Resources

In May, many of us were devastated and heartbroken when George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. This marked yet another Black man’s life being taken too soon by the very people that are supposed to protect us. As Philadelphians took to the streets to express their First Amendment rights with justified anger at the institutions that enabled this to happen and to advocate for Black lives, the City of Philadelphia appeared unprepared to handle the resulting unrest. The investigation shows that the root cause of the lack of planning was a lack of leadership at the highest levels.

It is also important to spend time reflecting on the fact that teargas was deployed in our city during these events. Teargas is banned in warfare and has not been used in Philadelphia for civil unrest since the MOVE crisis in 1985. Despite this, teargas was deployed on our own people several times during the unrest. The negative and painful effects of teargas cannot be overstated, and it should not have been used the way it was. The report details how our own police department shot teargas canisters down residential streets in West Philadelphia, hurting children in their own homes and innocent bystanders.

Chicago is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world. Cameras, automatic license plate readers, cell site simulators and many other surveillance devices are currently used in the city by the Chicago Police Department and its sister agencies. However, many Chicago residents are unaware of the scope of the surveillance systems, their huge cost, and the privacy implications of their use. Lucy Parsons Lab surveys the major parts of the surveillance system in Chicago with respect to costs, capabilities, efficacy, and legal and privacy concerns.

This report was written by Pascal Emmer, Woods Ervin, Derecka Purnell, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Tiffany Wang for the COVID19 Policing Project, hosted by the Community Resource Hub for Safety & Accountability. It gathers and expands on regular project updates, and is the first in a series on the impacts of policing and criminalization in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

This report is based on rich interviews and engagement with movement technologists, organizers, researchers, and policy advocates about what liberation from surveillance and criminalization can actually look like. Astraea and Research Action Design (RAD) created this report as a resource for funders to understand what is at stake and what opportunities exist to support critical organizing at the intersections of decriminalization and technology. Throughout this report, you will read about surveillance, carceral technologies, criminalization, and policing. In some instances, we speak about these practices in tandem, and, in others, we hone in on one to provide deeper insight, but please bear in mind that these processes and practices—and their consequences—are inextricably linked.

Calls for reform suggesting the deployment of social workers instead of police in our communities overlook the past and present damage done by the child welfare system as co-conspiring with police. The primary goal of this brief is to discuss the ways the Department of Children and Family Services is interconnected with police through data sharing, predictive analytics, and direct partnership. We see this brief as just the beginning of a larger endeavor in understanding the harm of the child welfare system on children and families.

A database containing several thousand data points on over 3,000 city and local police departments and sheriffs’ offices nationwide, allows citizens, journalists, and academics to review details about the technologies police are deploying, and provides a resource to check what devices and systems have been purchased locally. Built using crowdsourcing and data journalism over the last 18 months, the Atlas of Surveillance documents the alarming increase in the use of unchecked high-tech tools that collect biometric records, photos, and videos of people in their communities, locate and track them via their cell phones, and purport to predict where crimes will be committed.

In response to the expanding criminalization of reproductive autonomy through increasing restrictions on abortion and reproductive care, and the growing criminalization of pregnant people and parents, a group of reproductive justice and anti-criminalization organizers and advocates came together in May 2019 to develop a shared analysis and resistance strategies. This preliminary list of policies which can contribute to increased surveillance, policing, criminalization, and punishment of pregnant people, parents, and providers emerged from these conversations. This document is intended to inform policymakers and advocates concerned about reproductive justice, intimate partner and domestic violence, public health, and criminalization about the potential consequences of the policy approaches outlined below, and to offer alternative strategies that carry less risk of contributing to the criminalization of reproductive autonomy.

The Advisory Circular is a network of twitter bots posting in real-time whenever they detect aircraft flying in circles over cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Baltimore, Portland, Minneapolis, and London. Because they use an uncensored source of data, the bots also record police, FBI, DHS, DEA, CBP, and military aircraft. They look for circles because it means an aircraft is doing something instead of going somewhere. If you’ve ever asked “what is that helicopter/plane?” there’s a good chance these bots can answer your question—even if it’s an advanced military surveillance plane.