Police Brutality

The head of the London Metropolitan Police is under pressure to explain her officers' actions during a vigil in south London on Saturday in memory of Sarah Everard.

Police were seen grabbing and leading women away from the event in handcuffs.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was "urgently seeking an explanation" from Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, while Home Secretary Priti Patel has asked the Met for a report on what happened.

A study by the US Crisis Monitor based on around 13,000 demonstrations across the US since April 2020 shows that the police use force three times more often on left than right-wing demonstrators.

Barack Obama used this data in a statement to justify why Trump supporters were not stopped at the Capitol: The use of police force against predominantly white demonstrators is now demonstrably significantly reduced.

Police fired tear gas in the French capital after thousands of critics of a proposed security law that would restrict sharing images of police officers in France joined a demonstration in Paris.

The crowd included journalists, journalism students, left-wing activists, migrants rights groups and citizens of varied political stripes expressing anger over what they perceive as a hardening police tactics in recent years, especially since France's Yellow Vest protests against economic hardship in 2018.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday said images of police beating a Black music producer in Paris put "shame" on the country, with top politicians and sportsmen expressing outrage over the incident.

The results of the Gallup survey show that Mexican security forces continue to be immersed in an image crisis due to corruption and violence.

Of all Latin American countries only in Venezuela the population feels less safe and distrusts the police more. Arturo Alvarado Mendoza, author and doctor of sociology at the Colegio de México, says that the current police force is at the service of the government and that it must "begin to attend to citizens' problems and improve its relationship with the population" in order to change its perception.

After Monday's shooting of the 27-year-old Black man Walter Wallace, who was shot and killed during a confrontation with Philadelphia police, protests have erupted in the city. According to Police, a large crowd, which they estimated to be approximately 1,000 people, looted businesses in Port Richmond, Philadelphia Tuesday night. Police have now asked residents to stay indoors, "requesting that all residents in the 12, 16, 18, 19, 24, 25, and 26th Districts remain indoors except when necessary."

"All this violence and looting. I don't want to leave a bad scar on my son and my family with this looting and chaos stuff. So I want my son's name and everybody to stop this. Give my son a chance. And the family like we're decent people," Wallace's father told CNN. "Everybody to have respect for our family, to pray for us. Cut it out. The looting is a mindset and it won't bring my son back. And it won't, it will escalate things to get worse instead of better."

With the re-election of President Lukashenko, who has been ruling Belarus for 26 years, a protest movement has started. It accuses the head of state of election fraud. The state security forces are trying to stem the demonstrations that have been going on since then by violent means. For the first time, the Belarusian police announced the use of deadly weapons.

The United States Department of Justice has declared New York City, Portland and Seattle "anarchist jurisdictions" as all three cities "have permitted violence and destruction of property to persist and have refused to undertake reasonable measures to counteract criminal activities." This move comes after President Trump signed a memo that threatened to defund Democratic-led cities he deemed "lawless".

Designated cities face potential financial consequences and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio's office is preparing to sue in case of funding cuts.

Jacob Blake, the black man who was shot seven times by a Kenosha police officer, released a video message from his hospital bed. The video was posted by @money_mike_la on Instagram and shared publicly by Ben Crump, Blake's attorney, on Twitter.

"I just wanna say [...] there's a lot more life to live out there. Your life, and not only just your life, your legs – something that you need to move around and forward in life – can be taken from you like this, man," he said snapping his fingers.

"Twenty-four hours, every 24 hours it's pain, it's nothing but pain. It hurts to breathe, it hurts to sleep, it hurts to move from side-to-side, it hurts to eat," Blake continues. "Please, I'm telling you, change your lives out there. We can stick together, make some money, make everything easier for our people out there, man, because there's so much time that's been wasted."

The seven police officers, who were involved in the March arrest of Black man Daniel Prude, have been suspended. Prude was pinned to the ground, put in a "spit hood" and later died of "complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint."

"I am suspending the officers in question today against council's advice, and I urge the attorney general to complete her investigation. Daniel Prude was failed by our police department, our mental healthcare system, our society and, he was failed by me," so Rochester's mayor Lovely Warren, who said that systemic racism led to Prude's death.

41-year-old Black man Daniel Prude had died of asphyxiation in March after police in Rochester, NY put a so-called "spit hood" over his head and pressed his face into the ground for over three minutes, body camera footage and documents released by Prude's family reveal.

Prude's brother Joe called the police on March, 23 to get help for his brother who was suffering from "an acute, manic, psychotic episode." Prude, who was naked, became agitated but complied with police. The officers handcuffed Prude and put a "spit hood" over his head, as Prude had been spitting at the officers they later told investigators.

In the footage, Prude can be heard yelling "You're trying to kill me!", while officers held down his head for over three minutes. Prude was unresponsive when paramedics arrived and was given CPR at the scene. One officer can be heard saying "he feels pretty cold."

Prude was taken to a hospital where he was taken off life support a week later.

According to the New York state's attorney general an investigation is under way.

