The Oakland Police Chief, Leronne Armstrong has been placed on paid administrative leave by Mayor Sheng Thao after he made the news for neglecting to follow through on punishments for an officer who violated policy and law multiple times – including a hit-and-run car accident while driving a city-owned vehicle and discharging his firearm in an elevator. Yesterday, Chief Leronne Armstrong teamed up with Public relations consultant Sam Singer – the same crisis communications manager that worked with terminated police chief Anne Kirkpatrick in her lawsuit against the city – and fired back demanding he be immediately reinstated and taking aim at the federal monitor Robert Warshaw. We speak with James Burch, the Deputy Director of the Anti-Police Terror Project to address the situation, and also to discuss the latest work of APTP, including the opening of a new building called The People’s House. At the end of the conversation, we’re joined by April Green, aunt of Keita O’Neil who was killed by San Francisco police officers in 2017.
Check out APTP’s website: http://aptp.org/
Follow APTP on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APTPaction
Then: For ten years, the Black Organizing Project (BOP) fought to remove police from Oakland schools. Developed from BOP’s Peoples’ Plan for Police Free Schools (2019) and an accumulation of a 9 year organizing campaign launched in 2011, the George Floyd Resolution (GFR) was passed June 24, 2020 making Oakland Unified School District the first district in the country to eliminate an entire school police department.
In 2020 they won that fight and the George Floyd Resolution was passed. But that was just the beginning of the work and the state is still pushing back – desperate to hang on to the status quo. BOP has released the peoples budget – a road map – and how much it will cost to stop criminalizing our children. We are joined this morning by Ebony Johnson, the Black Sanctuary Organizer with the Black Organizing Project. She leads most of the Black Organizing Project’s work surrounding the George Floyd Resolution and the People’s Budget.
Check out the Black Organizing Project’s website: https://blackorganizingproject.org/
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