Dear Friends, We are happy to announce the release of our latest report Automating Banishment: The Surveillance and Policing of Looted Land. 15 months in the making, Automating Banishment is truly a community-based report envisioned, researched, drafted, and edited by over two dozen individuals and several organizations coming together to study the relationship of “data-driven policing” to real estate development and settler colonialism. The Report comes from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s Land and Policing Working Group. But it belongs to the community. We are deeply grateful for everyone’s contribution.
Automating Banishment is based on analysis of hundreds of LAPD documents including police mission sheets, patrol maps, crime analysis reports, alerts, emails, and much more. While more and more people are beginning to understand the role of data in policing, less attention is paid to data-driven policing’s relationship to land. The report takes a deep dive and looks at the relationship between real-estate development, displacement, gentrification, policing, and surveillance, and how these relationships conspire to harm Black, Indigenous, migrant, and poor communities.
As the report maps out, data-mining supercharges the ability of police to stalk, target, and harm people – “Sometimes the purpose is banishment: removing us from our homes and communities in order to take land. Sometimes it’s containment: restricting us from areas that police want to secure for development. Sometimes it’s blight: targeting areas for neglect in order to maintain racial and class hierarchies. Sometimes it’s extraction: exploiting our wealth, labor, or resources. And sometimes it’s elimination: killing or incarcerating our people. Whatever the purpose, what links these practices is the process of conquest.”
The report is a Call to Action!! Join the fight in abolishing the white superamicist, violent structures of power, and systems of knowledge. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback. Best.. hamid
p.s. here are couple of articles from yesterday and today from The Guardian on the report:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/07/revealed-nipsey-hussle-lapd-the-marathon-clothing
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/07/lapd-predictive-policing-surveillance-reform
