I've Been Here Before...

The way I think about it, is, say a fireman is told by a supervisor, we need you to put out 15 fires this month. And if you don’t put out 15 fires you’re gonna get penalized for it. So if he doesn’t find 15 fires to put out, is that his fault? It’s not. But the fireman might even go out there and start setting fires, causing fires, just so he’s not penalized or looks bad… And that’s kind of what the police officers are doing.

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Anonymous NYPD officer on the department’s policy of setting arrest and summons quotas. New audio obtained by The Nation reveals that New York City’s police union has cooperated with the NYPD in setting arrest quotas for the department’s officers, a practice that plays a direct role in increasing the number of stop-and-frisk encounters. 

Read the full story here.

(via thenationmagazine)

i can’t shake the feeling that this feels like news from fifteen years ago. or maybe thirty. or maybe that it’s not news at all to some of us. but good, talk about it. talk about it. i see more and more talking about it since dorner lost his shit. so, good. maybe some people are waking up.

(via nezua)

this has been going on for decades in law enforcement. its even common in immigration enforcement where Border Patrol uses perks like vacations, gift cards, and cash bonuses to incentivize agents to round up innocent immigrants.

maybe someone else can answer this but why do law enforcement quotas exist? what difference would it make if your jail wasnt filled with innocent black people

(via dickchunks)

Private prisons.

(via mohandasgandhi)

and private prisons = free/almost free labor.  We don’t need to go to china or el salvador to exploit someone in a sweatshop.  Now we can do that here in the USA legally.

(via writeswrongs)

“Now we can do that here in the USA legally.”….Again, and the same one’s who were doing the free labor before are the one’s doing it this time around. The US just found a new way to enforce slavery.

(via actofrebellion82)

This is why it’s called the new Jim Crow. Even with quotas it doesn’t explain why the people being used to fill them are largely Black indigenous and Latino if it weren’t for a system of white supremacy and capitalism that benefits off the labor of people deemed expendable or less. If it was even just about stocking private prisons white people could easily be used to fill quotas needed by police. Pull over any random group of suburban teens, stop and frisk all kinds of white working men, stop white drivers and search their vehicles. They will fill their quotas tenfold because whites use drugs, sell drugs and own illegal weapons more than people of color and also have greater population numbers. Just money never explains it because you could make billions locking away and doing the same to white people in this country but then the whole whites as superior and worthy and hard working and non deviant would fall apart completely.

(via strugglingtobeheard)