Welcome to the Weekly Dispatch. This week our reporters have covered the biggest topics, from police accountability to the exponential spread of COVID-19 and the chaos of the government’s distribution of billions of dollars in contracts for coronavirus supplies. Let’s start with a police accountability story that unfolded right in front of the family of a ProPublica editor last Halloween.
(Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica)
Try Holding the NYPD Accountable. It’s Not Easy.
Witnesses saw an unmarked NYPD cruiser hit a Black teenager who was running with a group. The teenager got away. The NYPD then detained a completely different group of Black teenagers in front of dozens of witnesses who told them they had the wrong teens. It happened in ProPublica Deputy Managing Editor Eric Umansky’s neighborhood last Halloween, and his family saw the whole thing. He decided to follow up and learned how the system really works. We won’t stop investigating the country’s biggest police force. Know any useful information? Help us out.
Coronavirus Case Counts Are Going Up. It’s Not Because of More Testing. There Are More Cases.
The virus is spreading dramatically in many states, and the president continues to push his misleading claim that cases are only going up because there’s more testing. We have looked at the numbers. In Florida, Texas, Arizona, California and other states that are becoming new epicenters, the data clearly shows that testing is increasing and positive cases are increasing faster. Only one explanation for that: The virus is spreading. “The tip of the iceberg can’t be growing with the iceberg shrinking,” said Dr. Sten Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. “It violates laws of physics and oceanography.” We took a look at West Virginia, where restaurants in the billionaire governor’s own luxury resort face charges that they are not being safe about reopening. And the virus’s spread in prisons continues unabated, but officials are ready to declare victory. This week we took you inside the biggest maximum-security prison in the United States. Incarcerated men described appalling conditions, including inmates who were obviously sick with the coronavirus but were denied even cursory medical examinations, mostly because they did not register sufficiently high fevers. Men passed out and were told they were dehydrated. Others, who complained of bad coughs, aches, fatigue and stomach pains, were treated with Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol and Tums.
Profiting Off Government Money for Medical Supplies
Inside the Trump Administration’s Decision to Leave the World Health Organization Despite Trump’s declared exit from the WHO, officials continued working toward reforms and to prevent withdrawal. This week, they were told they must justify any cooperation with the WHO on the grounds of national security and public health safety. by Sebastian Rotella, James Bandler and Patricia Callahan
With the Senate preparing to vote on an annual defense policy bill calling for $740.5 billion in military spending for fiscal year 2021, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday delivered a floor speech in support of his new amendment aiming to cut the proposed Pentagon budget by 10%—around $74 billion—and devote those resources to funding healthcare, housing, jobs, and education in impoverished U.S. communities.
"At this pivotal moment in American history, we have to make a fundamental decision," Sanders said on the Senate floor. "Do we want to spend billions more on endless wars in the Middle East, or do we want to provide decent jobs to millions of unemployed Americans here at home? Do we want to spend more money on nuclear weapons or do we want to invest in decent jobs and childcare and healthcare for the American people most in need?"
Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) filed a companion amendment in the House.Sanders' amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—which the Vermont senator filed Thursday alongside Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—would take $74 billion in Pentagon savings and "create a federal grant program to fund healthcare, housing, childcare, and educational opportunities for cities and towns experiencing a poverty rate of 25% or more," according to a summary released by Sanders' office.
"Under this amendment," Sanders said, "distressed cities and towns in every state in the country would be able to use these funds to create jobs by building affordable housing, schools, childcare facilities, community health centers, public hospitals, libraries, sustainable energy projects, and clean drinking water facilities."
"Now at this moment of unprecedented national crises—a growing pandemic, an economic meltdown, the demand to end systemic racism, and police brutality, and an unstable president—it is time for us to truly focus on what we value as a society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities," Sanders continued. "Cutting the military budget by 10 percent and investing that money in human needs is a modest way to begin that process."
Watch Sanders' full speech:
Following Sanders' remarks, the Senate late Thursday easily cleared a procedural hurdle and paved the way for a final vote on the NDAA. Just seven senators voted against the motion: Sens. Sanders, Markey, Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
"Year after year Democrats and Republicans, who disagree on almost everything, come together with minimal debate to support an exploding Pentagon budget which is now higher than the next 11 nations combined, and represents more than half of our discretionary spending," Sanders said on the Senate floor. "Incredibly, after adjusting for inflation, we are now spending more on the military than we did during the height of the Cold War or during the wars in Vietnam and Korea."
