries to do. When someone’s behavior is the result of a mental health issue, “you have to think real hard before you make an arrest for that because, really, that may not help the person,” he said. “It may not help society.”
A related issue is that many agencies focus on crisis intervention “training” and forget that CIT actually stands for crisis intervention “team.” In addition to well-trained police working in partnership with mental health experts and providers, “one of the team members has to be the local prosecutor,” he said. “It should be standard.”
Krinsky agrees. The idea is to provide a series of “exit ramps,” so that people whose behaviors are prompted by crisis are dealt with outside the criminal justice system. “The problem is, in the first instance, we don’t have adequate alternatives and we think of law enforcement as the auto response when people are in crisis,” she said. The first off-ramp, she says, is to get police out of the equation — to have trained civilians deal with as many mental health-related calls as possible, as with the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets program in Eugene, Oregon, known as CAHOOTS, which has been in operation for more than three decades. Amid the ongoing protests over police violence, the CAHOOTS model has gained considerable national attention, and a number of jurisdictions across the country are now talking with the organization about ways to adapt its strategy, including officials in Austin and Houston. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Peter DeFazio have introduced the CAHOOTS Act, which would allow Medicaid to pay for these programs.
But if efforts to divert individuals at this earliest stage fail, we “need to ensure that DAs have the wisdom to understand when people need help and not punishment,” Krinsky said. “The DA’s job is not to be on autopilot where every case that comes before them has to be charged and, if charges are filed, every punishment has to be the max. That’s not what their job is about; it’s not about notches on a belt. It’s about what is the wise result, and how do you promote the well-being and safety of your community?”
Photo: Courtesy of Michelle Durden
There are many ways prosecutors can do this, she says. In Seattle, for example, the elected prosecuting attorney, Dan Satterberg, was a principle architect of his county’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which proactively seeks to divert people toward services and away from the criminal justice system. As state’s attorney of Chittenden County, Vermont, T.J. Donovan, now the state attorney general, partnered with local social services to create a diversion program that significantly reduced conviction rates for nonviolent offenses prompted by drug addiction and mental illness. “Ideally, the prosecutor is a partner in reforming the process,” she said, “so it doesn’t get to their doorstep.”
For his part, Jacob Putman, the elected Smith County, Texas, district attorney, said he could see how Davis’s actions could have been motivated by a mental health crisis. “I can certainly see that’s one way to look at it,” he said. But he doesn’t see that as the only possible explanation. “I guess I’ve had lots of evading cases where it was never really known why they evaded, right? I mean, people pull over and then take off.”
Putman said his office would have needed more information to determine if Davis’s offense had actually been caused by a mental health crisis before considering a lesser punishment; if someone had brought them a psychological evaluation that explained how his mental health influenced his offense and offered a treatment plan, “that would certainly be something we consider.” Putman did not personally try the case but said there is no record in the file that the family’s letters were given to the state; he said those letters might have been useful in determining punishment.
Putman’s office doesn’t have any formal policy or diversion program that outlines how to address offenses that may be motivated by mental health issues and instead says individual prosecutors make those determinations on a case-by-case basis — so, for example, in offices that consider conviction rates a measure of success, it might be less likely that prosecutors would consider diversion a worthy goal.
In Davis’s case, Putman said he doesn’t think a four-year prison term was extreme. In fact, he said, after learning that a doctor who evaluated whether Davis was competent to aid in his defense found “what appeared to be signs of a mental illness,” prosecutors dropped their initial recommendation, which was six years in prison. “I don’t think it’s that harsh considering just how dangerous the offense was,” he said. “When it comes to mental health, obviously the majority of people with mental health issues are not violent and don’t typically put the public in danger.” Here, he said, regardless of the motivation, Davis’s offense put people at risk. “I guess that was why it was for prison time and not probation or something like that. It was just a very, very dangerous set of events.”
Still, Putman says he understands that the system as a whole has not served people with mental illness. “I want to be first on the list of DAs who think the jail should not be our mental health treatment center. That is a big travesty of our criminal justice system, that we don’t have a robust mental health system that should be dealing with these kinds of cases,” he said. “And I think everybody involved in the criminal justice system would be happy to see that. I’d much rather people be treated in a hospital or clinic setting than arrested.”
A letter Cameron Davis sent to his mother from prison, photographed in Jacksonville, N.C., on Nov. 16, 2020. Photo: Ben Alper for The Intercept
A Horrible Cycle
Perkins, Davis’s defense attorney, says he’s convinced his client’s behavior was caused by mental illness — there were the police reports, the finding of mental illness by the competency evaluator, and the letters he says he did show to the prosecutor — but he couldn’t convince the state that getting Davis treatment instead of locking him up was the just outcome. “What you do is you end up doing the best you could possibly do under the circumstances,” he said. “Unfortunately, Cameron Davis is not the first nor will he be the last person that’s in this particular situation.”
Prison is not a good setting for addressing mental health issues, which is why diversion is key “for supporting the mental health of people with mental disorders and substance use disorders,” Dr. Nathaniel Morris, a forensic psychiatry fellow at the University of California, San Francisco wrote in an email to The Intercept. “Jails and prison are generally not therapeutic places from a mental health standpoint, and we should strive to connect people with treatment or rehabilitation services, rather than jail or prison cells, whenever possible.”
