Tops Friendly Markets has reopened its Buffalo, New York, grocery store where 10 people were killed in a racist massacre in May, a decision that has outraged residents who hoped the location would be turned into a memorial. The predominantly Black community also has expressed dismay that the tragedy has not prompted officials to fulfill […]
Criminal Justice
Posted inCriminal Justice, Policing
Do Police Really Treat White Mass Shooters With Kid Gloves?
The memes show up on social media whenever a white mass shooter is taken into custody. On one side of the image is the face of a Black person who was gunned down by police after being stopped on suspicion of a minor crime. On the other side is the face of a young white […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Gun Violence
The Mass Casualty Crime No One Is Talking About
A few hours of celebration turned into mourning at a high school graduation party in South Carolina in June when two vehicles pulled up and as many as 70 bullets were fired into the crowd, police said. Audrionna Kind, 32, was killed, and eight others — mostly teenagers — were injured. Kind, a mother of […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Incarceration
The Land of the Free Leads the World in Incarceration. Why?
This story is part of a special Juneteenth project with Vox which explores the ongoing struggle for freedom for Black Americans. When Sylvester Shockley was 9 years old, he says he was arrested for breaking into businesses and sent to an “all-boys reform school” — what he later realized was a detention center for “juvenile delinquents.” […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Gun Violence
Biden’s policies aren’t the only possible solutions to America’s gun violence epidemic
As the number of mass shootings has surged beyond the number of days in 2022, President Joe Biden addressed the country in a televised primetime speech Thursday to advocate for policy solutions and urge lawmakers to “finally do something” about the nation’s gun violence epidemic. Following the massacres of 10 Black people in New York, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Gun Violence
The Reading List: How Black Buffalo Became the Target of White Supremacist Hate
The Tops grocery store where a gunman killed 10 people this month is now the site of one of the deadliest acts of racial violence in recent United States history. The rampage targeted a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, that has suffered generations of segregation, pollution, and neglect. The 18-year-old charged in the shooting […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Incarceration
Lawmakers Have Promised to Reform Criminal Justice, But Bills Are Lingering in Congress
When Dawn Brooks recalls her time in prison, she uses a simple word: “unfathomable.” She remembers the lack of toilet paper and feminine and hygiene products. She remembers the lack of alcohol-based hand sanitizer in the midst of the COVID pandemic. She remembers having to miss meals because of her severe peanut allergy: The prison […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Incarceration
Exonerations of Black Americans Rise to More Than 1,600, Report Finds
More than two-thirds of people exonerated in wrongful conviction investigations last year were Black, including three on death row, according to an annual report from the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE). The cases included the overturned convictions of two men — Sherwood Brown and Eddie Lee Howard Jr. — who were taken off Mississippi’s death […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Policing
Whose Second Amendment Rights? Black Gun Owners Respond to No Charges in Amir Locke’s Killing
After Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office landed convictions of police officers in the deaths of George Floyd and Daunte Wright, advocates hoped his office’s investigation into Amir Locke’s death would lead to similar results. Instead, Ellison and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced this week that Mark Hanneman, the police officer who fatally shot […]
Posted inCourts, Criminal Justice
The U.S. Supreme Court Adds Its First Black Woman to the Bench
Ketanji Brown Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, concluding a contentious confirmation process and weeks of criticism from some Republican lawmakers. The Senate gave the stamp of approval to President Joe Biden’s nominee on Thursday afternoon with a vote of 53-47. Democrats unanimously supported Jackson, while 47 […]