2021 will be a referendum on the call for police reform

It has been less than a year since George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, spawning a national movement to reimagine the American criminal justice system and end race-based abuses.

Yet with shootings spiking in cities nationwide during the pandemic, there are growing signs that the thirst for change is being blunted by fears of runaway crime.

 

....from December 1996 to January 2011....

As sexual assault cases proliferate, judges must weigh accusers’ requests for anonymity against the tradition of open courts and fairness toward defendants.

By Graham Bowley @ NYTimes.com, May 14

The man said he was 14 years old when he was sexually assaulted by the actor Kevin Spacey in the early 1980s. Last year he filed a lawsuit against Mr. Spacey in which he sought to maintain anonymity, identifying himself in court papers only as “C.D.”

From NYT

House Democrats are pressing forward with a bipartisan proposal to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, after reaching agreement with a key Republican to drop his party’s demand that such an inquiry look into left-wing violence at racial justice protests.

The deal announced on Friday between Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Representative John Katko of New York, the panel’s senior Republican, could break a partisan logjam that has persisted for months around the commission.

A mainstream outlet accepted my pitch on what media refuses to say about US empire – then refused to let me say it. By Mathew Alford.