If approved, Sanders' amendment "would apply a blunt 14 percent cut to all of the accounts authorized by the bill except for Defense Department and military payroll, and the Defense Health Program," according to The Intercept, which obtained draft text of the amendment ahead of its official introduction Thursday.
"Why do we spend more on the military than the next 11 nations combined?" Sanders asked on Twitter. "I have a better idea: Cut Pentagon spending by 10% and invest it in the fight to end homelessness, hunger, and poverty in the richest country on Earth."
The Trump administration late Thursday night filed a legal brief asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, a move that would strip health insurance from more than 20 million people in the middle of a pandemic and slash taxes for the richest Americans.
The brief (pdf), submitted by the Justice Department in support of a Republican lawsuit, argues that Congress' 2017 repeal of the individual mandate rendered the ACA unconstitutional.
"The entire ACA thus must fall with the individual mandate," writes Solicitor General Noel Francisco.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and lead sponsor of the House Medicare for All Act of 2019, said in response to the Trump administration's latest attack on the ACA that "we need to be guaranteeing healthcare for all, not gutting it from millions."
The brief comes at a time when millions of Americans are newly uninsured due to the coronavirus pandemic, which caused calamitous job losses nationwide and kicked many people off their employer-provided coverage. Government data released Thursday shows that nearly half a million Americans turned to the federal ACA exchanges in April and May after losing their health insurance due to the Covid-19 crisis.
If successful, the effort by Republican state attorneys general and the Trump administration to tear down the ACA would add around 23 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured and end protections for more than 100 million people with pre-existing conditions.
"It wouldn't only end coverage for the 11.4 million people who signed up for insurance for this year, but also halt the expansion of Medicaid that covers more than 12 million people," the Wall Street Journal reports. "Insurers would again be able to deny people health coverage or charge higher premiums to consumers with pre-existing conditions."
Full repeal of the ACA would also deliver massive tax cuts to the richest Americans and big corporations, according to a report released this week by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
"The highest-income 0.1 percent (1 in 1,000) households would receive tax cuts averaging about $198,000 per year," the think tank notes. "Households with annual incomes over $1 million would receive tax cuts averaging about $42,000 per year... Striking down the ACA would thus transfer billions of dollars each year from low- and moderate-income people (who would lose subsidized health coverage) to high-income households and corporations (which would receive large tax cuts)."
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a member of the coalition of Democratic state attorneys general fighting the GOP lawsuit in court, said Thursday that his side "intends to win this."
"In the middle of a pandemic, the Trump administration's fighting to destroy the ACA," Becerra tweeted. "Tonight before SCOTUS they showed how far they're willing to go."
Ahead of the Trump administration's anticipated legal filing, House Democrats on Wednesday introduced legislation that would bolster the ACA but stop well short of progressive calls to expand Medicare to cover the uninsured.
Titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Enhancement Act, the bill aims to make the ACA more affordable by boosting federal premium subsidies.
In a statement Thursday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said "Trump and the Republicans' campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty."
"If President Trump gets his way, 130 million Americans with pre-existing conditions will lose the ACA's lifesaving protections and 23 million Americans will lose their health coverage entirely," said Pelosi. "There is no legal justification and no moral excuse for the Trump administration's disastrous efforts to take away Americans' healthcare.
"This is the exact time when we should be worried about government officials, even members of Congress, taking money out of the hands of others in need."
The Trump administration in April quietly issued a sweeping waiver exempting members of Congress and other federal officials from ethics rules in order to allow them and their families to apply for small business coronavirus relief loans without facing conflict of interest reviews.
The existence of the ethics waiver was reported Friday by the Washington Post and met with alarm by good government advocates who warned the "blanket approval" from the Small Business Administration (SBA) opens the door to abuse of Paycheck Protection Program funds designed to help struggling small businesses stay afloat.
"Let's hope someone else is minding the store," added Amey, "because SBA seems more about speed and less about accounting for taxpayer dollars."Scott Amey, general counsel with the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, told the Post that "this is the exact time when we should be worried about government officials, even members of Congress, taking money out of the hands of others in need."
The Post noted that lawmakers and federal officials who own small businesses and want to apply for loans must typically be approved by the SBA's Standards of Conduct Committee.
"But in a rule the administration issued April 13," the Post reported, "the administration disclosed that the approval requirement had been suspended for all entities seeking funds from the $660 billion [Paycheck Protection Program] 'so that further action by the [ethics committee] is not necessary."