The prison environment is highly stressful, with people limited to small and often overcrowded spaces. There are shortages of medical personnel, including psychiatrists, lack of access to a broad spectrum of drugs, and constraints on counseling, among other structural issues, he wrote. So even though incarcerated people have a right to mental health care, there are a range of impediments to access.
In Texas prisons, mental health care is “horrible,” says Gary Cohen, one of several legendary parole attorneys in the state. “I mean, in order to get mental health treatment, you literally need to be banging your head against a wall or talking in tongues because the system views these offenders as manipulative. That’s the presumption — ‘oh, they’re faking this crap.’” To get care, you have to be a “gentle pest in terms of dealing with the unit health care professional and then dealing with their higher ups,” he said — a tall order for the incarcerated population.
And that has a range of implications, including on the ability of a person to earn parole. In Texas, parole eligibility is calculated based on a formula that takes into account calendar time served — also known as flat time — and good-time credit, which is earned through good behavior and compliance with prison rules. The more compliant a person is, the more good time they accrue, which in turn shaves time off the calendar, making a person eligible for parole. When a person won’t — or can’t — follow the rules, they lose the ability to earn good-time credit and are more likely to serve their flat-time sentence.
For people dealing with mental illness, this can set up an impossible situation: They can’t comply with rules because they’re dealing with an illness that needs treatment, but they can’t get the medical treatment they need to comply with the rules. “A lot of these people can’t really conform to all the minutia of the agency rules and regulations, so they end up in this horrible cycle where, because of a mental disorder or mental condition, they’re unable to control their behavior, and they’re treated as basically just knuckleheads rather than people with a disease,” Cohen said. On paper they look defiant, even though their behavior is a direct result of their mental health issues, “but the system doesn’t recognize it as such.”
Photo: Ben Alper for The Intercept
This is precisely the cycle that Davis has fallen into, Durden said. He’s gotten in trouble, been beaten up, sent to solitary, and has been unable to access mental health care (he hasn’t received any mental health medications since he was detained in the Smith County jail). He’s also been shuffled among prison units across Texas; he’s been moved three times since the summer of 2019. And another move is pending “for his safety,” Durden was told, the result of some sort of altercation with his cellmate.
For nearly two years now, Durden has struggled with grief and regret. What if she’d just flown out to California and brought Davis home? Or what if she’d gone to Texas to advocate for him in person? Would things have worked out differently? The letters he writes break her heart. Sometimes when they arrive, she hesitates to open them. “I would just lay it there and just stare at it for a couple of days. I had to work up to even be able to read it, because you don’t know what’s inside,” she said. “Is it good? Is it bad? Is it horrible? Sometimes a little bit of all of it.”
She constantly wonders why things have turned out this way. Why didn’t anyone in the system understand that Davis was ill and needed help? Maybe, she thinks, it’s just that no one cared. She says she talked to the warden at one of the units “no less than 15 times,” imploring him to get Davis some help. “After hearing me tell him the whole story, on more than one occasion, and me bawling my head off, he’s like, ‘Well, sounds like Cameron needs to make better choices.’ I’m like, seriously? That’s what you just got from all this?” She says it’s like they just don’t “want to learn, I don’t think they want to understand.”
In navigating the system, she’s realized just how big the problem is. “I didn’t know that this was a problem until it happened to my family,” she said. “Where was the common sense in this whole thing? Yes, we want law enforcement to have more training in mental health, that would be wonderful. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together at the time of Cameron’s incident. You know what I’m saying?”


theintercept--2020-11-27--Beyond Breonna: Louisville Police Make the Case for Abolition

mainstream political discussions around the notion of “ defunding the police ” have taken a pernicious , if predictable turn .
The so-called debate is no longer focused on the violent facts of U.S. policing .
Instead , this ongoing news story has become , first and foremost , a narrative about the Democratic Party and its divisions .
Such is the nature of the media-politics machine : A demand situated in a fight for life and liberation has been transmogrified into a realpolitik hot button — replete with polls , right-wing fearmongering , questions of electability , and calls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pushed to the background , meanwhile , is the unending flood of reports and revelations that again and again show policing to be an institution worthy of abolition .
Just this month , two such stories came from Louisville , Kentucky , where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police in March during a botched raid .
Louisville Metro Police , the same department to which Taylor ’ s killers belonged , was found to have hidden from the public a staggering 738,000 records documenting sexual abuse of minors by two officers — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County Attorney ’ s Office .
The records related to the abuse of youths in the “ Explorer Scouts ” program , created for young people interested in law enforcement careers .
And just two weeks ago , a woman filed a sexual assault lawsuit against former Louisville detective Brett Hankison , one of the cops directly involved in Taylor ’ s death .
The lawsuit claims that Hankison has a history of using his authority as a police officer to prey on women .
The wanton killing of a young Black woman @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of predation , alongside the coverup of a major case of child sexual abuse — all recent events from just one department in one U.S. city .
As is typical , funding for the policing operations will constitute the largest expenditure of Louisville ’ s 2020 city budget : $ 190.6 million out of $ 613 million .
Highlighting recent abuses committed by this one police department , which takes nearly a third of a city ’ s budget , does not dispositively prove the need for police abolition , let alone defunding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and training , or more drastic reforms , are the appropriate solutions .
Following Taylor ’ s killing , and the potent anti-racist uprisings it helped catalyze , a number of such reforms were instituted , including an end to no-knock warrants .
