The right to assemble is as American as apple pie. It is written in the First Amendment — “the right of the people to peaceably assemble.” The American Revolution followed high-spirited protests in the colonies. But legal experts say that police tactics at mass demonstrations are threatening the right to assemble. Kettling protesters, spraying them
ST. LOUIS – Ferguson became the Selma of the 21st century after Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown seven years ago. Protests transformed Black Lives Matter from a hashtag into the nation’s leading civil rights movement and forged a potent political coalition that elected Black reformers to top St. Louis offices, from prosecutor to congresswoman
Most of the 79 St. Louis area police officers who killed people in recent years have escaped public scrutiny, going unnamed both in media and department incident reports. Nearly half of them still are active officers today. In addition, public knowledge of police killings has significantly decreased, despite increased attention to police killings nationwide. In
Police misconduct records are either secret or difficult to access in a majority of states — 32 of them including Washington, D.C. But the breeze of openness is blowing. Seven big states have opened records in recent years — California, New York, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts and Maryland. Nineteen states now have laws that allow these
Police officers who abuse citizens usually escape punishment because of an array of legal doctrines that stack the law in an officer’s favor. That was true before the murder of George Floyd and killing of Breonna Taylor and it’s true after the uprising that those events caused. The guilty verdict and stiff sentence for Derek
