Monday, June 22, 2020

Black Lives Matter: Will it lead to reform of Police Forces in the USA?

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Kanika Bajaj

Article Title

Black Lives Matter: Will it lead to reform of Police Forces in the USA?

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

June 22, 2020

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Police in riot gear

Police in riot gear | Source: AJ Alfieri-Crispin via Wikimedia

The spontaneous eruption of the “Black Lives Matter” protest after the unfortunate death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has once again put the spotlight on the operational methodology of the police department at different cities around the USA. There is a chorus across the country, more so in the Democratic Party strongholds to do fundamental reorganization of the police force by focussing on community policing. Some of the extreme and radical activists have gone so far to demand “defund the police” and re-distribute its budget to marginalized communities, municipal corporations and necessity institutions.

“There is no magic switch to turn off and boom there’s no police department,” said Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College. She released a book named ‘The End of Policing’. The book has become a manifesto for protests and police-reform advocates. The defund development calls for diminishing networks' dependence on police for various administrative problems like, observing the homeless, settling household quarrels, restraining understudies, reacting to upheavals by individuals with mental illness, paring down violence in neighbourhoods, and proportional reaction to minor inconveniences like somebody attempting to pass a fake $20, the allegation that set off the police call that resulted in Floyd's demise. The funds saved by reducing the workload of police could be utilised by social and community workers to resolve street feuds. “When we talk about de-funding the police, what we're saying is invest in the resources that our communities need,” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC News.

There are cities which have approached this reform in a positive manner. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided to shift the money from NYPD budget to youth recreational programs. A whopping $150 million is being pulled out of the LAPD by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. This money is proposed to be invested in healthcare systems and build peace centres. Similarly Portland and Oregon have consented to pull police from state funded schools. A few Minneapolis organizations, including the government funded school region, the University of Minnesota and the Park and Recreation Board, have moved to diminish or end their agreements with city police.

Dallas has earlier experienced the positive results of diverting emergency mental health calls, not only on hospitals but also police to non-police establishment when in 2018 RIGHT Care  was provided $3 million funding to look after these issues. Since the program started, ambulances and emergency vehicle calls for individuals encountering emotional wellness inconveniences have declined in the south-local region of Dallas where the program works, which has opened up officials to manage different calls, authorities said. This transition was also done after the outcry over the shooting of a schizophrenic man holding a screwdriver in 2014 and subsequent defence of police personnel by the police boss David Brown.

Law enforcement officials and conservative activists believe that de-funding police would lead to an upsurge in criminal activities. President Donald Trump has started making this as a key plank of his re-election campaign while the Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump, also came out against de-funding police.

It is therefore too early to predict whether the current phase of “Black Lives Movement” after the death of George Floyd will be successful in bringing some substantial reform in the working of police forces across the cities of the US or the momentum will be lost with some incremental tweaking here and there.  

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February 4, 2021 4:49 PM

The case of Huawei: How that impacts Canada-China relations

In December 2018, Meng Wanzhou, the Chief Financial Officer for Huawei, a China-based tech company which is dominating the telecom supplies, was arrested in Vancouver, Canada on her flight stop to Mexico. This was done on a request from the USA with whom Canada has an extradition treaty. She was sought by the USA for allegedly dealing with Iran using an American banking system in spite of the sanctions placed on Iran by the country, in 2013. In May, Wanzhou lost the legal challenge to the extradition process, meaning that they will go ahead with the extradition proceedings.

Within days of Wanzhou’s arrest, two Canadian citizens in China were arrested on alleged accounts of spying. This is seen as a retaliation for the Wangzhou arrest by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who says that there is a direct link between Wanzhou’s arrest and those of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig,  the Canadians who are detained in China. Though China has been tight-lipped about the link between the two, these two incidents are often raised jointly by the Chinese spokesperson. David Mulroney, former ambassador for Canada to China, has said that the officials in Beijing are mirroring the ongoing extradition case to that of the detained Canadians.

Although Mr. Trudeau has in the past repeatedly emphasized the need for good relations with China, and has enthusiastically worked on them to the point of agreeing to discuss a Canada-China extradition treaty. But the China-Canada relations already started souring much before the arrest after a trade deal fell through in 2017. Many major carriers in the country, some of which have been outspoken in their support of Huawei, have decided to shun the company and opt for western alternatives instead. One of them, Bell Mobility, even announced that it will use equipment from its Finnish rival, Nokia.

Huawei is considered a symbol for China’s technological prowess, and the arrest is seen by the Chinese Communist Party as an attack on its symbol of technological achievement. The Chinese state-owned newspaper the Global Times calls the act a “political persecution launched by the US, with the intention to contain China’s high-tech development.” The China Daily also criticized the court ruling as unfair and potentially harmful in mending the Canada-China relations.

There has also been a backlash from legal experts and family members of the detained Canadians on the Canadian policy of letting the extradition charges proceed and not going with a prisoner swap. Mr. Mulroney, however, feels that it would legitimize “hostage diplomacy”, which would put at risk all traveling Canadians for arbitrary arrests to gain political leverage. There is a stark difference between the condition of the hostages and that of Meng Wanzhou, for while the two prisoners spend their days in small cells in isolation, interrupted by interrogation and bland meals, Wanzhou lives in her Vancouver mansion, being happy about the fact that she can spend more time reading and oil painting, now.

The Canadian government is also claiming that it has to let the extradition process go on without political interference as to not compromise the independent, legal decision of surrendering the Huawei CFO. Mr. Mulroney has said that “it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. It would compromise the integrity of both our democracy and our justice system,” and that their values need to count for something. Brian Greenspan, a Toronto lawyer with experience on extradition cases, has said that the government has the power to withdraw from the extradition case, and that the lessons from a previous case in which political pressure affected an international case, are being applied wrongly here.

There are many sides to this tension, complicated by previous feuds, economic decisions, the detentions of the Canadians and Wanzhou and the difference between the political and the legal, and the many opinions on whether it should be that way.

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