And news of the sexual abuse records coverup has brought reliable calls for accountability from local politicians .
Yet the Louisville cases highlight the problems of a violent and unaccountable law enforcement apparatus ; problems which are so widespread and historic that they point to an unreformable institution .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ When you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man ’ s neck until he dies , that ’ s the logical result of policing in America .
When a police officer brutalizes a black person , he is doing what he sees as his job.
” The Louisville examples might not make for an airtight case for abolition , but they makes a case nonetheless — a case that can be made almost anywhere police are found across the country .
might not convince a skittish liberal of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward abolition , but it should be sufficient to show that police defunding is a reasonable demand .
The argument that police presence in communities is a source of harm should not be considered controversial .
Sexual assault committed by cops is not rare .
A 2015 data investigation by the Buffalo News found that a police officer in the U.S. is accused of an act of sexual misconduct on average every five days .
It ’ s an insult to survivors to suggest that police are a protection from rape and sexual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ official reports and in court — perjury , that is — is so common that it has earned its own neologism : “ testilying.
” It is an affront to Black and Indigenous lives , as well as the lives of other communities of color , to treat police racism as anomalous , or even endemic but curable within the existing justice system .
A fantastical failure of empirical thinking is involved in claiming that an institution , which has always operated to uphold the hierarchies and brutalities of racial capitalism , can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role .
There ’ s every reason for skepticism over claims that reform and oversight are ways to end the harm of policing ; a century of attempted reforms have had no such effect .
In another recent news story , newly released reports show that the New York Police Department consistently ignored and rejected recommendations from the Civilian Complaint Review Board on punishments for police misconduct .
The board is an independent oversight agency , established in 1993 to address complaints about police impunity — which has continued apace regardless .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misconduct charges , the Police Department reduced or rejected recommendations for stiff discipline of officers , ” the New York Times reported , based on data from the last two decades .
In a related , and also recently reported , incident , four senior officials were fired from the Civilian Complaint Review Board .
Fellow employees claimed that the officials were known for pushing a more aggressive stance toward the police .
The risk in drawing attention to cases of extreme police violence and duplicity is that police apologists can dismiss these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of police work , even when they number in the thousands per year .
But such abuses could only emerge within certain conditions : an impunity-drenched culture and history of dehumanizing Black life .
These anti-abolitionist arguments tacitly treat as acceptable the normal activities of policing that have little to do with catching “ bad guys ” and everything to do with protecting capital while criminalizing poverty and Blackness .
It may be the case that campaigns to reduce or remove police funding do better with voters when “ defund the police ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calls to invest instead in other social services .
Ballot Measure J in Los Angeles County , which requires 10 percent of the city ’ s unrestricted general funds be invested in social services and alternatives to incarceration , not prisons and policing , was successful on the election ballot , and commentators have credited the success in part to campaigners avoiding the word “ defund.
” It is also the case that only a vanishingly small number of politicians , on both the local and national level , are seriously pushing for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these dynamics need not determine the terms of the debate .
Indeed , calls to abolish the entire policing and carceral system should not be reduced to a Democratic Party “ debate ” at all .
With new , vile chapters , like the latest from Louisville , added every week to policing ’ s unbroken history of racist , patriarchal violence , those calling for abolition should no longer have to demonstrate the basic grounds for this fight .

In recent weeks, mainstream political discussions around the notion of “defunding the police” have taken a pernicious, if predictable turn. The so-called debate is no longer focused on the violent facts of U.S. policing. Instead, this ongoing news story has become, first and foremost, a narrative about the Democratic Party and its divisions. Such is the nature of the media-politics machine: A demand situated in a fight for life and liberation has been transmogrified into a realpolitik hot button — replete with polls, right-wing fearmongering, questions of electability, and calls for less “divisive” rhetoric.
Demonstrators protesting the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor display a flyer with photos of the Louisville Metro police officers accused of fatally wounding Taylor, at the Louis XVI statue on Aug. 1, 2020, in Louisville, Ky. Photo: Joshua Lott/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Pushed to the background, meanwhile, is the unending flood of reports and revelations that again and again show policing to be an institution worthy of abolition. Just this month, two such stories came from Louisville, Kentucky, where 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed by police in March during a botched raid. Louisville Metro Police, the same department to which Taylor’s killers belonged, was found to have hidden from the public a staggering 738,000 records documenting sexual abuse of minors by two officers — concealment that was aided by the Jefferson County Attorney’s Office. The records related to the abuse of youths in the “Explorer Scouts” program, created for young people interested in law enforcement careers.
The Louisville examples might not make for an airtight case for abolition, but they makes a case nonetheless.
And just two weeks ago, a woman filed a sexual assault lawsuit against former Louisville detective Brett Hankison, one of the cops directly involved in Taylor’s death. The lawsuit claims that Hankison has a history of using his authority as a police officer to prey on women.
The wanton killing of a young Black woman involving a cop with an alleged history of predation, alongside the coverup of a major case of child sexual abuse — all recent events from just one department in one U.S. city. As is typical, funding for the policing operations will constitute the largest expenditure of Louisville’s 2020 city budget: $190.6 million out of $613 million.
Highlighting recent abuses committed by this one police department, which takes nearly a third of a city’s budget, does not dispositively prove the need for police abolition, let alone defunding. Reformists could well respond that oversight and training, or more drastic reforms, are the appropriate solutions. Following Taylor’s killing, and the potent anti-racist uprisings it helped catalyze, a number of such reforms were instituted, including an end to no-knock warrants. And news of the sexual abuse records coverup has brought reliable calls for accountability from local politicians.