Josh Gotbaum, a guest scholar in the Brookings Institution's Economic Studies Program, told the Post he was "appalled" by the sweeping ethics waiver.
"The idea that the Small Business Administration can, without any review or publicity, secretly let all of its employees arrange loans for their family members or associates is outrageous," said Gotbaum.
The number of lawmakers and federal officials who have benefited from PPP loans is not yet known because Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has resisted calls to release the information. In the face of backlash, Treasury and the SBA last week agreed to disclose the names of borrowers who received loans of $150,000 or more.
Politico reported last week that at least four members of Congress—Reps. Roger Williams (R-Texas), Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), and Debbie Mucarsel Powell (D-Fla.)—have "reaped benefits in some way from the half-trillion-dollar small-business loan program they helped create."
A spokesperson for Lee told the Post the congresswoman was not aware that her husband—the owner of Las Vegas casino company Full House Resorts—was interested in applying for PPP loans when she was pushing for casinos to be made eligible for the relief funds in April.
The SBA ultimately allowed casinos to apply, and Full House Resorts received two loans totalling $5.6 million.
Bank stocks jumped and lobbyists rejoiced Thursday after U.S. regulators voted to gut the so-called Volcker Rule, a set of regulations imposed in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street collapse limiting the ability of financial institutions to engage in high-risk behavior that threatens the systemic health of the economy.
CNBC reported that the shares of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley "were all trading more than 2% higher" after the changes to the Volcker Rule were announced by five regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation."Instead of protecting our financial system in the middle of an unprecedented economic crisis, Trump-appointed regulators are plowing ahead with their dangerous deregulatory agenda," tweeted Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "The big banks couldn't be happier about it."
The changes, set to take effect on Oct. 1, will make it easier for big banks to devote more of their resources to investments in venture capital funds and other vehicles—the kind risky of speculation that sent the entire U.S. financial system into a tailspin in 2008.
Regulators on Thursday also eliminated a requirement that banks set aside a certain amount of financial cushion to protect against trading losses. The rollback could free up tens of billions of dollars for Wall Street banks.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the combined deregulatory moves hand "Wall Street one of its biggest wins of the Trump administration."
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), one of the authors of the original Volcker Rule regulations, warned in a statement Thursday that the changes further destabilize the U.S. financial system at a time when the economy is already reeling from the coronavirus crisis.
"Deregulation of the banks is exactly the wrong way to boost our economy in this moment," said Merkley. "The last thing we need is to follow a public health crisis that has cratered our economy with another Wall Street-driven financial meltdown."
"It was only a decade ago when millions of Americans paid the price for Wall Street gambling in lost jobs, homes, and life savings," Merkley continued. "Reopening the Wall Street casino is the wrong path forward, one that puts all Americans' financial stability at greater risk."
Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at consumer group Public Citizen, echoed Merkley's warning in a statement Thursday.
"This is no longer the Volcker Rule," said Naylor. "In the hands of revolving door regulators, it turns banks into Trump casinos. Will the inevitable Trump casino bankruptcy be far away?"
The United States government expanded their indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to criminalize the assistance WikiLeaks provided to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when staff helped him leave Hong Kong.
Sarah Harrison, who was a section editor for WikiLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former spokesperson, and Jacob Appelbaum, a digital activist who represented WikiLeaks at conferences, are targeted as “co-conspirators” in the indictment [PDF], though neither have been charged with offenses.
No charges were added, however, it significantly expands the conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge and accuses Assange of conspiring with “hackers” affiliated with “Anonymous,” “LulzSec,” “AntiSec,” and “Gnosis.”
The computer crime charge is not limited to March 2010 anymore. It covers conduct that allegedly occurred between 2009 and 2015.
Prosecutors rely heavily on statements and chat logs from Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson and Hector Xavier Monsegur (“Sabu”), who were both FBI informants, in order to expand the scope of the prosecution.
In March, Judge Anthony Trenga dismissed the grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, that was investigating WikiLeaks. U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who refused to testify before the grand jury, was released from jail after spending about a year in confinement for “civil contempt.” She was still ordered to pay $256,000 in fines.
Activist Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his involvement in the hack against the intelligence consulting firm Stratfor, refused to testify as well. Trenga ordered his release, and he was transferred back into the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.
Prosecutors accuse Assange and other WikiLeaks staffers of engaging in “efforts to recruit system administrators” to leak information to their media organization. WikiLeaks Openly Displayed ‘Attempts To Assist Snowden In Evading Arrest’
“To encourage leakers and hackers to provide stolen materials to WikiLeaks in the future, Assange and others at WikiLeaks openly displayed their attempts to assist Snowden in evading arrest,” the indictment declares.
