[su_label]Bay Area[/su_label]
BART mobile security app being used for racial profiling
The BART Watch app for iOS and Android, which was released by the Bay Area Rapid Transit last year, was designed to allow riders to alert BART police of suspicious activity directly from their smartphones via text message. It’s been called a valuable tool by BART police, but through a California Public Records Act request the East Bay Express learned that black people are being reported at disproportionate rates for alleged crimes as well as “sleeping, smelling bad and other non-crimes.”
[su_label]National[/su_label]
Massachusetts police dispatcher ignores Spanish language calls
Lawrence, MA police are investigating allegations that a 911 dispatcher chose repeatedly not to assist callers who spoke Spanish. Nearly 75 percent of Lawrence’s 77,000 residents are Latino. While the investigation is ongoing the dispatcher has been placed on leave.
Anniversary of Mike Brown killing marked by unrest in Ferguson
A state of emergency was declared in Ferguson, MO on Monday, Aug. 10, after Ferguson police shot and critically injured a black teenager who they claim had fired on them the previous night. The shooting followed a series of peaceful demonstrations over the weekend to commemorate the death of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson one year ago.
For-profit border detention centers employ detainees at slave wages
Undocumented immigrants detained at the U.S.-Mexican border are being put to work in private Government-contracted detention centers earning as little as $1 a day Los Angeles Times reports. The rate of compensation was determined by Congress in 1950 and has twice been upheld, once in 1979 and again in 1990. “Immigration detention is only profitable if the labor is done by people who are not being paid minimum wage,” said Andrew Free, a Nashville immigration attorney. “You can’t run them unless you have this labor.”
[su_label]Latin America[/su_label]
Los 43 activist and nine others murdered in Acapulco
Miguel Angel Jimenez, a prominent activist who helped organize the search for the missing students of Ayotzinapa, was found dead in a taxi from a gunshot to the head Aug. 8. His murder was one of the 10 that occurred over the weekend of Aug. 8-9 in Guerrero, which has one of the highest murder rates in Mexico.