Yet the Louisville cases highlight the problems of a violent and unaccountable law enforcement apparatus; problems which are so widespread and historic that they point to an unreformable institution. As abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba put it, “When you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.” The Louisville examples might not make for an airtight case for abolition, but they makes a case nonetheless — a case that can be made almost anywhere police are found across the country.
Incident after incident might not convince a skittish liberal of the need to go beyond reform and toward abolition, but it should be sufficient to show that police defunding is a reasonable demand. The argument that police presence in communities is a source of harm should not be considered controversial.
Sexual assault committed by cops is not rare. A 2015 data investigation by the Buffalo News found that a police officer in the U.S. is accused of an act of sexual misconduct on average every five days. It’s an insult to survivors to suggest that police are a protection from rape and sexual violence.
Meanwhile, police lying in official reports and in court — perjury, that is — is so common that it has earned its own neologism: “testilying.”
It is an affront to Black and Indigenous lives, as well as the lives of other communities of color, to treat police racism as anomalous, or even endemic but curable within the existing justice system. A fantastical failure of empirical thinking is involved in claiming that an institution, which has always operated to uphold the hierarchies and brutalities of racial capitalism, can somehow be maintained while disentangled from that role.
There’s every reason for skepticism over claims that reform and oversight are ways to end the harm of policing; a century of attempted reforms have had no such effect. In another recent news story, newly released reports show that the New York Police Department consistently ignored and rejected recommendations from the Civilian Complaint Review Board on punishments for police misconduct. The board is an independent oversight agency, established in 1993 to address complaints about police impunity — which has continued apace regardless. “In about 71 percent of 6,900 serious misconduct charges, the Police Department reduced or rejected recommendations for stiff discipline of officers,” the New York Times reported, based on data from the last two decades.
In a related, and also recently reported, incident, four senior officials were fired from the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Fellow employees claimed that the officials were known for pushing a more aggressive stance toward the police.
Police abuses could only emerge within certain conditions: an impunity-drenched culture and history of dehumanizing Black life.
The risk in drawing attention to cases of extreme police violence and duplicity is that police apologists can dismiss these brutalities as anomalous in the grand scheme of police work, even when they number in the thousands per year. But such abuses could only emerge within certain conditions: an impunity-drenched culture and history of dehumanizing Black life. These anti-abolitionist arguments tacitly treat as acceptable the normal activities of policing that have little to do with catching “bad guys” and everything to do with protecting capital while criminalizing poverty and Blackness.
It may be the case that campaigns to reduce or remove police funding do better with voters when “defund the police” rhetoric is avoided, in favor of calls to invest instead in other social services. Ballot Measure J in Los Angeles County, which requires 10 percent of the city’s unrestricted general funds be invested in social services and alternatives to incarceration, not prisons and policing, was successful on the election ballot, and commentators have credited the success in part to campaigners avoiding the word “defund.”
It is also the case that only a vanishingly small number of politicians, on both the local and national level, are seriously pushing for defunding within an abolitionist framework.
Yet these dynamics need not determine the terms of the debate. Indeed, calls to abolish the entire policing and carceral system should not be reduced to a Democratic Party “debate” at all. With new, vile chapters, like the latest from Louisville, added every week to policing’s unbroken history of racist, patriarchal violence, those calling for abolition should no longer have to demonstrate the basic grounds for this fight.


theintercept--2020-11-28--Obama Book Explains How Birtherism Made Trump’s Presidency

to criticize about former President Barack Obama , his track record in office , and the liberal establishment , of which he remains a champion .
Given America ’ s current reckoning with race in public life , his new memoir , “ A Promised Land , ” highlights something separate yet important : the incredible difference in ability between two individuals , Donald Trump and Barack Obama , who were both entrusted by the American people with the same immensely important job .
For all his faults , as any reader of his memoir is immediately reminded , Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risen to such heights in the United States , as a Black man with a Muslim name , no doubt required him to be extraordinary .
Trump , meanwhile , a beneficiary of hereditary wealth and status , was richly rewarded with the same prestigious position , notwithstanding his obvious unfitness .
This subtext screams out throughout the pages of “ A Promised Land.
” The two consecutive presidents could not be more different men .
And given how Trump ’ s political career got started — by spreading a xenophobic conspiracy theory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that race had something to do with it .
Obama does not spend much time directly discussing his experience of race while in office , but , to the extent that he does , he makes a convincing case that the anti-intellectual populist movement now known as Trumpism began in part as a racial backlash to his own presidency — specifically , Trump ’ s conspiratorial campaign to establish that Obama had been born in a foreign country and was thus ineligible to hold office .
“ Birtherism , ” as it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something about having a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama as president , no matter how competent and capable , that simply caused a large number of Americans to completely lose their minds .
It ’ s not clear that people who went down that rabbit hole ever came back .
The overpowering insanity of the past five years has drowned out most memories of the “ birther ” episode that Obama recounts in his book .
Looking back , the conspiracy theory and all that went along with it feels like a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unstable course that U.S. politics had begun to chart .
Beginning around early 2011 , Trump began publicly questioning Obama ’ s place of birth , but he also went much further .