It notes Harrison (“WLA-4”) traveled with Snowden to Moscow from Hong Kong, leaving out the part where the State Department revoked his passport and trapped him in Russia.
During an interview for “Democracy Now!” in September 2016, Sarah Harrison said WikiLeaks understood Snowden was in a “very complex legal and political situation” and needed “some people to assist with technical and operational security expertise.”
“I went over there, as the person on the ground in Hong Kong, to help him, not only for him, himself, because he had clearly done something so brave and deserved the protection, I felt, but also for the larger objective to try and show that despite [President Barack] Obama’s war on whistleblowers, that actually there was another option.”
Harrison added, “At the time, the Obama administration was intent upon putting alleged source Chelsea Manning into prison for decades — as she is now in prison for 35 years — and we really wanted to try and show the world that there are people that will stand up, there are people that will help. And The Guardian, for example, did not give any additional help to Edward Snowden as a source, as a person there, and we wanted to show there are publishers that will help in these scenarios.”
Prosecutors note WikiLeaks booked Snowden on “flights to India through Beijing” and Iceland as examples of how Assange engaged in an alleged conspiracy.
At the annual Chaos Computer Club conference in Germany on December 31, 2013, Assange, Appelbaum, and Harrison participated in a panel discussion called, “Sysadmins of the World, Unite! A Call to Resistance.” (Assange appeared via video.)
The indictment criminalizes Assange’s speech in support of Snowden and any future whistleblowers and twists his words into a prime example of WikiLeak “encouraging” the “theft of information” from the U.S. government.
Prosecutors even omit particular words to make the message Assange shared seem more nefarious than an endorsement of radical transparency.
From the indictment:
…Assange told the audience that “the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations” showed that “it was possible now for even a single system administrator to…not merely wreck[] or disabl[e] [organizations]…but rather shift[] information from an information apartheid system…into the knowledge commons…
…And we can see that in the cases of the famous leaks that WikiLeaks has done or the recent Edward Snowden revelations, that it’s possible now for even a single system administrator to have a very significant change to the—or rather, apply a very significant constraint, a constructive constraint, to the behavior of these organizations, not merely wrecking or disabling them, not merely going out on strikes to change policy, but rather shifting information from an information apartheid system, which we’re developing, from those with extraordinary power and extraordinary information, into the knowledge commons, where it can be used to—not only as a disciplining force, but it can be used to construct and understand the new world that we’re entering into.
Assange encouraged young people to “join the CIA. Go in there. Go into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out—with the understanding, with the paranoia, that all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation, by an ideology that is spread across the Internet. And every young person is educated on the Internet.”
“There will be no person that has not been exposed to this ideology of transparency and understanding of wanting to keep the Internet, which we were born into, free. This is the last free generation,” Assange added.
The government presents this message as evidence that WikiLeaks solicits government employees to steal classified information. However, what Assange did was appeal to young people to help the public address a crisis of corruption in government by forcing transparency at a time when the government abuses the classified information system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and other illegal actions.
Appelbaum is singled out for saying Harrison “took actions” to protect Snowden, and “if we can succeed in saving Edward Snowden’s life and to keep him free, then the next Edward Snowden will have that to look forward to. And if we look also to what has happened to Chelsea Manning, we see additionally that Snowden has clearly learned.”
This is a fairly innocuous observation numerous people in the news media, including this author, have shared. It means if whistleblowers do not believe they will be punished with decades of prison or forced to flee their home country then we will have more whistleblowers because they will not believe it so dangerous to come forward.
At no point does the Justice Department attempt to connect the alleged “recruitment” of “hackers” or “leakers” to an actual individual, who heard these words and acted upon them.
Of course, the Justice Department refuses to accept the public benefit that came from Snowden’s disclosures. He still faces an indictment for allegedly violating the Espionage Act, which is why he remains in Russia, where he obtained asylum in 2013.
On May 6, 2014, the indictment alleges Harrison “sought to recruit those who had or could obtain authorized access to classified information and hackers to search for and send the classified or otherwise stolen information to WikiLeaks by explaining, ‘from the beginning our mission has been to public classified, or in any other way, censored information that is of political, historical importance.’”
It is one of the clearest indications that the “conspiracy” charge is a not-so-subtle effort to criminalize the journalism of an adversarial media organization that the United States has spent the last decade working to destroy. At no point in this statement does Harrison ask any specific persons to steal information.
