Supreme Court of the Youth / Police Project: Graham v Connor, July 2019
The Youth / Police Project’s primary objective is to build conversations with teenagers about how their lives are affected by the character of the police presence in their neighborhoods. Each year, we meet weekly with a set of teenagers, discuss their questions about constitutional law, and commit to being a regular presence in their lives as they grow into young adults.
We called a session of the Supreme Court of the Youth / Police Project to review, de novo, the question of whether a finding of excessive use of force should require the officer had evil intentions. The Court immediately inquired into whether Dethorne Graham, the plaintiff in this case, was Black. We had to look beyond the opinion for contextual reporting and analysis in order to determine that yes, Dethorne Graham was a black man. The Court could not determine the race of the officers, to their unending frustration.
In a review of other landmark Fourth Amendment cases this omission proved consistent – race is not preserved in the record. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of the Youth / Police Project agreed with the Supreme Court of the United States that an officer’s intentions need not be malicious in order for the force to be excessive.
It is nearly impossible to prove someone is a racist in court. However, that should not prevent an inquiry into the mind of the officer. For the historical record we must note whether any explicit racism (or other prejudice) is involved. Or we won’t know the whole story.
The opinion published here reflects the logic of that position.
Policing Grief in Chicago - Restrained Mobility and Surveillance on Social Media
Excerpt:
In conversations with our current and former students, the news of police and researchers monitoring their social media comes with no major surprise. Overpolicing is a familiar circumstance. Most upsetting, though, is the strategy of Patton and others to monitor and tag their expressions of grief, like “RIP” statements and sad emojis. That strategy is a new concept to them.
There is something about policing grief and mourning on a public forum, assuming retaliation from their sadness, that feels particularly cruel. The industry of technology for predictive policing is not new, though, and mostly reiterates old forms of discrimination and prediction. Made popular in the 1990s, the “broken windows” method of predictive policing aimed to prevent more serious crime by detecting and policing lower crimes, like vandalism and prostitution.
How Black Chicago Youth Perceive Police, ABA Human Rights Association, May 2019
Keyonne Barnes graduated from a neighborhood Chicago Public School. She is interested in media / broadcast technology, journalism, and law.
In October 2019, civil rights attorney Chaclyn Hunt sat down with Chicago public school student Keyonne Barnes. They talked about Keyonne’s experiences as a young black woman living in the heavily policed South Side of Chicago.
