Activists continued to hammer away at the NYPD’s body camera program Thursday.
Outside City Hall, groups affiliated with Communities United for Police Reform demanded that the pilot program — slated to begin next week and eventually involve 1,000 officers in 20 precincts — be halted until changes are made.
Eighteen-year-old unarmed Ramarley Graham was shot and killed in front of his grandmother and younger brother. Five years later Graham’s mother, Constance Malcolm, is doing everything in her power to get justice for her son.
Police officers chased Graham into his home without a warrant and violated protocol repeatedly. Fast-forward to April 12, 2017—on this day Graham would have turned 24.
On March 16, I videotaped two New York Police Department (NYPD) officers pushing and threatening students from Midwood High School in Brooklyn. Toward the end of the encounter, one of the officers threatened the young people with a Taser, asking them if they wanted to "ride the lightning." The officers were attempting to disperse these young people from a public sidewalk for reasons unknown to me.
Constance Malcolm is fed up. It's been just over five years since former New York City police officer Richard Haste stormed into her Bronx home and opened fire on her unarmed son, 18-year-old Ramarley Graham.
In the weeks since Donald Trump won the presidential election and assumed office, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has sought every opportunity to present himself as opposed to Trump. While de Blasio has promoted his administration as a defender against Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist agenda, he has refused to take concrete action within his own power to protect New Yorkers.
About 19 months ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order that was hailed by many advocates and elected officials as a bold and unprecedented step towards police accountability...Over the course of the year-and-a-half since Cuomo signed the order, there have been more than a dozen police-involved deaths across New York State that have warranted examination by Schneiderman’s office. Nine have been determined to fall under the attorney general’s jurisdiction, with mixed results....Now, advocates and victims' families are pushing for the executive order to be written into law — both for permanence and to broaden criteria for cases that fall under the attorney general’s jurisdiction.
In the national conversation about police violence, the name Ramarley Graham has been far less present than Mike Brown’s, Eric Garner’s, Freddie Gray’s, or Sandra Bland’s. This may be because Black Lives Matter was not yet a national movement when eighteen-year-old Graham was fatally shot in February 2012 by an NYPD officer. In fact, it was just weeks before Trayvon Martin’s death brought the issues of police brutality and institutionalized racism to widespread national attention.
February 2 marked five years since New York Police Department (NYPD) officer Richard Haste shot and killed Ramarley Graham, an unarmed 18-year-old Black man, inside his Bronx home.