If what Harrison did—and by association, Assange supported—is a crime, then there are countless news media organizations which pride themselves on publishing documents they obtain from sensitive sources that must worry they are opening themselves up to prosecution if they boast about their work in a public setting. Conspiracy Charge Depends On Statements From Paid FBI Informants
The section of the indictment on Assange’s alleged role in “conspiring” with “hackers” mentions a “Teenager,” who Assange met in Iceland. This individual is Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson.
As Wired Magazine reported, “When a staff revolt in September 2010 left the organization short-handed, Assange put Thordarson in charge of the WikiLeaks chat room, making Thordarson the first point of contact for new volunteers, journalists, potential sources, and outside groups clamoring to get in with WikiLeaks at the peak of its notoriety.”
Thordarson was fired from WikiLeaks in November 2011 after the media organizations discovered he embezzled about $50,000.
After the FBI asked to talk with him in person following his termination, Thordarson “begged the FBI for money.” Agents initially ignored his requests, but eventually they paid him $5,000 for “the work he missed while meeting with agents” in Alexandria, Virginia, where the grand jury investigation was empaneled.
In 2013, WikiLeaks stated, “Because of requests from people close to him and his young age [Thordarson] was offered the opportunity to repay the stolen funds, which amounted to about $50,000. When it became clear he would not honor the agreement the matter was reported to the Icelandic Police.”
Thordarson apparently embezzled funds from several other organizations in Iceland that were not related to WikiLeaks. The Icelandic authorities process charges of embezzlement.
“It has materialized that the individual has engaged in gross misrepresentations of different types to obtain benefit from a range of parties,” WikiLeaks added. “We will not identify him by name in light of information that he has recently received institutional medical treatment.”
“In light of the relentless ongoing persecution of U.S. authorities against WikiLeaks, it is not surprising that the FBI would try to abuse this troubled young man and involve him in some manner in the attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks staff. It is an indication of the great length these entities are willing to go that they will disrespect the sovereignty of other nations in their endeavor. There is strong indication that the FBI used a combination of coercion and payments to pressure the young man to cooperate,” WikiLeaks contended.
Hammond was the target of an FBI operation. As Dell Cameron previously reported for the Daily Dot, chat logs, surveillance photos, and government documents showed it was Monsegur who introduced Hammond to a hacker named Hyrriya, who “supplied download links to the full credit card database as well as the initial vulnerability access point to Stratfor’s systems.”
According to Hammond, he had not heard of Stratfor until Monsegur brought the firm to his attention. Monsegur transferred the details for at least two stolen credit cards.
In December 2011, Monsegur gave “AntiSec” or the group of hackers targeting Stratfor access to the private intelligence firm’s systems. He pushed Hammond and others to “unknowingly transfer ‘multiple gigabytes of confidential data’ to one of the FBI’s servers. That included roughly 60,000 credit card number and records for Stratfor customers that Hammond was ultimately charged with stealing,” according to Daily Dot.
Anthropologist Gabriella Coleman wrote in her book, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, that AntiSec went to the WikiLeaks internet relay chat server. Monsegur was largely unaware. A deal was made to provide files from Stratfor to WikiLeaks.
When talking to WikiLeaks,” Hammond recounted to me, “they first asked to authenticate the leak by pasting them some samples, which I did, [but] they didn’t ask who I was or even really how I got access to it, but I told them voluntarily that I was working with AntiSec and had hacked Stratfor.” Soon after, he arranged the handoff. When Sabu found out, he insisted on dealing with Assange, personally. After all, he told Hammond, he was already in contact with Assange’s trusted assistant “Q.”
Thordarson was “Q.”
According to Hammond, Monsegur attempted to entrap WikiLeaks by suggesting the organization pay him “cash for the leaks.” But WikiLeaks already had the documents they planned to publish.
The U.S. government had a deadline in June 2019 for submitting an extradition request. It seems improper to add these substantial details to the request, especially since a one-week hearing was already held.
While the conspiracy charge includes sensational claims of collaboration with hackers, it is no less of a political charge than the seventeen Espionage Act offenses Assange faces for publishing information.
The additional sections in the indictment represent an attempt to give the illegitimate prosecution a greater veneer of criminality. Unfortunately, it does not take much to scrape it off and expose the contempt for press freedom that still lies behind this vindictive prosecution.