Trump cast aspersions on Obama ’ s intelligence , suggesting that his grades , concealed in unreleased college transcripts , must have been poor and that the erudite writing of his previous book , “ Dreams From My Father , ” meant that a ghostwriter must have penned it .
This was ugly stuff .
It was also popular , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and kickstarting his successful political career .
The media at the time mostly didn ’ t endorse Trump ’ s theories .
Yet , in a pattern that would disastrously repeat during his 2016 election campaign , outlets also couldn ’ t get enough of his wacky sensationalism , providing wall-to-wall national publicity for the future president free of charge .
At the behest of his advisers , Obama writes in his memoir that he tried to downplay potentially divisive racial issues in his rhetoric and focus on unifying messages .
As the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s first term , the president reflected on a hostile reaction to his presidency that was no longer merely about politics .
In some quarters of the American public , there was an “ emotional , almost visceral ” feeling , Obama writes , that “ the natural order had been disrupted ” by the election of a Black man like him to the presidency .
Not all , or even most , conservative opponents of Obama endorsed these sentiments , but the enthusiastic response to the conspiracy theory clearly suggested something @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emergence of the proudly ignorant Sarah Palin onto the national political scene as John McCain ’ s possible vice president was an early sign that things were cracking up .
Trump , though , proved best at tapping the vengeful and paranoid sentiments that were ready to erupt beneath the surface of American political life , riding them all the way to the White House .
immediate aftermath of Trump ’ s 2016 election , a grief-stricken American liberal intelligentsia began searching for a way to make sense of their repudiation by much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on how their own errors , corruption , and misguidance may have contributed to Trump ’ s rise , some arrived at American racism as a self-exculpatory “ theory of everything ” to make sense of things .
In this telling , the liberal establishment was not rejected because of any major failures to uphold a just economic and social order .
They lost , instead , because of the ingrained evil of much of the American population .
The Obama years had seen some heady liberal fantasizing about a utopian “ post-racial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ With head-spinning abruptness , during the Trump years the new liberal consensus seems to be that America is in fact more racist than ever — indeed , structurally racist in every element .
Personally speaking , I ’ m not a fan of any of these nebulous and unfalsifiable narratives .
While Trumpism may have gotten started with a racist conspiracy , mass movements tend to sweep up people for all types of complicated reasons .
Some Obama voters later switched to supporting Trump against Hillary Clinton in 2016 , while Trump managed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ growing , minority support base after four years in office .
Rejecting the convenient narrative that racism explains everything doesn ’ t necessitate going in the opposite direction to suggest that it then explains nothing .
In his book , Obama never goes as far as Clinton did in writing off a vast section of the U.S. population as beyond redemption .
Yet he also doesn ’ t shy away from stating the obvious : that more than a few people were “ triggered ” by his presidency into a collective nervous breakdown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a Black man in the White House , ” he writes in his book , a loudmouthed reality television host had arrived promising “ an elixir for their racial anxiety.
” This is a subtext of Obama ’ s memoir : The story of how , starting with the birtherism episode , the embers of an unhinged majoritarian backlash to his presidency fanned into an inferno that consumed the Republican Party along with much of the broader conservative movement .
A common undercurrent to conservative arguments about immigrants and minorities is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recognition from society , they are inevitably eroding its intellectual and cultural standards .
After watching many conservatives spend years defending intellectual train wrecks like Palin and Trump , it ’ s difficult to take such claims seriously .
With so many people having been driven out of their minds by a Black president , there is little reason to think that Trump ’ s narrow defeat in the 2020 election is going to improve that condition .
Obama ’ s faults as a president are there for us to criticize .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ security state .
There were ugly compromises with Wall Street and , more generally , a perceived coziness with a corrupt ruling establishment .
In a way that he does not really confront in the book , those failures helped lay the groundwork for a populist backlash now coming from both the right and the left .
There was one thing Obama , to his credit , did understand very well : how a mix of celebrity , xenophobia , and paranoia might prove a winning formula for a hostile takeover of American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the liberal order of which he himself is a product .
“ What I knew was that he was a spectacle , and in the United States of America in 2011 , that was a form of power .
Trump trafficked in a currency that , however shallow , seemed to gain more purchase with each passing day , ” Obama writes .
“ Far from being ostracized for the conspiracies he ’ d peddled , he in fact had never been bigger .
”

Photo: Pat Benic/Pool/Bloomberg/Getty Images
There’s a lot to criticize about former President Barack Obama, his track record in office, and the liberal establishment, of which he remains a champion. Given America’s current reckoning with race in public life, his new memoir, “A Promised Land,” highlights something separate yet important: the incredible difference in ability between two individuals, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, who were both entrusted by the American people with the same immensely important job.
For all his faults, as any reader of his memoir is immediately reminded, Obama is an uncommon genius. To have risen to such heights in the United States, as a Black man with a Muslim name, no doubt required him to be extraordinary. Trump, meanwhile, a beneficiary of hereditary wealth and status, was richly rewarded with the same prestigious position, notwithstanding his obvious unfitness.
This subtext screams out throughout the pages of “A Promised Land.” The two consecutive presidents could not be more different men. And given how Trump’s political career got started — by spreading a xenophobic conspiracy theory about Obama — it also seems clear that race had something to do with it. Obama does not spend much time directly discussing his experience of race while in office, but, to the extent that he does, he makes a convincing case that the anti-intellectual populist movement now known as Trumpism began in part as a racial backlash to his own presidency — specifically, Trump’s conspiratorial campaign to establish that Obama had been born in a foreign country and was thus ineligible to hold office.
