Does the District Need More Police Or More Resources?

By Grassroots DC, on October 13th, 2015

Mayor Bowser has a plan to address D.C.’s rise in crime. It involves more police and greater police powers. Your experience with the police may suggest that this might not be the best way to go. Let the mayor and the city council know how you feel about this issue. Tell your story on videotape at the below locations today and tomorrow!!!

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DC Ferguson Shuts Down Chinatown Demanding Lanier Actually End Jump-Outs

By Grassroots DC, on June 19th, 2015

Cross-Posted from DC Independent Media Center Written by Luke

On the 16th of June, DC Ferguson returned to the streets and shut down Chinatown, demanding not only that Police Chief Lanier keep the de facto promise she just made to end jump-outs, but also an end to gentrifcation and homelessness. The 16th of June was the 39th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising a crucial event in the movement that ultimately ended Apartheid in South Africa.

A few days earlier, DC Police Chief Lanier said that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) would be switching focus from “low-level drug dealers” to major suppliers. According to the Washington Post report, the city’s vice squads are to be finally eliminated. Not once was the word “jump-out” used in any mainstream media story, but it is clear this is in response to growing pressure to end this tactic. When DC Ferguson began organizing against jump-outs, MPD first claimed to have discontinued the tactic during the 1990’s, then claimed only vice squads did anything like this. Now they say they will abolish the vice squads, but will the jump-outs really end or some other or renamed part of MPD continue business as usual?

Jump-outs are essentially when undercover cops swarm onto a block and attempt to intimidate every young Black male into submitting to an illegal search. Presumably MPD hopes to catch street corner drug dealers by searching everyone on the corner in this way. Jump-outs are seen in gentrification front-line areas and in Wards 7 and 8, which are African-American majority neighborhoods. Police deny they do this, yet everyone on some blocks I know well knows exactly what a jump-out is.

Since Lanier’s statement, FAUX (known by most as Fox) News has been running nonstop crime stories, along with interviews with masked cops complaining about the shift of focus. Faux is yakking every day about overdoses of a bad batch of “synthetic pot”-just after real pot has been legalized. Most likely FAUX has another agenda behind supporting jump-outs, a pro-gentrification one. This is in itself evidence that as protesters charge, jump-outs are about social control and racism, not about drugs at all.

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DC Ferguson Movement Protest Against Racist, Militarized Policing

By Grassroots DC, on June 15th, 2015

Posted on Behalf of DCFerguson

On June 16th 1976 twenty-thousand Black students took to the streets of South Africa to protest the imposition of the racist language Afrikaans in their schools. The event is remembered as the Soweto Student Uprising. Their protests were met with bullets by the Apartheid government killing hundreds of youth. Oppression, however, breeds resistance. The murders of those students jump-started the movement against Apartheid as thousands upon thousands of Black (and white) South Africans actively joined the struggle, swelling the ranks of the Liberation Movement.

Here in the United States we are in the midst of our own Youth uprising, from Ferguson to Baltimore Black youth have led the way and kicked off a powerful movement against racism, police murders and poverty.

On June 16th DCFerguson seeks to honor those who lost their lives in Soweto township in 1976, who gave everything to be liberated. Our uprising must turn into a liberation movement that uproots racist oppression. We will march to commemorate the lives of the lost martyrs in both struggles and in the memory that through struggle comes sacrifice but also victory. Join us on Tuesday June 16 as we continue to demand an end to racist militarized policing in D.C. and the entire United States!

This morning, Mayor Bowser and Chief Lanier announced that they will be “shifting” the strategies of the Metropolitan Police Department. They are backpedaling because of the pressure DCFerguson and their supporters have been able to bring together.

Her announcement is designed to create the appearance of being responsive to those who have called for changes to policing, without any substantive engagement. The Chief, clearly feeling the pressure from our exposure of the jump-out policy, is attempting to make it appear that jump-outs are ending by closing down the “vice units” that were often most responsible. However, there has been no indication that jump-outs themselves will be completely halted. Further, we have no actual way of knowing or measuring progress on this or other fronts while the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) continues their attempt to sidestep any comprehensive data collection.

The takeaway? That what we are doing is working. Clearly, the administration is looking for a way out. A way of calming down the community and hoping we will relax and stop paying close attention to the actions of police. We will not relax, and we will pay attention. Tomorrow, more than ever, we need to demonstrate to show that this movement isn’t going away until we have changed the racist, militarized policing strategies of the MPD, changed them permanently, and in a way that can be monitored and enforced. Period.

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