Today's dirt article about two incidents between Bennett College students and Greensboro police references the complaints that students filed with the city after the incidents in Sebastian Village apartments. In the first incident, students describe how they were treated when police knocked on their door looking for an armed robbery suspect and in the second, Bennett students celebrating graduation give their version of a night that led to four arrests after noise complaint calls.
Read the complaint and other relevant documents from the first incident here.
For some reason I am having technical difficulties uploading the complaints from the second incident but I will update this post as soon as possible. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Showing posts with label document. Show all posts
Showing posts with label document. Show all posts
Greensboro to support "alternative ID" for immigrants
Police Chief Ken Miller signaled in a memo yesterday that the department is on board for a proposed "alternative ID" that would allow immigrants to obtain a form of identification that the police department would recognize, thereby reducing the need for an arrest in some cases.
The alternative ID is scheduled for launch in early July and will be formally announced at a community meeting on immigration hosted this Sunday at Saint Mary's Catholic Church. The impetus for the project — which mirrors a system used in Winston-Salem, Durham and numerous other cities around the country — grew out of immigrant community conversations with the police department facilitated by FaithAction International House. The nonprofit agency will be responsible for printing the IDs and working out a few small details, but the city is supportive and ready to move forward with the project.
From the chief's memo:
This initiative, while providing dignity and inclusiveness to immigrant residents in our community, will provide Greensboro Police officers with crucial information to better address and resolve legal and criminal concerns involving immigrants who may not otherwise have a valid form of ID. It can save tremendous time and resources by allowing officers to issue citations instead of having to make custodial arrests, keeping our officers in the field and available to respond to calls for service or doing proactive work.
Read the full document here.
YES! Weekly will have a full news story on the issue, including coverage of Sunday's meeting, in next week's issue. The alternative ID has been in the making since last year and would only be recognized by the Greensboro Police Department (and not, say, the Guilford County Sheriff's office or highway patrol) and is not a substitute for a drivers' license or other government-issued identification. The initiative is also supported by the city manager's office, Assistant City Manager Jim Westmoreland confirmed, adding that city council has been updated on the plan but will not have to vote to approve it.
The alternative ID is scheduled for launch in early July and will be formally announced at a community meeting on immigration hosted this Sunday at Saint Mary's Catholic Church. The impetus for the project — which mirrors a system used in Winston-Salem, Durham and numerous other cities around the country — grew out of immigrant community conversations with the police department facilitated by FaithAction International House. The nonprofit agency will be responsible for printing the IDs and working out a few small details, but the city is supportive and ready to move forward with the project.
From the chief's memo:
Read the full document here.
YES! Weekly will have a full news story on the issue, including coverage of Sunday's meeting, in next week's issue. The alternative ID has been in the making since last year and would only be recognized by the Greensboro Police Department (and not, say, the Guilford County Sheriff's office or highway patrol) and is not a substitute for a drivers' license or other government-issued identification. The initiative is also supported by the city manager's office, Assistant City Manager Jim Westmoreland confirmed, adding that city council has been updated on the plan but will not have to vote to approve it.
Document: Beloved Community Center report on police
My staff column in today's paper about police investigations encourages readers to check out an extensive report by the Beloved Community Center for themselves. The report covers various cases that the center says point to a pattern of "corruption and double standards" within the Greensboro Police Department, impacting treatment of officers of color and communities of color.
You can download the document here.
You can download the document here.
Documents on police surveillance, Abuzuaiter now public
YES! Weekly is making numerous documents connected to today's article on Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter's correspondence with police available to the public, as well as a few key e-mails about police surveillance. We redacted phone numbers out of respect for privacy.
Read the files on Abuzuaiter here, including the e-mails Abuzuaiter claimed she did not send. The councilwoman denied all correspondence with Detective Rob Finch, and also said she never communicated with Capt. John Wolfe about the Beloved Community Center or Latin Kings. Another e-mail between Wolfe and Abuzuaiter was accidentally left off of the file. The two pages that are blank except for e-mail attachments contain images of planned protest maps in Charlotte, referenced in today's article.
In a guest piece in Saturday's News & Record, the police chief, city attorney and city manager claimed a restraining order the city filed against YES! Weekly was aimed at preventing the release of intelligence that could expose an informant to serious danger.
"The city acted appropriately when it learned that criminal intelligence information was inadvertently released to the media," they wrote. "It believed that publishing intelligence information, including informant information, created immediate risk of serious injury or death."
Here are the other files we received that identifies a confidential informant. Due to a technical error, this e-mail was omitted from the file:
Only one person was named (with a full name and e-mail address that we have redacted here) and this is the full extent of the documents involving that individual that we have. In another e-mail, Finch referred to this informant as a "snitch." Is the city's claim referring to this handful of files, or to the more extensive information included in the public-information request on Abuzuaiter? What credible information is the alleged "immediate risk" based on?
