police-reform
‘We had to start somewhere’: Pa. officials say police misconduct database is a step toward reform
A new statewide database will let Pennsylvania police agencies check for “red flags” among prospective hires, but it’s just the beginning of efforts to weed out bad actors.
Already, a Democratic identity crisis on policing | Josh Kurtz
As sure as night follows day, national pundits are reading way too much into a single primary result and are prematurely extrapolating trends that may or may not be developing in Democratic politics.
What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July? | Frederick Douglass
In July 2020, as the United States found itself at a reckoning point on civil rights, the Capital-Star ran excerpts from a speech on the meaning of the Fourth of July delivered by the abolitionist and advocate Frederick Douglass in Rochester, N.Y., July 5, 1852. With that dialogue ongoing in 2021, we are continuing that embryonic tradition.
In Pgh., reformers call for decreased police funding, more community investment
“The safest communities are not the ones with the most police. The safest communities are the ones with the most resources,” one local advocate said.
Congress can’t do much about fixing local police. But it can tie strings to federal grants | Opinion
The federal government’s primary tool for influencing American policing is its spending power. But states and localities have to want to cooperate.
Data: Black people in Pa. are more than 5 times as likely as whites to be killed by police | Tuesday Morning Coffee
Black people are 11 percent of Pa.'s population, but they made up 33 percent of the people killed by police between 2013-2020, a new report concludes.
Biden urges Congress to act on policing reform after meeting with George Floyd’s family
“Indeed, that change is coming true,” U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday.
Morale down: Philly’s Black police face post-Floyd era
Crystal Williams-Coleman has waded into an oncoming hail of anti-police crossfire ever since becoming president of Philadelphia’s Guardian Civic League in March 2020.
As Allegheny Co. Council forms police review board, one member shares story of being racially profiled
"It happened to me. If it happened to me, it happens to too many! We gotta do what’s right," Councilmember DeWitt Walton said in an emotional speech.
A just verdict is not justice, it’s accountability — and we need more | Opinion
The United States government, however, apparently cannot tell you exactly how many lives have been lost at the hands of law enforcement.
Why this trial was different: Experts react to guilty verdict for Derek Chauvin | Opinion
Scholars of policing, law and race explain the landmark guilty verdicts handed down in the trial for the murder of George Floyd.
In the Poconos, calls for justice for Pa. teen fatally shot by State Police | Wednesday Morning Coffee
Christian Hall, 19, was suffering from mental health issues, his family says, when he was fatally shot on an I-80 overpass last December.