Thandisizwe Chimurenga

Thandisizwe Chimurenga is an award-winning, freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, California. She is a staff writer for MintPress News, Daily Kos and co-hosts a weekly, morning drive-time public affairs/news show on the Pacifica Radio network. She is the author of No Doubt: The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant and Reparations … Not Yet: A Case for Reparations and Why We Must Wait; she is also a contributor to several social justice anthologies.

In Baltimore Guilty Cops May Soon Have to Pony Up

When police officers are sued for corruption or brutality — and when, as more frequently happens, the case is settled — it is almost always the city that employs them that picks up the tab for the damages awarded. This may be changing, with the focus now on events in Baltimore.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
A boy stands in front of a police cordon following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Gray's family agreed to a $6.4 million settlement with the city in September 2015. (AP/Matt Rourke)

BALTIMORE – As the Baltimore Police Department currently sits front and center in a massive corruption trial, talk of having individual police officers be fiscally responsible for the lawsuits against them is making the rounds. Two officers in Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force were found guilty earlier this week of racketeering and robbery in the

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Jeff Sessions’ Dog Whistle to White Supremacy: Sheriffs Guard Our “Anglo-American Heritage”

Coming from a man who was literally kept off the judge’s bench for being too racist, serving an administration staffed with unrepentant ideological bigots and ‘white nationalists,’ there is no mistaking what Jeff Sessions’ message to the sheriffs really says.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Attorney General Jeff Sessions bows his head during a prayer session prior to addressing the National Sheriffs' Association Winter Conference in Washington, Feb. 12, 2018. (AP/Cliff Owen)

WASHINGTON – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed a meeting of the National Sheriff’s Association on February 12 in Washington. As the nation’s chief law enforcer, Sessions was “among friends” and such an appearance should have been uneventful. What could possibly go wrong? Well … it appears that the Attorney General may have improvised a

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Cops Rebranded as “School Resource Officers” Can Injure and Criminalize Schoolkids

The over-reliance on law enforcement in the nation’s schools is reflective of a national attitude — one that is in dire need of adjusting.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
A Douglas County Sheriff sits in on part of an art class at Buffalo Ridge Elementary School, part of a new cooperative effort between law enforcement and schools for more routine police presence at local elementary schools, in Castle Pines, Colo. (AP/Brennan Linsley)

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – Last month a video emerged of a La Mesa police officer violently slamming a 17-year-old student onto the ground at a San Diego charter school. The juvenile, who had complained of feeling ill, was accused by a teacher of being on drugs. When the student consented to a search of her belongings, no drugs were found but some

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In NYC When Cops Backed Off, Crime Did Too

The choice to invest in punitive systems instead of stabilizing and nourishing ones does not make our communities safer. A living wage, access to holistic health services and treatment, educational opportunity, and stable housing are more successful in reducing crime than more police or prisons.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
New York City police officers detain and question a man,, July 11, 2017, in the Bronx borough of New York. (AP/Mark Lennihan)

NEW YORK – A couple of weeks ago ProPublica noted that 2017’s murder rate in New York City was down to 291, the lowest since the 1950s. That number is noteworthy in and of itself, but also because of the context in which it occurred: the number of “stops” and “frisks” employed by the NYPD. About 10,000 people were stopped and frisked -- checked for

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In the US it’s “Objectively Reasonable” for Cops to Kill Arrestees with Hands Up

Pressing for hate-crime or federal civil rights violations in the deaths of unarmed black people by police is somewhat of a staple in the arsenal of police-brutality activists. Unfortunately the track record of success is all but nonexistent.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Protesters rally against a grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer involved in the death of Eric Garner in Foley Square, Dec. 4, 2014, in New York. (AP Photo)

Erica Garner never stopped fighting for justice for her father Eric, who was killed by an NYPD officer with an illegal chokehold in 2014. The 27-year-old -- who passed away at the end of December last year -- led vigils and protests, spoke at rallies and on panels, and endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential campaign. And this week, she

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Holding Top Cops Accountable: When the Brass Lead by Bad Example

“Better training” is rarely, if ever, directed at those officers who have been on the streets for years, or those who are responsible for commanding other officers in the field.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Newly minted NYPD Officers attend the New York City Police Graduation Ceremony for the Graduating Class of December 2017 held at the Beacon Theater on December 28, 2017 in New York City. (Photo: Mpi43/MediaPunch/IPX)

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY – Todd Shaw, the former assistant police chief of the city of Prospect, Kentucky, resigned November 20, 2017, after more than 20 years on the job. Shaw quit after Prospect’s Chief of Police Jeff Sherrard confronted him with copies of Facebook messages sent to a Louisville Metropolitan Police Department (LMPD) recruit. Those

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Democrats and Republicans Unite In Vote To Extend Warrantless Surveillance

Civil liberties groups have decried the expansion of warrantless surveillance, saying that it violates Americans’ rights to privacy, creates an end-run around the Fourth Amendment, and may be subject to politically motivated abuse.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga
By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
NSA | Surveillance

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate has quietly voted to give intelligence agencies the permission to conduct warrantless surveillance on U.S. citizens for an additional five years. Senators took a vote on Tuesday of this week to end debate on a bill, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), that allows the National Security

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