John Whitehead – Programmed to Kill: The Growing Epidemic of Cops Shooting Dogs

Almost two years after the firestorm that took place in Ferguson, Missouri, when a white police officer shot an unarmed black teenager and militarized police descended in a brutal show of force to quell local protests, not much has really changed for the better. Unarmed Americans are still getting shot by police with alarming regularity. SWAT teams are still bursting through doors, terrorizing families and leaving …

Peter Van Buren – Police are Calculating Your ‘Threat Score’ to Decide How to Treat You

I watched a documentary about North Korea which explained how the government there assigns a score to each citizen, based on how large a threat to the regime s/he is perceived to be. When I lived in Taiwan under a military government years ago, such a number was encoded into every national ID card. Those citizens every interaction with the …