“Birtherism,” as it was called, grimly illustrated that there was something about having a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama as president, no matter how competent and capable, that simply caused a large number of Americans to completely lose their minds. It’s not clear that people who went down that rabbit hole ever came back.
The overpowering insanity of the past five years has drowned out most memories of the “birther” episode that Obama recounts in his book. Looking back, the conspiracy theory and all that went along with it feels like a disturbing early warning sign of the terrifyingly unstable course that U.S. politics had begun to chart. Beginning around early 2011, Trump began publicly questioning Obama’s place of birth, but he also went much further. Trump cast aspersions on Obama’s intelligence, suggesting that his grades, concealed in unreleased college transcripts, must have been poor and that the erudite writing of his previous book, “Dreams From My Father,” meant that a ghostwriter must have penned it.
This was ugly stuff. It was also popular, building Trump’s news media profile and kickstarting his successful political career. The media at the time mostly didn’t endorse Trump’s theories. Yet, in a pattern that would disastrously repeat during his 2016 election campaign, outlets also couldn’t get enough of his wacky sensationalism, providing wall-to-wall national publicity for the future president free of charge.
“Birtherism” grimly illustrated that there was something about having a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama as president that simply caused a large number of Americans to completely lose their minds.
At the behest of his advisers, Obama writes in his memoir that he tried to downplay potentially divisive racial issues in his rhetoric and focus on unifying messages. As the Trump-orchestrated birther frenzy heated up during Obama’s first term, the president reflected on a hostile reaction to his presidency that was no longer merely about politics. In some quarters of the American public, there was an “emotional, almost visceral” feeling, Obama writes, that “the natural order had been disrupted” by the election of a Black man like him to the presidency. Not all, or even most, conservative opponents of Obama endorsed these sentiments, but the enthusiastic response to the conspiracy theory clearly suggested something deeply troubling was taking place. The emergence of the proudly ignorant Sarah Palin onto the national political scene as John McCain’s possible vice president was an early sign that things were cracking up. Trump, though, proved best at tapping the vengeful and paranoid sentiments that were ready to erupt beneath the surface of American political life, riding them all the way to the White House.
Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP
In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s 2016 election, a grief-stricken American liberal intelligentsia began searching for a way to make sense of their repudiation by much of the public. Rather than reflecting on how their own errors, corruption, and misguidance may have contributed to Trump’s rise, some arrived at American racism as a self-exculpatory “theory of everything” to make sense of things.
In this telling, the liberal establishment was not rejected because of any major failures to uphold a just economic and social order. They lost, instead, because of the ingrained evil of much of the American population. The Obama years had seen some heady liberal fantasizing about a utopian “post-racial” America on the near horizon. With head-spinning abruptness, during the Trump years the new liberal consensus seems to be that America is in fact more racist than ever — indeed, structurally racist in every element.
Personally speaking, I’m not a fan of any of these nebulous and unfalsifiable narratives. While Trumpism may have gotten started with a racist conspiracy, mass movements tend to sweep up people for all types of complicated reasons. Some Obama voters later switched to supporting Trump against Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Trump managed to maintain a solid, and even growing, minority support base after four years in office.
Rejecting the convenient narrative that racism explains everything doesn’t necessitate going in the opposite direction to suggest that it then explains nothing. In his book, Obama never goes as far as Clinton did in writing off a vast section of the U.S. population as beyond redemption. Yet he also doesn’t shy away from stating the obvious: that more than a few people were “triggered” by his presidency into a collective nervous breakdown. “For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House,” he writes in his book, a loudmouthed reality television host had arrived promising “an elixir for their racial anxiety.”
Birtherism was the ember of an unhinged majoritarian backlash that fanned into an inferno, consuming the Republican Party along with much of the broader conservative movement.
This is a subtext of Obama’s memoir: The story of how, starting with the birtherism episode, the embers of an unhinged majoritarian backlash to his presidency fanned into an inferno that consumed the Republican Party along with much of the broader conservative movement. A common undercurrent to conservative arguments about immigrants and minorities is that when they ask for accommodations or special recognition from society, they are inevitably eroding its intellectual and cultural standards. After watching many conservatives spend years defending intellectual train wrecks like Palin and Trump, it’s difficult to take such claims seriously. With so many people having been driven out of their minds by a Black president, there is little reason to think that Trump’s narrow defeat in the 2020 election is going to improve that condition.
Obama’s faults as a president are there for us to criticize. He failed to rein in a rampaging national security state. There were ugly compromises with Wall Street and, more generally, a perceived coziness with a corrupt ruling establishment. In a way that he does not really confront in the book, those failures helped lay the groundwork for a populist backlash now coming from both the right and the left.
There was one thing Obama, to his credit, did understand very well: how a mix of celebrity, xenophobia, and paranoia might prove a winning formula for a hostile takeover of American democracy, perhaps even putting an end to the liberal order of which he himself is a product.
“What I knew was that he was a spectacle, and in the United States of America in 2011, that was a form of power. Trump trafficked in a currency that, however shallow, seemed to gain more purchase with each passing day,” Obama writes. “Far from being ostracized for the conspiracies he’d peddled, he in fact had never been bigger.”