Miller also told the News & Record that there wasn't an undercover officer posing as part of Occupy Greensboro. We had technical difficulties with this document too but have included a screen shot below. Click to enlarge and read where Finch wrote (at the bottom) that he was in an Occupy meeting. Miller forwarded the message (at the top) to the Secret Service because President Obama would be in town, and he commented about Finch's role.
We've also included a few other files of interest from the police surveillance article.
Read the files on Abuzuaiter here, including the e-mails Abuzuaiter claimed she did not send. The councilwoman denied all correspondence with Detective Rob Finch, and also said she never communicated with Capt. John Wolfe about the Beloved Community Center or Latin Kings. Another e-mail between Wolfe and Abuzuaiter was accidentally left off of the file. The two pages that are blank except for e-mail attachments contain images of planned protest maps in Charlotte, referenced in today's article.
In a guest piece in Saturday's News & Record, the police chief, city attorney and city manager claimed a restraining order the city filed against YES! Weekly was aimed at preventing the release of intelligence that could expose an informant to serious danger.
"The city acted appropriately when it learned that criminal intelligence information was inadvertently released to the media," they wrote. "It believed that publishing intelligence information, including informant information, created immediate risk of serious injury or death."
Here are the other files we received that identifies a confidential informant. Due to a technical error, this e-mail was omitted from the file:
Only one person was named (with a full name and e-mail address that we have redacted here) and this is the full extent of the documents involving that individual that we have. In another e-mail, Finch referred to this informant as a "snitch." Is the city's claim referring to this handful of files, or to the more extensive information included in the public-information request on Abuzuaiter? What credible information is the alleged "immediate risk" based on?
Miller also told the News & Record that there wasn't an undercover officer posing as part of Occupy Greensboro. We had technical difficulties with this document too but have included a screen shot below. Click to enlarge and read where Finch wrote (at the bottom) that he was in an Occupy meeting. Miller forwarded the message (at the top) to the Secret Service because President Obama would be in town, and he commented about Finch's role.
We've also included a few other files of interest from the police surveillance article.
DOCUMENT: Read city's complaint to stop YES! Weekly distribution
YES! Weekly just received the complaint the city filed Jan. 29 to try and prevent us from publishing information the city gave us in several public-records requests. You can read it in its entirety here. Not only did they want to stop us from distributing it, but they wanted us to pay their attorney fees for filing the temporary restraining order against us.
The most glaring error in the complaint: Wombo3 LLC, the entity named in the complaint, is not connected to YES! Weekly. Publisher Charles Womack confirmed that Wombo3 LLC is a separate business venture (in a different industry altogether) and that the paper is run under Womack Newspapers Inc.
Some smaller errors: The complaint states that the information was provided to the paper on Dec. 7, when the requests were actually turned over periodically from October 2012 through Jan, 23, 2013. The "HIVE" request has still not been provided to us, and the "Downtown Greensboro" search was for a separate article. One request should read "mkay5507@gmail.com" and not "mk5507@gmail" — an e-mail address of Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter.
The judge denied the city's request but we don't have a copy of his denial yet. The city was most likely shot down because the issue of prior restraint has been thoroughly adjudicated after a 1971 Supreme Court ruling in the case New York Times vs. the United States, commonly known as the "Pentagon Papers" case. Read more about this issue in the Feb. 6 issue of YES! Weekly.
We also now have copies of their explanation for why the hearing was ex parte — meaning without anyone present representing the paper and without notifying us of the hearing — which boiled down to a lack of time (they filed the request Tuesday night and we distribute on Wednesday mornings) and because they asserted we would act to publish the information immediately if we knew they were trying to stop us from doing so.
The most glaring error in the complaint: Wombo3 LLC, the entity named in the complaint, is not connected to YES! Weekly. Publisher Charles Womack confirmed that Wombo3 LLC is a separate business venture (in a different industry altogether) and that the paper is run under Womack Newspapers Inc.
Some smaller errors: The complaint states that the information was provided to the paper on Dec. 7, when the requests were actually turned over periodically from October 2012 through Jan, 23, 2013. The "HIVE" request has still not been provided to us, and the "Downtown Greensboro" search was for a separate article. One request should read "mkay5507@gmail.com" and not "mk5507@gmail" — an e-mail address of Councilwoman Marikay Abuzuaiter.
The judge denied the city's request but we don't have a copy of his denial yet. The city was most likely shot down because the issue of prior restraint has been thoroughly adjudicated after a 1971 Supreme Court ruling in the case New York Times vs. the United States, commonly known as the "Pentagon Papers" case. Read more about this issue in the Feb. 6 issue of YES! Weekly.
We also now have copies of their explanation for why the hearing was ex parte — meaning without anyone present representing the paper and without notifying us of the hearing — which boiled down to a lack of time (they filed the request Tuesday night and we distribute on Wednesday mornings) and because they asserted we would act to publish the information immediately if we knew they were trying to stop us from doing so.
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