Two Decades Of Israeli-US Police Cooperation Includes Training In Racial Profiling, Counter Terrorism And Suppressing Protests.
The video of a white police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, an unarmed African American, for nearly nine minutes as he slowly died, gasping for air, has struck a familiar chord with many Palestinians and anti-occupation activists.
Since his death in late May, footage of Floyd pleading: “I can’t breathe” and “they’re going to kill me,” has emerged alongside videos and stills of Israeli security forces taking similar positions over the necks of unarmed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip.
The Israeli police force has tried to distance itself from any perceived similarities, issuing statements denouncing what happened and stating that its officers are not trained to use knee-to-neck techniques.
But photographs taken as recently as March have shown Israeli forces using the same restraint on unarmed protesters just yards from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The damning imagery has revived complaints against US programmes that send American police officers to train under Israeli law enforcement and military officials, as nationwide calls for defunding and abolishing American police departments have taken hold.
Since the early 90s, hundreds of law enforcement officers, including police officers and agents from the FBI, CIA, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), have either been sent to Israel through police exchanges, or attended summits within the US that were sponsored by Israeli lobby organisations.
Police forces from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state and others have participated in the training, including one that took place in Minneapolis, the city where Floyd was killed.
Leading human rights groups have denounced the exchange programmes, warning that Israeli police standards and tactics only serve to exacerbate racial profiling and police brutality in the US.
“With a long record of human rights violations, Israeli security forces are an incredibly problematic training partner,” Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International USA’s researcher for arms control, security and human rights told MEE.
Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesperson, rejected criticisms of the training scheme, telling MEE that the police exchanges in Israel provide American forces with valuable information on how to “prevent and respond” to attacks.
“The learning and sharing has saved many lives both in Israel and overseas throughout the years,” Rosenfeld said.
“The organisations that are calling out, specifically in the US, against law enforcement learning and sharing are weakening the nation’s preparedness to respond to terror attacks, hate crimes and extremists who break the law.” ‘Policy Or Practice?’
Since Floyd’s death, second-degree murder charges have been levied against Derek Chauvin, the officer who had his knee to Floyd’s neck, while the other three are facing charges of aiding and abetting.
Rosenfeld called the incident “sad” and said that “there is no procedure that allows an officer of the Israel police department to carry out an arrest by placing a knee on the neck of a suspect”.
Still, before being fired and charged over the incident, all four officers had been employed by the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), which participated in a 2012 training conference in Minneapolis that was held by the FBI and Chicago’s Israeli consulate.
“Every year we are bringing top-notch professionals from the Israeli police to share some knowledge,” Deputy Consul Shahar Arieli said at the time, as quoted by Mint Press News.
MEE reached out to the MPD several times to inquire as to whether Chauvin was one of the 100 Minnesota police officers that participated in the training. The MPD did not respond to requests for comment, but before he was fired Chauvin was a training officer at the department, having worked there for the past 18 years.
MEE also reached out to the Israeli consulate in Chicago for comment, but failed to receive a response.
For his part, Rosenfeld said that no training exchange with Israel’s police forces would “involve such a measure” like the one Chauvin used against Floyd.
“It doesn’t exist in any [Israeli] police textbook,” he said.
But Fady Khoury, a Harvard Law School civil and political rights attorney with Adalah legal centre for minority rights in Israel, said textbooks and bylaws cannot negate the physical evidence of such tactics being used by Israeli officers on the ground.
“There is plenty of documentation out there of violent arrests that involve kneeling on detainees’ heads and necks,” Khoury said.
“We have seen this not only in the occupied territories when soldiers perform arrests, but inside Israel by police officers as well.”
Days after Floyd was killed, Mohammad al-Qadi, a Palestinian marathon runner from the occupied West Bank, posted several pictures depicting uniformed Israelis arresting Palestinians by using knee-to-throat techniques similar to the one that resulted in Floyd’s death.
“Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it,” al-Qadi said.
Khoury also pointed out that it is difficult for the public to know what is and is not allowed in terms of Israeli police tactics due to a lack of transparency within the law enforcement system.
“Since most of the [Israeli] police bylaws related to these issues are confidential, it is hard to tell if this a matter of policy or practice.”
Like Rosenfeld, Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo on Wednesday said Chauvin’s use of force against Floyd was not part of any MPD training.
Since Floyd’s death, chokeholds and neck restraints have been explicitly banned by the MPD. At least 12 other states have followed suit, rolling out measures to ban chokeholds. ‘Two Already Repressive Forces’
Still, while human rights activists have long denounced US and Israeli police exchanges, those speaking to MEE were quick to point out that the United States has its own history of police brutality and systemic racism.