theintercept--2020-11-30--Austin Fusion Center Spied on Nonpolitical Cultural Events

the killing of George Floyd spread across the country in early summer , federal and local law enforcement authorities in Minnesota and California culled social media for postings on upcoming protests , then disseminated RSVP counts and other details to agencies .
Documents obtained by The Intercept show that into at least mid-July , law enforcement officials in Austin did the same — and that they kept tabs on cultural events with no apparent protest component , including an online Juneteenth celebration .
The documents originate with the Austin Regional Intelligence Center , or ARIC , part of a network @ @ @ @ @ @ @ share intelligence among federal agencies , local police departments , and the private sector .
They show that law enforcement personnel there monitored Facebook , Instagram , Reddit , and Twitter for announcements of protests , social gatherings , and other events organized by supporters of Black Lives Matter , and sometimes merely by Black people .
Fusion center employees then prepared dispatches listing organizers ’ names or social media handles , information about notable guests , and RSVP totals .
The fusion center , which is managed by the Austin Police Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state , and national law enforcement , including recipients at the CIA , FBI , and Immigration and Customs Enforcement .
“ We at the ARIC completely understand concerns as they may relate to ‘ monitoring ’ protests or events , ” Ron Phillips , deputy director of the fusion center , wrote in an email .
“ We do not continually monitor protests or events.
” He added that when the ARIC does take an interest in events , “ we only look at it from a standpoint of determining if there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could pose a concern for the safety of our community.
” But the documents tell a different story .
The monitored events include a Juneteenth celebration , a meditation event , and two candlelight vigils .
“ In our heightened political moment , the fact that now every single public gathering is being surveilled by local , state , and federal government is incredibly concerning for civil liberties , ” said Matthew Guariglia , a policy analyst focused on surveillance and policing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation .
The surveillance in Austin this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ federal law enforcement agencies in other parts of the U.S .
Documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015 show that the Department of Homeland Security collected similar information on social events in historically Black neighborhoods , at one point circulating details about a funk music parade .
Later reporting by Foreign Policy and The Intercept shows that the FBI devoted significant resources to monitoring people it labeled “ black separatist extremists.
” In the early days of the George Floyd protests , a woman in Tennessee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Black Lives Matter rally said she received a visit from FBI agents who questioned her about her knowledge of antifa , suggesting that the monitoring of activists had continued .
In late June , the release of 19 gigabytes of data hacked from fusion centers around the country — a trove of documents known as BlueLeaks — confirmed it .
The BlueLeaks documents date to early June and before .
The new ARIC documents show that in Texas , at least , social media surveillance persisted into July .
The Intercept verified the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ metadata to that of the ARIC documents in the BlueLeaks trove .
At the top of the documents is a disclaimer recognizing that police are surveilling legally protected events .
Titled “ First Amendment Acknowledgement , ” it reads , “ The ARIC recognizes that U.S. citizens have constitutionally protected rights to assemble , speak , and petition .
The ARIC safeguards these First Amendment rights , and reports on only those activities where the potential use of incitement rhetoric could be used to instigate acts of violence.
” Guariglia said of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fig leaf over what ’ s really happening here , which is that police feel a need to have situational awareness over any event , based on the politics and race of the people participating.
” It ’ s hard to see how many of the events listed could have led to the “ incitement rhetoric ” singled out in the disclaimer .
The meditation event , held on June 20 , invited “ witches , shamans , rootworkers , spiritualist [ sic ] , and all other energy practitioners ” to burn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of protection and transmutation , ” according to a description posted on Facebook .
The Juneteenth event , “ Stay Black and Live , ” was promoted by community groups from Austin ’ s historically Black east side .
The festival featured a raffle , spoken-word performances , and an appearance by Austin City Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison , the council ’ s sole Black member .
In that case , attendees didn ’ t even gather in person .
The event was entirely virtual .
“ The Austin Police Department is charged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Harper-Madison in an emailed statement .
“ It is imperative that they follow policy , show restraint , and compassion to ensure their own safety and that of our community.
” One dispatch dated July 9 included information about two pro-police rallies , including one organized by the right-wing media site Infowars .
But a note appended to the Infowars event suggested that it was notable mainly because Black Lives Matter supporters had taken notice .
The dispatch quoted a tweet from the account @ atxprotests that advised : “ NOT @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll be there , be careful & stick together.
” The document continues : “ Analyst Note : User account @ atxprotests is primarily an informational outlet for anti-police and racial justice rally events in Downtown Austin.
” Like cities across the U.S. , Austin has grappled with calls to drastically rethink policing in the past few months .
In Austin , tensions were heightened by the police killing in April of Mike Ramos , an unarmed Black and Latinx man .
But the BlueLeaks documents show that the ARIC first encouraged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tabs on protesters years ago .
In a 2015 document published by the Austin Chronicle , the ARIC called for local agencies to gather information on demonstrations during the South by Southwest festival .
“ Please include the location , number of protesters , whether or not there are any signs that it may be violent , and any other information you feel may be relevant.
” In an audio recording found in the BlueLeaks trove , members of the ARIC ’ s privacy policy advisory committee candidly discussed the possibility of overreach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information that the ARIC collects could be misused by local law enforcement .
“ My problem is this , ” the man says .
“ I get sometimes nervous making decisions about how something ’ s going to go to a police department , when I don ’ t know what the hell they do with it .
