Page 23 - Florida Sentinel 9-6-19

National
At Least 10 Injured In Shooting At Alabama High School Football Game
When Companies Like Amazon Sell Paranoia, Black People Find Themselves Targeted
A shooting at a high school football game in Mo- bile, Alabama, on Friday night left 10 people injured, police said.
Gunshots began at ap- proximately 9:25 p.m., ac- cording to the police report, at Ladd-Peebles Stadium where there was a game be- tween Leflore and Williamson high schools.
According to WKRG, gun- fire erupted in the concourse of the stadium near the end of the football game.
The suspect, who was ar- rested and identified as Deangelo Parnell, 17, shot victims whose ages ranged from 15 to 18, Mobile Police Chief Lawrence Battiste told CNN. Mobile Fire-Res- cue confirmed to WKRG that 10 people were transported
Scene from the football shooting.
to local hospitals.
Of the 10 teens who were
injured, five of them are in critical condition, but with no life-threatening injuries, WKRG reports.
“Why are the young peo- ple bringing this type of vio- lence to public events? They’re bringing their beefs
that they have with each other in their neighborhoods and they’re putting other people in harm’s way,” Bat- tiste said during a news con- ference, according to USA Today. “This is unacceptable for people not to be able to come out and enjoy an event.”
In February 2018, Amazon acquired Ring, a smart door- bell company in a $1 billion deal. Amazon followed that acquisition up only three months later by launching a new app called Neighbors through Ring.
Describing itself as the “new neighborhood watch,” Neighbors is designed to allow users to receive real- time crime updates from their neighbors. On the surface, it seems like an innocent proj- ect. However, Neighbors is a strong example of how sur- veillance companies like Ring manufacture paranoia to sell back to you.
Neighborhood watch relies on the idea that you never know what’s going to happen, so you need to remain pre- pared. By flooding phones with crime updates and noth- ing more, apps like Neighbors can create a feeling of unease that often relies less on facts and more on pre-existing dis- trust of people of color.
As reported by Mother- board, videos posted on Neighbors disproportionately show people of color with de- scriptions relying on racist language or assumptions. After reviewing over 100 user-submitted posts in the app, using VICE offices in Brooklyn as the home ad- dress, Motherboard found that the majority of people re- ported as “suspicious” were people of color.
“In many ways, the Neigh- bors/Ring ecosystem is like a
virtual gated community: people can opt themselves in by downloading the Neigh- bors app, and with a Ring camera, users can frame neighbors as a threat,” re- porter Caroline Haskins wrote.
The notions of people of color — particularly Black people — as inherently suspi- cious is nothing unusual. Black people have far too often been viewed as being out of place even while in their own neighborhoods. This has been showcased with viral incidents of white people calling the police on Black people for using community pools, barbecuing in public parks, or simply just existing. Surveillance of Black commu- nities existed long before the digital age with programs like COINTELPro and even bio- metric identification through slave passes. Through anti- Blackness, Black people are outside of the gated commu- nity that Neighbors and Ring create. By virtue of being “out of place,” Black people must be under constant watch, for everyone else’s safety.
Amazon has worked to es- tablish a surveillance network through Ring partnerships with law enforcement. The company has already part- nered with over 400 agencies, according to a blog post pub- lished on Wednesday. CNET recently revealed that Ama- zon uses peer pressure and incentives to convince police to join the Ring network.
2 Ex-NYC Cops Get Probation For Having Sex With A Handcuffed Teenager They Had Just Arrested
Two former New York City cops slipped through a crack in New York law and now will serve just five months’ proba- tion for having sex in the back of a police van with a handcuffed 18-year-old they’d just arrested on a mar- ijuana charge.
Prosecutors fought to have Eddie Martins, 39, and Richard Hall, 34, impris- oned for at least one to three years on the official miscon- duct charges to which they pleaded guilty, the BBC re- ports. But New York state Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun found the credibility of the victimized 18-year-old to be “seriously, seriously questionable,” and handed down the much lighter punishment.
Former New York detectives Richard Hall and Edward Martins.
Martins and Hall were initially charged with rape, but those charges were dropped. The men claimed the sex was consensual, and they exploited a legal loop- hole, saying that it was not il- legal under New York law for cops to have sex with some-
one who was under arrest, as long as the sex was consen- sual.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said that while his office wanted stiffer punishment, at least the two men are no longer police offi- cers.
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