“It is important to understand that US police have harmed Black people long before Israel existed, and that Israel harms Palestinians without any special training from the US,” an activist whose work focuses on building Black-Palestinian solidarity told MEE.
Even so, these training exchanges with Israeli law enforcement “should be opposed”, she said, “because they help two already repressive forces learn how to enhance state violence against populations fighting racism and colonialism”.
Activists have spoken out against the training exercises since they gained popularity after the attacks on 9/11, with Israel marketing itself as a global leader in counterterrorism.
The exchanges with Israeli law enforcement and military have been paid for by public funds, as well as by an array of pro-Israel groups, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
JINSA alone has sent at least 200 American police officers to Israel for training in the wake of 9/11 and has hosted 10 conferences across the United States, with a combined attendance of over 10,500 law enforcement personnel.
Meanwhile, the New York Police Department (NYPD) even has its own branch in Israel, opened at the Sharon District Police Headquarters in 2012. In fact, the department’s discriminatory Muslim surveillance programme was modelled in part after Israel’s surveillance programme used on Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003 also established a special office in Israel, which has institutionalised the relationship between Israeli and American law enforcement.
“I think we can learn a lot from other countries, particularly Israel, which unfortunately has a long history of preparing for and responding to terrorist attacks,” Senator Susan Collins said about the special office during a congressional hearing at the time.
But campaigns looking to abolish police exchanges have highlighted that Israel has long been criticised by human rights groups across the world for its “extrajudicial killings” and “disproportionate use of force” against Palestinians.
Even the US Department of State has in the past cited Israeli police for carrying out “arbitrary or unlawful killings”.
Khoury, who mainly represents protesters who have encountered police brutality, said it is uncommon for an Israeli officer or soldier “to be held accountable for the use of excessive force against Palestinian civilians”.
“In fact, it is more accurate to say that it is rare for an investigation to be opened,” he said.
“This is true in the context of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and even more so when it comes to Palestinians living in the occupied territories, where excessive force is much more commonly used by both the police and the military.”
Israeli forces killed hundreds of protesters in Gaza between 2018 and 2019 during the Great March of Return demonstrations, while thousands more suffered devastating gunshot wounds. Only one soldier – who shot and killed a plainly unarmed 14-year-old – was convicted of a crime. He was sentenced to one month in jail.
The day the United States moved its embassy to Jerusalem, Israeli forces killed 50 Palestinians protesting along the Gaza border fence and injured at least 2,400 others. No charges were levied as a result of the crackdown.
In addition to the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the field, since 1967 some 222 Palestinian have been killed while already in Israeli custody. Campaigning Against Israeli Training
Because of Israel’s notoriety for its excessive use of force tactics, many human rights groups have launched campaigns trying to end the US-Israeli police training programmes.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a grassroots anti-occupation group, has helped create several localised coalition campaigns working to stop the militarisation of US police forces, which especially focus on ending law enforcement exchanges with Israel.
After years of lobbying by one of those JVP coalitions, in April 2018, the City Council in Durham, North Carolina, voted unanimously to bar its police department from taking part in “military-style training” programmes abroad, becoming the first American city to bar police training in Israel.
That same year, another coalition of social justice groups backed by JVP succeeded in getting California’s Alameda County Board of Supervisors to end its Urban Shield programme, which sponsored exchanges with Israel and other countries.
According to the programme’s website, it was the world’s largest militarised SWAT training and weapons expo.
It had been funded in part by a $5.5m grant from DHS.
Nearly $75,000 was spent from the Urban Shield trust fund in 2010 on travel to Israel. Travellers included at least three top officials from the Alameda County Sheriff’s office.
Police departments in Vermont and Massachusetts also withdrew from a trip to Israel organised through the ADL in 2018, following pressure from one of the JVP coalition groups.
“For the first time in 20 years, the all-expenses-paid trips to Israel where American law enforcement are trained by the Israeli military and police have run into a snag,” JVP said in a statement at the time. ‘Deepening Relationships And Loyalty’
The coalition group in Washington, Occupation Free DC, has also been working to end the DC Police Department’s partnership with Israel, as well as the force’s militarisation.
Scott Brown, an organiser with the group, said the training that takes place with Israel is as much about ideology as they are about tactics and equipment.
“The US and Israel are huge political and military allies, so they have a stake in deepening relationships and loyalty between them,” Brown said.
