State legislators mull police records reform in wake of George Floyd’s death – The Buffalo News
Criminal Justice
Arrests plummet in Buffalo – Investigative Post
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday 100 percent of employees in nonessential business must work from home. That comes days after the governor mandated bars and restaurants to close their doors to sit-down diners.
Rinaldo said the New York State bail reform that went into effect at the beginning of the year has been helpful in reducing the number of arrests. As a result of the reform, police now issue appearance tickets for most minor crimes, resulting in them taking fewer people into custody.
“Because of bail reform and because we have so many people out of custody, they’re able to care for themselves, care for families, be nimble, flexible, respond to this pandemic,” said Kevin Stadelmaier, the chief attorney for Buffalo Legal Aid’s Criminal Defense Unit.
In addition to serious crime and arrests being down, Rinaldo said calls for service have decreased. And with fewer cars on the road, fewer accidents are being reported.
What Do We Really Know About the Politics of People Behind Bars? | The Marshall Project
A simple question at a Bernie Sanders town hall last spring sparked a debate new to prime time: Should incarcerated people be allowed to vote? Sanders said yes—his home state of Vermont (and its neighbor, Maine) are the only states to give all people in prison that right. Later, Joe Biden said no.
Yet in a country awash in political polling, the views of those who are most affected remain a mystery: the 2.3 million people behind bars. Do they want to vote? If given the right, who would they vote for? What issues do they care about most? No one’s ever really asked.
This is why The Marshall Project partnered with Slate to conduct the first-of-its-kind political survey inside prisons and jails across the country. Now that criminal justice is a campaign issue and many states are restoring voting rights to those convicted of felonies, we asked thousands of incarcerated people across the country for their opinions on criminal justice reform, which political party they identify with and which presidential candidate they’d support. We heard from more than 8,000 people.
Political extremists have found a home on this GOP-backed Facebook group | CSNY
“It exposes the what has been the undercurrent for us of the bail rollback movement,” Jessica Wisneski, a co-director of Citizens Action of New York, said of the Facebook group. “It's this undercurrent of racism and it's an undercurrent that is perpetuating this kind of Trumpian fear-mongering, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-woman rhetoric that is all over – right wing national politics showing up right here in New York.”
From Prison to Silicon Valley – The Atlantic
Jesse Aguirre’s workday at Slack starts with a standard engineering meeting—programmers call them “standups”—where he and his co-workers plan the day’s agenda. Around the circle stand graduates from Silicon Valley’s top companies and the nation’s top universities. Aguirre, who is 26, did not finish high school and has so far spent most of his adulthood in prison; Slack is his first full-time employer. But in the few years he has been writing code, he has cultivated what is perhaps the most useful skill in any software engineer’s arsenal: the ability to figure things out on his own.
Ex-Cop Reveals How NYPD Forced Officers to Arrest Black & Latino Men | Democracy Now!
A retired New York police officer has revealed the police department’s Transit District 34 in Brooklyn encouraged officers to arrest black and Latino men in exchange for rewards. The testimony is part of a discrimination lawsuit filed by Sgt. Edwin Raymond and three other officers, who say they were forced to apprehend more black and Latino men than other racial and ethnic groups. The former officer Pierre Maximilien also said Asian, Jewish and white people — who were referred to as “soft targets” — were not to be cuffed and that all officers in that district were required to fill a “collar quota.” Maximilien retired in 2015 after being retaliated against for not following these orders.
PAC Targets Upstate District Attorneys on Bail Reform
A national political action committee is targeting two Upstate district attorneys for their stance on New York's new bail rules.
The ads are being promoted on Facebook apparently funded by an organization called Real Justice PAC. The targets are the prosecutors in Erie and Albany counties, John Flynn and David Soares, who are both Democrats.
According to the PAC's website, its goals is to elect county prosecutors with platforms focused on ending discriminatory policing, ending cash bail, and rolling back practices that lead to mass incarceration. The digital ads accuse the DAs of leading the charge to roll back the state's elimination of cash bail for most crimes by "using fear-mongering tactics based on lies and racist rhetoric."