Are we protecting communities or redefining rights as optional? Join reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis for this special Police Accountability Report and conversation with three voices who have spent years documenting government power up close: James Freeman, Ismael Rincon, HBO Matt.
Credits:
Written by: Stephen Janis
Produced by: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham, David Hebden
Transcript
A transcript will be provided when ready.
Taya Graham and Stephen Janis speak with Sean-Paul Reyes, better known as Long Island Audit on YouTube, about his choice to risk detention and stand up for his constitutional rights at a Texas checkpoint. We think you can guess which he chose. Reyes explains the difficulties and dangers in cop watching federal law enforcement officers like those with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Credits:
Written by: Stephen Janis
Produced by: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And today, we will achieve this goal by talking to popular cop watcher Long Island audits about his recent battles with federal authorities. He is one of the fiercest defenders of First Amendment rights and a fearless advocate for police accountability. And today he will be breaking down for us his recent encounters with federal officers and border patrol agents. Shocking video that shows just how tenuous our rights are and why it is vitally important that auditors like Sean are on the streets defending them. But before we get started, I don’t have a sponsor.
We don’t run any ads on our channel. All that we ask is that you like the video, share it and
Elite consensus over the past year is that “defund” and “abolish” language from immigrant and Black Lives Matter activists of the late 2010s and early 2020s was a primary contributor to Harris’ 2024 loss to Trump. Despite this conventional wisdom lacking things like evidence, good-faith analysis, or empirical basis, it has quickly been cemented into the conventional wisdom of the Beltway and the media. The narrative, somewhat awkwardly, requires acting as if we jumped directly from 2017 to 2023, and requires ignoring that at the height of “abolish ICE,” Democrats over-performed in the 2018 primaries. And, at the height of “defund the police” rhetoric, Biden used the wave of George Floyd activism to help him capture the White House in 2020. But the story—and make no mistake, it’s simply a story—fit neatly into a left-punching, elite-serving narrative: Harris was bogged down not by a clearly sunsetting Biden clinging to power, not by veering to the center and thus depressing progressive energy, not by her continued support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, but some vague brand association that swing voters had with Harris and anti-police and anti-ICE language in the preceding years.
This elite consensus has been, in large part, pushed out by billionaire-backed groups like Searchlight Institute, Third Way, Blue Rose’s David Shor and other influential liberal pundits. It is in this context one must examine this latest PR effort by center-left media and their allies in law enforcement to contain the populist anger over DHS abuses and their attempt to frame said abuse as an anomaly, a one-off deviation from a narrative of progress and reform after the mass
In the USA, so many Black parents have seen their children killed by police that, now, growing numbers of those same parents are building a grassroots movement for accountability and justice. On Oct. 14—the birthday of George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis police in 2020—a coalition of parents, allies, and community organizations gathered in Washington, DC, for a rally to remember those who have been killed by the police and to hear from their loved ones who continue to fight in their name. TRNN reports on the ground from the rally in Union Square.
Credits:Studio Production / Post Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Bianca Austin:
Every year when we celebrate George Floyd, we celebrate him because we in a movement. We going to keep this shit moving, y’all. Say his name! Say his name!
Rapper:
Stand up for your rights that had nothing at all,
beyond the scope, be hope to the people I sworn,
no matter the cost I let it be known…
Rev. Dr. Greta Willis:
But in the hearts of mothers as we in this remembrance, a celebration, a heavenly birthday for George Floyd. If you remember on that particular day, in those nine minutes and those 26 seconds, if I truly recall, that he was calling out for his mother, as he was calling out for his mother because he knew that the comfort was with his mother. As there are mothers that are here, mothers such as myself and the other mothers that’s a part of this particular party, this organization, a place that
President Trump repeatedly promised that his mass deportation efforts would target “the worst of the worst” criminals, yet the government’s own data reveals that immigrants with no criminal record are the largest group in US immigration detention today. How can the Trump administration justify its deployment of federal agents, and even the military, to US cities based on the factually disprovable fictions that American cities are crime-ridden “war zones” overrun with criminal “illegal aliens”? To answer that, one must study the long-established precedent in the USA of overpolicing poor communities of color that are painted as inherently violent, chaotic, and crime-ridden. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with TRNN reporters Stephen Janis and Taya Graham about what the history of policing in America can teach us about Trump’s authoritarian deployment of law enforcement agencies today.
Credits:
Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. The Watts Riots, sometimes referred to as Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in Watts neighborhood and surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11th and 16th from 1965. The rise was motivated by anger at racist and abusive practices of Los Angeles Police, as well as his grievances over unemployment discrimination and residential segregation of property. The backdrop of it was that they arrested our individual that they claimed didn’t pass the drunk driving test. Out of that grew a conversation about police kicking a pregnant woman. At any rate,