When asked whether systemic racism is a problem in the United States during his trip to Kenosha on Tuesday, President Trump refused to answer the question directly and instead focussed on "violence we've seen in Portland and here and other places."

"The fact is that we've seen tremendous violence and we will put it out very, very quickly if given the chance," so Trump.

Addressing whether there is a need for structural change to the law enforcement, he said: "Well I think the people are calling for structural change. And then you take the people of Kenosha that aren't here and that you won't see and that aren't protesting, but they want change also. They want to see law and order. That's the change they want. They want the police to be police."

"They want people that are going to keep them safe, where their houses aren't broken into. Where they're not raped and murdered. That's what they want. And they're protesters, too, but they don't walk down the street... so, you know, just the way it is," he added.

During President Trump's visit to Kenosha, he addressed the family of Jacob Blake, who was shot seven times in the back by a police officer.

"I feel terribly for anybody that goes through that. As you know, it's under investigation," Trump said. "I hope they come up with the right answer. It's a complicated subject, to be honest with you. But I feel terribly for anybody who has to go through -- and I didn't get to speak to the mother, I hear she's a fine woman. I hear from the pastor, a really fine woman. But you can see when I spoke with the pastors, I see exactly what it is and they understand where I am. And if we can help we're going to help but it is a question. It's under investigation. A lot of things happened with that and other things, frankly, that we're looking at very, very closely."

After the White House announced Trump would visit Kenosha on Tuesday to survey the damage caused by last week's protests following the shooting of Jacob Blake, Mayor John Antaramian (D) said: "from our perspective, our preference would have been for him not to be coming at this point in time."

"All presidents are always welcome and campaign issues are always going on. But it would have been, I think, better had he waited to have for another time to come." Antaramian added.

Antaramian further stated that the city supports peaceful protests and that the people had "every right to protest," and added that "our biggest problem really did come from people coming from outside the area and causing a great deal of damage and destruction."

In a companywide meeting on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg addressed the recent shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, both in a seven-minute public address and in a heated series of questions from employees.

In the wake of the shooting, Facebook has been criticized for allowing self-proclaimed militia groups to organize on the platform, including a group called the Kenosha Guard, which had solicited armed attendees for an event on the night of the protest. Several Facebook users reported the event as likely to result in violence in the hours before the shooting, only to be told by Facebook moderators that the group and event were not violating Facebook policy.

“It was largely an operational mistake,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s because the team that enforces our policy against dangerous organizations is a specialized team that is trained to look for symbolism and innuendo ... and understand the details of how certain militias and conspiracy networks operate. The contractors and reviewers who the initial complaints were funneled to didn’t pick this up. On second review, doing it more sensitively, the team responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies and we took it down.”

Two people have died, and another person was seriously injured in a shooting after protests erupted into violence for a third night in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

A 17-year-old Illinois resident connected to the shooting was taken into custody Wednesday morning, according to police in Antioch, Illinois.

Jacob Blake's shooting by police in Kenosha on Sunday has ignited fresh protests against police brutality and racial injustice in a number of cities across the country

The Milwaukee Bucks boycotted Wednesday NBA playoff game five against Orlando Magic to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake. Blake was shot seven times by a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and is paralysed.

Bucks player George Hill told The Undefeated: "We're tired of the killings and the injustice."

Some NBA players didn't want to resume the season after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. They decided to play, but with most players kneeling during the National Anthem and wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts during pregame warmups.

Claudio Crespo, Chilean police special Special Forces commander, was detained early Friday over the blinding of the student Gustavo Gatica during protests in November 2019.
The psychology student Gatica, was blinded in both eyes by police rubber bullets during the protests against the government of President Sebastian Piñera.
Crespo, known as "G3", was discharged last June for manipulating the images recorded by his GoPro camera.

According to a press release by Amnesty International, US law enforcement committed at least 125 incidents of police violence against "protestors, medics, journalists and legal observers in 40 states and D.C." during the Black Lives Matter protests in May and June.

The NGO further stated that US law enforcement "repeatedly used physical force, chemical irritants such as tear gas and pepper spray, and kinetic impact projectiles as a first resort tactic against peaceful protestors rather than as a response to any sort of actual threat or violence." Amnesty recorded 89 cases of use of tear gas, six incidents of the use of batons, 13 instances of the use of rubber bullets and 31 cases of unlawful pepper spray.

On Wednesday, the transcript of former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane's body camera footage detailing the last minutes of George Floyd's life was made public. George Floyd told the police officers over 20 times that he can't breathe, crying out "Mama, I love you. I can't do nothing," and "Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."

Derek Chauvin, the police officer who pressed his knee onto Floyd's neck for over 8 minutes, told Floyd at one point to "stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

The transcripts were released as part of a motion filed by Lane's attorney Earl Gray who seeks to have Lane's charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd's death dismissed.

After the riots in Stuttgart, a voice message with racist content by a police officer appeared on social networks. The official describes the events in Stuttgart city center and draws a direct parallel to refugee policy and migrants. The police have confirmed the authenticity and have initiated an internal investigation against a known police officer.