Everyday Injustice Davis Vanguard

“Policing is violent. And its violence is not distributed equally: stark racial disparities persist despite decades of efforts to address them,” writes Texas Professor Michael Sierra-Arévalo in his recently published book, The Danger Imperative.

In his book, Sierra-Arevalo delves into how police culture shapes officers’ perception and practice of violence.

He conducted over 100 interviews and spent over 1000 hours on patrol.

Everyday Injustice asks the Michael Sierra-Arévalo to describe a culture where the police are more focused on protecting themselves rather than the public as well as the war on cops myth.

Can police culture be reformed? Is the violence something that can be extracted from police culture? Or do you think it must be abolished and reworked completely?

In April, four incarcerated people at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston, Rhode Island died. Everyday Injustice, spoke with Melonie Perez and Brandon Robinson from Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), a non-profit that organizes low-income families in communities of color for social, economic, and political justice.

Perez and Robinson expressed concern for the lack of training by staff and lack of urgency in some of the incidents that might have been preventable. Moreover, there has been an overall lack of transparency.

In an April 29 letter from advocates, the groups wrote, “As organizations working for criminal justice reform and advocating for the rights of incarcerated individuals, we are deeply concerned about both the limited information that the Department has provided the families and the public about these deaths and the allegations that medical concerns raised by at least two of the individuals before their deaths were not treated with the urgency they deserved.”

They add, “Under the circumstances, we believe it is essential that prompt steps be taken by the Department to address this situation, with the goal of promoting greater transparency and accountability in the reporting and investigation of these deaths.”

Listen as Perez and Robinson speak about the need for a full investigation into the deaths at ACI in Rhode Island.

In April, an unprecedented lawsuit was filed in the Supreme Court of California challenging the state’s death penalty statute as racially discriminatory and unconstitutional under the Equal Protection guarantees of the California Constitution.

The filers which include the ACLU, LDF (Legal Defense Fund), and the Office of the State Public Defender on behalf of OSPD, Witness to Innocence, LatinoJustice PRLDEF (Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund), the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and Eva Paterson, co-founder of the Equal Justice Society, claim, “This is the first time a petition of this nature has been filed with the court.”

“Numerous empirical studies by leading social science experts reveal troubling disparities: Black people are about five times more likely to be sentenced to death when compared to similarly situated non-Black defendants, while Latino people are at least three times more likely to be sentenced to death.”

The 95-page complaint stated, “The parties agree that persistent and pervasive racial disparities infect California’s death penalty system.”

The Vanguard recently hosted a webinar to discuss this historic suit.

Panelists:

Avi Frey, Counsel from ACLU of Northern California
Lisa Romo, Office of State Public Defender (OSPD)
Morgan Zamora, prison advocacy coordinator at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Karen Munoz, from LatinoJustice

Moderators:

Madison Whittemore, Vanguard News
Sophie Yoakum, Vanguard News

Civil Rights Attorney John Burris announced a $7.5 million settlement against the Antioch, CA Police in the 2020 death of Angelo Quinto.

Quinto, suffering from a mental health incident was killed when police held him in a prone position similar to George Floyd for over ten minutes despite pleas from his mother.

John Burris said: “While no amount of money can make up for the tragic circumstances surrounding Angelos’s death, his family is to be commended for their unwavering commitment to improving the relationship between the community and Antioch police.”

He added, “The Quinto family took their pain and anguish and immediately challenged the City to reform its approach to engaging the mentally and emotionally impaired. Their efforts at partnering with the City have resulted directly or indirectly with (1) body-worn cameras, a mental health crisis team, a mobile crisis unit, a police review commission, and state legislation outlawing excited delirium. The family efforts turned a heartbreak into a source of social justice activisms that will benefit the community for years to come. This is citizenship at its best.”

Assembly Bill 360 was passed and signed into law, banning the term “Excited Delirium”, and its corollaries, like “Agitated Delirium” from being recognized as a valid medical diagnosis or cause of death in the State of California and prohibiting such terms from appearing on death certificates issued in the State of California.

The Vanguard talks with Civil Rights Attorney Ben Nisenbaum and father Robert Collins about what the settlement means to them, but also the changes to law and policy they were able to get – due in large measure to the organization and activism of Mr. Quinto’s surviving family members (Cassandra, Isabella, Andrei, and Robert), in partnership with Assemblyman Mike Gipson.

In her introduction to Dorsey Nunn’s book, Michelle Alexander quoted Toni Morrison: “Just remember that your real job is that if your free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

Alexander notes, “I’ve known Dorsey for two decades. I’ve watched him grow and evolve into an extraordinary thinker and leader, someone who has helped to birth and shape movements that are changing the course of history.”

Dorsey and others launched the “ban the box” movement, Alexander writes, “Because of the heroic work of Dorsey and all those in the organizations that he led or cofounded, and the powerful movements that he has helped to build, barrier to employment, housing, education and more have begun to fall away for millions of people…”

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk to Dorsey Nunn, who just released his memoirs, “What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly,” and he describes his story of going from a life sentence to a leader in criminal justice reform.

Shannon Bohrer, served 27 years in the Marland State Police – but it was a case where he was an investigator that caused him to re-examine the criminal legal system.

He wrote the book Judicial Soup which “examines the need for criminal justice reforms through a case in which an innocent person was found guilty of a crime he did not commit.”

As his book explains, “The story is simple, yet the judicial process evolved into a complex event. It is a crime story that featured too many players, some with individual motives, shoddy police work, prosecutors who would say anything to win, and a judge who seemed to ignore evidence that did not fit his mental model of the case. If this were a novel, no one would believe it.”

The book addresses the larger need for criminal justice reform – listen as Shannon Bohrer describes his experience and what he learned through his involvement in this case.