Since its initiation in 2013, the NYPD’s gang policing program has operated with little outside scrutiny. Based on evidence it has kept almost entirely hidden from public view, the police have targeted and surveilled entire social networks inside low-income communities, breaking down doors in pre-dawn military-style raids that have resulted in over 2,000 arrests in just the […]
Early on the morning of January 19, the New York Police Department and local and federal partners raided the Sheepshead/Nostrand Houses, a large public housing complex in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, arresting 13 alleged members of the “Towaz Boyz gang.” Unnamed law enforcement authorities described the scene to the Daily Newsas a “New Jack City-style sales operation” — a reference […]
The New Orleans Police Department, the Louisiana State Police, and the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) have raided eight French Quarter strip clubs in the past 10 days. At a Monday press conference, both NOPD and ATC claimed the raids were the result of a multi-month, ongoing “human trafficking” operation, yet they also admitted they made no trafficking arrests, nor did they identify any victims of trafficking.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear filed lawsuits last week against several pharmaceutical companies, including Purdue Pharma and McKesson Corporation, that manufacture and distribute opioid pain relievers, alleging that they are getting rich to the tune of $13 billion annually from an overdose crisis that kills 120 people each day. “By suing […]
For decades, Philadelphia held the dubious honor of hosting America’s largest open-air heroin market in a tangle of pockmarked streets on the city’s north side, known as the “Badlands.” On Tuesday, less than two weeks after Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf declared the overdose crisis a public health emergency, city officials, including District Attorney Larry Krasner and […]
On January 31, 2013, a California Highway Patrol officer pulled over Carlos David Sanchez for playing his car stereo too loud. During the stop, the officer asked Sanchez, then 19, if he was on probation or parole. He was not, Sanchez said, but he was under a gang injunction, as was his younger brother, also in […]
null null By the end of his senior year in a Philadelphia high school in June 2017, Jamal had missed out on completing his certification in the culinary arts, playing on the basketball team, attending prom, and walking across the stage at his graduation. He was barred from working a job to help his mother […]
National Review, the influential right-wing magazine, recently raised eyebrows for its public mea culpa on being wrong about New York City’s Stop and Frisk program, which peaked at nearly 700,000 police stops in 2012 but has reportedly declined dramatically since. The magazine, like most conservative media (and even Democratic strategists), predicted gloom and doom if the police department’s […]
This article was published in collaboration with The Nation. Editor’s note: After publication, The Appal received letters from David Kennedy and other proponents of the Ceasefire model that challenged this article’s characterization of the model and its effectiveness. An internal review determined that the story contained a number of inaccuracies related to the BRAVE program and the description of […]
On January 5th, Baltimore Police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins entered a guilty plea in federal court on an array of charges such as racketeering, conspiracy, and robbery. Sergeant Jenkins is just one of eight indicted members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a specialized unit focused on getting guns off the streets. The list of crimes Jenkins […]
In a thoughtful and poignant piece in the New York Times, Bärí A. Williams described her concerns about racial bias in predictive policing software and the effect such software might have on her own family. In response, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson published an excellent article on In Justice Today that clarified some of the points raised in Ms. Williams’s […]
Philadelphia implemented the “focused deterrence” model of gang policing, which includes the promise of critical social services. The reality is much different.
Overdoses on fentanyl, an uber-potent synthetic opioid, are the main driver of the opioid crisis: deaths related to the drug more than doubled from 2015 to 2016, killing nearly 20,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pennsylvania is a locus of the crisis. In 2016, fentanyl was present in over half of the […]