The Subversion of New York City’s Official Policy to Curb Police Brutality

In early November 1966, my sister and I―armed with a bucket of home-made paste, a wide brush, and a thick roll of “Vote No” posters―headed off from my student apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to plaster the surrounding area with the signs.  The Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (PBA), a very powerful police union, had placed a referendum on the New York City ballot to remove civilians from the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

We were a very small part of  a read more

Defunding US Police is an Excellent and Workable Idea: Who needs cops for school discipline, domestic disputes, traffic control and serving warrants?

By Dave Lindorff

The new call to “defund the police departments” is a brilliant idea whose time has come.

As an activist eloquently put the case in a hearing before the Minneapolis City Council, “The police are a 19th-century creation that is inappropriate for a 21st-century society.”

Absolutely correct. As we have written on this site earlier, police forces in the US were actually created for chasing down, capturing and returning escaping slaves. Their role read more