Journalist – Historian – Speaker
At about 9:30 AM yesterday I got a series of texts from my babysitter. She had been tidying toys with my daughter in one of the rooms, and suddenly Nico, my son, was gone. She and Ellie searched the house, looked outside, and gradually panicked. They called the cops. They ran around. They shouted. They …
Today St. Louis police shot a man with a knife. He had been acting erratically, police showed up, he raised the knife and said shoot me now, so they did. Read more about it here. The officers ordered the man to get down, according to Dotson. The man, 23, became more agitated and walked toward …
From Digby, we have another example of what I call the cult of compliance. In Springfield, MO, a panhandler in a Walmart parking lot, Eric David Butts, was confronted by a police officer, Jason Schuck. Butts turned to run away and Schuck drew his weapon and shot him in the back. Later, he claimed that he …
At the end of May, a black female professor named Ersula Ore at Arizona State University was walking across the street when she was arrested for jaywalking. By report, people cross at that site regularly to avoid construction and it is reasonably suspicious that a black woman was the person singled out by police. She …
Yesterday’s piece in The Atlantic has a quite excellent comment section (in general, Atlantic readers’ comments are polite and smart, if still sometimes easily led to the hostility that happens online everywhere). Here are three followup points (I know this is long, but bear with me). 1. Why/how are these incidents happening now? 2. How …
I co-write a new piece just published by The Atlantic on police violence and disability. My co-author is Lawrence Carter-Long, communications director for the National Council on Disability. I’m really honored to have worked with him and hope that more collaborations with the NCD follow. There’s nothing surprising in this piece for readers of this …
Cecily goes to prison bc you’re supposed to let cops do whatever they want to your body. Frisking, groping, doesn’t matter. #Justice4Cecily — Sarah Leonard (@sarahrlnrd) May 5, 2014 Note: Below is a picture of Cecily McMillan in her bra, showing the bruise on her breast. This is a picture she made public but it’s …
Not a case of beer The blog Police State USA does a fantastic job of tracking and writing up incidents of police brutality, overreach, abuse, and other nefarious conduct. I continue to focus on the cult of compliance. This story is from the summer of 2013: Three female college students went to the grocery story and …
According to a report from NBC New York (also covered in Jezebel, and thanks to my friend K. for the story tip), a woman with Multiple Sclerosis was gang raped in a warehouse in New Jersey. She fell asleep on the bus (she is on a narcotic for pain), woke up in Trenton, left the …
This is my 200th post on the blog. It’s not a happy one. As long-time readers know, my work on the Ethan Saylor case led me to coin the phrase the “cult of compliance.” This phrase allows me to link diverse moments in which authority figures respond to non-compliance with egregious acts of violence and place …