True Left

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is failing to address the rising scourge of white supremacist violence despite stark warnings that such attacks pose the greatest domestic terrorism threat in the US, a leading authority on law enforcement has told the Guardian.

Michael German, a former FBI special agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups in the 1990s, said the bureau continues to underplay the scope of the threat.
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Numerous recent studies have pinpointed white supremacy as the greatest domestic terrorism threat in America today. The FBI itself has sounded the alarm, with its former director Christopher Wray telling Congress in 2020 that “racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” were the main source of ideological killings, superseding jihadists.

In an interview with the Guardian, German said that US law enforcement in general, and the FBI in particular, were lagging behind. Despite a clear mandate from Congress, the bureau has yet to produce statistics revealing the scale of white supremacist crimes.

“White supremacists kill far more Americans than anybody else the FBI designates as domestic terrorists, yet the bureau still doesn’t document the crimes and fatalities that occur.”

He added: “I think that’s a reflection of lack of concern for the victims of that violence.”
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In German’s opinion, both these designations – “hate crime” and “racially motivated violent extremism” – are problematic in terms of how they are routinely applied to white supremacist incidents. Most acts that are deemed to be hate crimes are deferred by the DoJ to state and local police for investigation, though 85% of those agencies do not recognize hate crimes as a phenomenon.

“Police in these jurisdictions don’t record or may not even investigate hate crimes, so the incident gets lost,” German said.
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“Racially motivated violent extremism” is also less than helpful as a designation, German said. Though it is classed as terrorism, it is a catchall in which white supremacy groups are lumped together with Black nationalists and those classified as “Black identity extremists”.

The end result is that the spotlight that should be tightly focused on the growing threat of white supremacy is diffused.
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German said it was puzzling that an institution like the FBI that had effectively turned itself into a counter-terrorism intelligence agency after 9/11 was, by contrast, so lax in its handling of white supremacy. One factor, he said, was that the FBI displays the prejudices of American society writ large: “we fail to recognize how foundational white supremacism is to our culture,” he said.

FBI agents are also overwhelmingly white and male, and the bureau has been infused with elements of white supremacist ideology stretching back decades. German knows that from personal experience.

“When I was going undercover in the 1990s I was warned about sympathy towards white supremacy among officers – that was raised as a hazard for my undercover operation.”

In 2006 the FBI drew up an internal intelligence assessment that found that “white supremacist presence among law enforcement personnel is a concern”. It said that organized groups were infiltrating law enforcement agencies, while individuals sympathetic to “white supremacist causes” were also joining the ranks.

That was 16 years ago. To this day there has been no national effort to root out the infection.
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What does that do to people of color who are the targets of all the hatred? “It creates a recognition for these communities that they have to solve their own problems. They know that law enforcement, the FBI included, treat them harshly when they are suspects and ignore them when they are victims.”

the Associated Press reported late Wednesday that police waited outside the school for at least 40 minutes while parents and onlookers urged them to do something.

“Let’s just rush in because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to,” Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed in the attack, told the AP. “More could have been done.”
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A nearly seven-minute video posted to social media seems to support the AP’s story, showing police restraining parents outside the school, including holding one person on the ground.
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In an interview Wednesday evening with San Antonio outlet KENS 5, a fourth grader who said he had been hiding in a classroom indicated that police officers’ actions may have caused another child who was hiding from the shooter to get shot.

“When the cops came, the cop said, ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard, and he came in and shot her,” said the boy.

Experts on police training told Insider that if officers in Uvalde, Texas, delayed storming Robb Elementary School after a gunman entered the building, they would not have been following standard protocol. Onlookers at the school told the Associated Press and other news outlets that police didn't enter the building for up to 45 minutes while the gunman was inside.

Alex del Carmen, the associate dean of the school of criminal justice at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, told Insider that the "universally accepted standard is that when an active shooter shows up, what will happen is law enforcement will engage the suspect until he is neutralized."
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Ultimately, the gunman fatally shot 19 children and two teachers inside a classroom of the elementary school.

Police haven't explained why it took 40 minutes to breach the classroom.

"If you have someone armed and shooting at victims, there is no 'let's pause and get backup,'" del Carmen told Insider.

Stayed outside because the unarmed VICTIMS were "brown" in nature.

Brown kids....that simple! No president 😢over people of color!! Why are u surprised? They handcuffed and tased Parents....ok let's say it was a White school....

They waited a hour because the were not white children.

Come on y’all we know why. We all know why as soon as it was discovered the kids and teachers were all Hispanics.

If this school was full of white kids with well to do parents those cops run in there asap. No waiting.

They don’t care because the children were not white children.

If that was a majority Caucasian school, the whole police department would’ve been there in 5 minutes.

Police didn’t do **** because they’re not white children.

Law enforcement did NOTHING because the children were not WHITE they were Hispanic. If it was a school of White children they would of responded immediately.

They weren’t white kids… that’s why

Outrage is building across Brazil as a result of the latest bout of apparent police brutality after a mentally ill Black man died inside the trunk of a police car. Protests have grown violent after people blocked roads and started fires.

Video of the incident shows Genivaldo de Jesus Santos pushed to the ground and handcuffed and then lifted and stuffed inside the hatchback of a clearly marked Brazil Federal Highway Police car where he died after a tear gas canister was thrown inside. “The images are just shocking,” Samira Bueno, executive director of the nongovernmental Brazilian Forum on Public Safety told the Washington Post. “He’s a mentally disturbed person, and it’s the story of you using the vehicle as a gas chamber to immobilize a person.”

The man, 38, can be seen struggling with his legs kicking and then growing limp as thick white clouds pour out of the car. The man’s wife, Maria Fabiana dos Santos told local media that her husband was murdered. “I don’t even call it fatality,” she said. “That was really a crime. They acted with cruelty to kill him.”
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Police brutality under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has spiked in recent years, with 21 people killed during a police operation on Tuesday after officers opened fire on civilians as part of a targeted drug raid.

Activists say that most of those targeted by police are Black. “There is no way out for Brazil that is not built on guaranteeing the life of the Black population,” Douglas Belchior of the Brazilian Black Movement Delegation said, according to the Post.

Brazil’s Forum of Public Security says that 80 percent of the 6,416 people killed by police in 2020 were Black. “These two pieces of vermin know they are being filmed and yet they still applied a death sentence,” Douglas Belchior of the Coalition for Black Rights tweeted. “There is no more decency or embarrassment. They tortured and executed the guy.”

A former police constable who posted racist WhatsApp memes mocking the death of George Floyd has been jailed.

James Watts, 31, shared the material in a group chat, which included former colleagues at a Warwickshire prison.

Watts admitted 10 counts of sending a grossly offensive or menacing message by a public communication network and was jailed for 20 weeks.

He was serving with West Mercia Police in 2020 when the offences were committed.