“So when you’re sending police departments there, that’s what you’re doing, you’re deepening relationships in a way that builds up really strong support for Israel and its actions.”
David Friedman, who was an ADL regional director, echoed that sentiment when talking about the so-called benefits of an ADL-funded trip of American law enforcement executives to Israel in 2015.
“[They] come back and they are Zionists,” Friedman said. “They understand Israel and its security needs in ways a lot of audiences don’t.”
That year’s ADL trip included executives from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US Marshals Service, the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and officers from the police departments of Chicago, Las Vegas, Austin, Seattle, Oakland and Miami-Dade.
In DC, Police Chief Peter Newsham and at least two other local commanders have taken part in the training exchanges, and organisers at Occupation Free DC suspect others from the department have gone as well.
“We don’t know because of lack of transparency around these things whether another trip is being planned for the near future, but we definitely know that high profile officers have gone in the past,” Brown said.
In 2017, DC councilman David Grosso sent a letter to Chief Newsham, denouncing a trip planned for the department.
“While I strongly believe in cross-cultural exchanges and the importance of training for our law enforcement officers, learning from military advisors is not what local law enforcement needs,” Grosso wrote in his letter. “Indeed numerous watchdog organisations, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have documented human rights violations by Israeli police and security forces.
“I am concerned that we are not doing enough to prevent the militarisation of law enforcement in the District of Columbia,” he continued.
Allegations that American police training in Israel encourages police militarisation is among the many criticisms regularly levied against these exchange programmes.
The Pentagon has given American police departments more than $7.2bn worth of surplus military equipment over the past couple of decades, which amounts to about two years worth of the annual US foreign military aid Israel receives.
Meanwhile, Israeli police and military forces can be hard to tell apart in terms of weaponry and tactics, and its training of US police officers is also often directed by military officials. Protests And Israeli ‘Riot Control’
Arguments against militarisation have heightened amid the massive ongoing nationwide protests that were sparked in the wake of Floyd’s death, with activists pointing to the many similarities in crowd control methods being used by American police forces during government crackdowns across the country.
US authorities – police and national guard – have tear-gassed peaceful gatherings, shot at protesters with rubber bullets (causing several people to lose an eye), mass arrested protesters, detained lawmakers, implemented curfews, and indiscriminately targeted journalists, all of which are tactics commonly used by Israel against Palestinians.
Despite the US and Israel’s copious use of tear gas and pepper spray against protesters, both are considered chemical agents and are banned under international law for use in warfare.
Included in that ban is Israel’s newest crowd control creation, “skunk water”, which Israel first deployed against Palestinian protesters in 2008.
Sprayed via water cannons at protesters, the stench of the foul-smelling liquid stays for days on any surface that it touches, such as asphalt, buildings, clothes and even skin.
“The physical side effects of the skunk [water] may include nausea, skin rash, and vomiting,” the ACLU said in a 2016 report.
Israel’s so-called counterterrorism training sessions have included seminars on the benefits of the noxious-smelling water.
“The problem with this method is that it is indiscriminate, as it targets groups of protesters without distinction. In many cases, homes, individuals and businesses were harmed by its use despite not having taken any part in the protests in which it was used,” Khoury told MEE.
While it has reportedly not yet been used by law enforcement in the US, the St. Louis Police Department began stockpiling skunk water after massive popular protests broke out in Ferguson in 2014 following a fatal police shooting of an unarmed Black teenager. The police department of Bossier City, Louisiana, has also purchased skunk water, according to records obtained by Defense One.
Private American security companies have also started advertising its potential use for “border crossings, correctional facilities, demonstrations and sit-ins”.
Amid reports of police brutality during crackdowns on the recent nationwide protests in the US, Anthony Lorenzo Green, an advisory neighbourhood commissioner of DC’s 7th Ward, pointed the finger squarely at Israel’s training of American police.
Green shared a video posted by an activist who linked the crowd control methods DC police were using to those used by Israeli forces when he had been in the occupied West Bank last year.
“@DCPoliceDept are trained by the [Israeli army]. They don’t want you to know that,” Commissioner Green tweeted.
Amnesty USA’s Wilcken said under the current circumstances, it is unsurprising that those shocked by the police’s use of force are drawing such comparisons.
“Peaceful protesters across the United States find themselves under attack by police forces,” Wilcken said.
“Harsh and violent tactics employed against demonstrators bring to mind security forces from other parts of the world that have employed similar and even harsher methods,” he continued. “Israel is one such country.”