”

As protests over the killing of George Floyd spread across the country in early summer, federal and local law enforcement authorities in Minnesota and California culled social media for postings on upcoming protests, then disseminated RSVP counts and other details to agencies. Documents obtained by The Intercept show that into at least mid-July, law enforcement officials in Austin did the same — and that they kept tabs on cultural events with no apparent protest component, including an online Juneteenth celebration.
The documents originate with the Austin Regional Intelligence Center, or ARIC, part of a network of fusion centers established after 9/11 to share intelligence among federal agencies, local police departments, and the private sector. They show that law enforcement personnel there monitored Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter for announcements of protests, social gatherings, and other events organized by supporters of Black Lives Matter, and sometimes merely by Black people. Fusion center employees then prepared dispatches listing organizers’ names or social media handles, information about notable guests, and RSVP totals. The fusion center, which is managed by the Austin Police Department, sent the updates to local, state, and national law enforcement, including recipients at the CIA, FBI, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We at the ARIC completely understand concerns as they may relate to ‘monitoring’ protests or events,” Ron Phillips, deputy director of the fusion center, wrote in an email. “We do not continually monitor protests or events.” He added that when the ARIC does take an interest in events, “we only look at it from a standpoint of determining if there is an impact on the area that could pose a concern for the safety of our community.”
But the documents tell a different story. The monitored events include a Juneteenth celebration, a meditation event, and two candlelight vigils.
“In our heightened political moment, the fact that now every single public gathering is being surveilled by local, state, and federal government is incredibly concerning for civil liberties,” said Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst focused on surveillance and policing at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“The fact that now every single public gathering is being surveilled by local, state, and federal government is incredibly concerning for civil liberties.”
The surveillance in Austin this summer follows years of similar monitoring by federal law enforcement agencies in other parts of the U.S. Documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015 show that the Department of Homeland Security collected similar information on social events in historically Black neighborhoods, at one point circulating details about a funk music parade. Later reporting by Foreign Policy and The Intercept shows that the FBI devoted significant resources to monitoring people it labeled “black separatist extremists.” In the early days of the George Floyd protests, a woman in Tennessee who created a Facebook event for a Black Lives Matter rally said she received a visit from FBI agents who questioned her about her knowledge of antifa, suggesting that the monitoring of activists had continued. In late June, the release of 19 gigabytes of data hacked from fusion centers around the country — a trove of documents known as BlueLeaks — confirmed it.
The BlueLeaks documents date to early June and before. The new ARIC documents show that in Texas, at least, social media surveillance persisted into July. The Intercept verified the documents by comparing their format and file metadata to that of the ARIC documents in the BlueLeaks trove.
At the top of the documents is a disclaimer recognizing that police are surveilling legally protected events. Titled “First Amendment Acknowledgement,” it reads, “The ARIC recognizes that U.S. citizens have constitutionally protected rights to assemble, speak, and petition. The ARIC safeguards these First Amendment rights, and reports on only those activities where the potential use of incitement rhetoric could be used to instigate acts of violence.”
Guariglia said of the disclaimer: “That’s a fig leaf over what’s really happening here, which is that police feel a need to have situational awareness over any event, based on the politics and race of the people participating.”
It’s hard to see how many of the events listed could have led to the “incitement rhetoric” singled out in the disclaimer. The meditation event, held on June 20, invited “witches, shamans, rootworkers, spiritualist [sic], and all other energy practitioners” to burn bundles of sage in a “ritual of protection and transmutation,” according to a description posted on Facebook. The Juneteenth event, “Stay Black and Live,” was promoted by community groups from Austin’s historically Black east side. The festival featured a raffle, spoken-word performances, and an appearance by Austin City Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison, the council’s sole Black member. In that case, attendees didn’t even gather in person. The event was entirely virtual.
“The Austin Police Department is charged with the safety of our City,” said Harper-Madison in an emailed statement. “It is imperative that they follow policy, show restraint, and compassion to ensure their own safety and that of our community.”
One dispatch dated July 9 included information about two pro-police rallies, including one organized by the right-wing media site Infowars. But a note appended to the Infowars event suggested that it was notable mainly because Black Lives Matter supporters had taken notice. The dispatch quoted a tweet from the account @atxprotests that advised: “NOT a friendly protest. … if you’ll be there, be careful & stick together.”
The document continues: “Analyst Note: User account @atxprotests is primarily an informational outlet for anti-police and racial justice rally events in Downtown Austin.”
Like cities across the U.S., Austin has grappled with calls to drastically rethink policing in the past few months. In Austin, tensions were heightened by the police killing in April of Mike Ramos, an unarmed Black and Latinx man. But the BlueLeaks documents show that the ARIC first encouraged law enforcement and private-sector partners to keep tabs on protesters years ago. In a 2015 document published by the Austin Chronicle, the ARIC called for local agencies to gather information on demonstrations during the South by Southwest festival. “Please include the location, number of protesters, whether or not there are any signs that it may be violent, and any other information you feel may be relevant.”
In an audio recording found in the BlueLeaks trove, members of the ARIC’s privacy policy advisory committee candidly discussed the possibility of overreach. One committee member conceded that the information that the ARIC collects could be misused by local law enforcement. “My problem is this,” the man says. “I get sometimes nervous making decisions about how something’s going to go to a police department, when I don’t know what the hell they do with it.”