The city’s top financial adviser is recommending that the Los Angeles City Council deny a police department request to procure 300 additional vehicles for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics.

The report, submitted to the council Monday by City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, found that the L.A. Police Department would have enough vehicles to temporarily expand its fleet during the Games without the additional cars.

LAPD officials had previously requested around $31 million, arguing the additional officers deployed for the Games will need additional vehicles for their police work.

But Szabo disagreed in his report, finding instead that the department would soon have a large enough fleet.

The fight to abolish the death penalty cannot be entrusted to the courts, which have sanctioned every stage of this horror, or to the Democratic Party, which has backed state killing for decades and remains silent as Trump moves to expand it. It is part of the struggle of the working class against inequality, war and police-state violence—a struggle against the capitalist system itself.

Local and state agencies are counting on the federal government to cover the cost of extra police, but it’s not guaranteed.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court has refused to allow the Bureau of Prisons to immediately reinstate sweeping restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for incarcerated transgender people, finding the government failed to make the strong showing necessary to suspend a lower court injunction while its appeal proceeds.

In an order filed Sept. 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied the Trump administration’s request to stay an Aug. 26 preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Bureau of Prisons Program Statement 5260.01.

The appellate court did not issue a final ruling on the legality of the BOP policy. Instead, Judges Robert Wilkins and Bradley Garcia concluded the government had failed to satisfy the stringent requirements necessary to obtain a stay pending appeal. Judge Justin Walker dissented.

Multiple sources are reporting that police in Menifee responded to a report of a burglary in progress on the 27000 block of Hemingway Court around 4:54 pm Monday.

A car driven by a woman believed to be involved in the burglary was seen leaving the area, and fled when the cops attempted to pull her over.

The driver was headed west on Holland Road at a high rate of speed when she ran the red light at Holland and Evans Road, striking the boy, who was riding north on Evans Road.

The victim, identified as 13-year-old Menifee resident Cody Villatoro, died at the scene, despite the efforts of police and paramedics.

The driver continued to flee until her car became disabled, at which point police arrested the woman, 21-year old Temecula resident Melody Valdez, on suspicion of evading police and homicide, among other charges.

So let’s repeat. Villatoro was riding with the green light, and apparently did nothing wrong other than share the planet with a driver wanted by police for a nonviolent property crime. But now he’s dead, because of a driver’s bad decision to flee and the cops’ choice to continue the chase.##

[a study paper is shown, with some of the text legible]
STUDY RESULTS
GIVING POOR PEOPLE MONEY REDUCES CRIME MORE THAN GIVING COPS THAT SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY
CONCLUSION
If you want to reduce crime, take care of your community's primary needs instead of funding cops so much

[an orange character in a suit has stamped a paper labeled MORE POLICE FUNDING BILL, and is grinning]
Heh, you think we don't know?

https://thebad.website/comic/scientific_policing

The historical record shows that the glossy language of “reform” contributes to the normalization of prisons and jails.

“Abolition is not absence, it is presence. What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities. So those who feel in their gut deep anxiety that abolition means knock it all down, scorch the earth and start something new, let that go. Abolition is building the future from the present, in all of the ways we can.” - Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Gilmore and Lambert, 2019).

Inmates and guards have been killed in fighting at a prison near Sri Lanka’s capital. Reports suggest at least 25 people have died and more than 100 others have been injured.

In April 2023, the FBI discovered that Rafael Silva, an officer with the Delano Police Department in California’s Central Valley, had made violent threats against transgender people on TikTok.

Under a pseudonym, Silva posted several comments that the FBI found imminently dangerous. One read, “You ain’t safe. We finna change your pronouns soon. Was/were.” Another said that Silva’s “AR will track y’all down.” And yet another read, “The only power you’ll see is the one from a barrel and a 9mm,” according to investigative documents.

Silva is one of the 148 California law enforcement officers who engaged in explicitly biased conduct between 2014 and 2024, according to an investigation by The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program. Records show the officers used racist, sexist and homophobic slurs; mocked transgender people; made violent comments about Black people; and demeaned members of the public, co-workers and incarcerated people, records show.

Yet only about 12% were fired because of their conduct. Silva was not one of them. After leaving Delano, he went on to work for police departments in Avenal and Wasco.

...

Four young people—Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Rajwani—were sentenced as terrorists this week for the crime of criminal damage. They broke into an Elbit Systems factory in Filton, near Bristol, and caused approximately £1.2 million worth of damage. They livestreamed the whole thing wearing their, now iconic, red jumpsuits and they acted in the open.

A jury of their peers, that is, Brits, convicted them of criminal damage. Not terrorism or any kind of violent disorder. Simple criminal damage.

But here is where the really nightmarish situation begins. The judge, Mr Justice Johnson, had already decided that he would add a ‘terrorist connection’ to their sentences. He did this secretly, before the verdict and the jury was never told this was being considered. The defence was never given the opportunity to address it. The conviction came down on criminal damage charges. And then the judge, alone, unilaterally, declared that these young people are terrorists. Image

I did my research and found out this has never happened before in British legal history. Direct action protesters have never been treated this way. Criminal damage has never been considered a terrorist offence. The barrister for the defence, Rajiv Menon KC, called it ‘chilling and creeping authoritarianism’.

He is not wrong.

The UN Chief of Police Summit will be held at the UN Headquarters in New York City on July 7 and 8. The conference, dubbed “Investing in Peace,” will feature security ministers and police chiefs. Discussions will focus on “strengthening international peace, security, and development for all,” a UN writeup claims.

Four previous UN policing conferences have focused on cooperation across law enforcement internationally.

Ben Gvir will lead a delegation from Israel’s national security ministry to the policing conference.

While Ben Gvir is not expected to face difficulties entering the U.S. to attend the conference, Israeli officials are reportedly concerned about the possibility of protests against his presence in New York City.

“One-Year-Old Boy Killed After Officer Fires at Vehicle in Mississippi,” said the New York Times headline (6/16/26). So, a “one-year-old boy”—what most people would call a baby—was “killed after” a police officer fired at a vehicle, but there’s no verb you could use to connect those two things?

A CalMatters investigation last year found that criminal defendants across the state are routinely convicted without anyone investigating the charges against them, significantly increasing the likelihood of wrongful convictions. Many California counties do not employ a single defense investigator who can interview witnesses, review police reports, visit crime scenes and retrieve video surveillance footage. CalMatters also found that lawyers in some rural counties are handling caseloads that far exceed even the most permissive standards, making them less likely than other defense attorneys to challenge the prosecution’s evidence in legal motions and take their cases to trial.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/66129403

Cross posted from https://lemmy.zip/post/66129061

Exclusive: Letters from inside the underground H Unit of Oklahoma state penitentiary allege beatings, vermin, degrading punishment and in many cases no access to a most basic necessity – natural light

Texas’s response to school shootings was as predictable as it was doomed to produce only more violence in schools — violence by cops.