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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
Facebook removes ‘boogaloo’ accounts for promoting violence. The social media giant said it had shut down hundreds of groups and users’ accounts associated with the right-wing boogaloo movement, which advocates a violent civil war. The action comes a day after The Trace published an investigation with The Informant about how gun companies are using boogaloo messaging to advertise their products. Contributor Ian Karbal identified dozens of companies that had posted references to the boogaloo on social media, including Instagram and Facebook. Instagram does not allow searches for the hashtag #boogaloo, but as of June 24 it autofilled suggestions of related terms. After being asked about this by The Trace, a spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said additional boogaloo-related hashtags had been removed. “We continue to remove content using boogaloo and related terms when accompanied by statements and images depicting armed violence,” the spokesperson said.
NYC is slashing $1 billion from the NYPD. Critics say it’s a budgetary sleight of hand. The approved budget agreement between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council will cut the NYPD’s budget by roughly one-sixth. Some of the savings will come from canceling the planned hiring of nearly 1,200 officers. But the bulk — some $750 million — will come from reducing overtime hours and shifting school resource officers from the police department’s budget to the city education department’s. Critics say the plan elides key demands for police reform. “Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math,” argued U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams pledged to invoke an obscure city rule to try and block the execution of the budget because it did not contain a total NYPD hiring freeze or city commitment to end the use of police in schools.
Chicago activists decry police plan to target ‘drug corners,’ flood streets with officers. David Brown, the city’s top cop, announced on Monday that he would deploy at least 1,200 additional officers over the historically violent July 4 holiday weekend to quell shootings. The cornerstone of his plan is to make arrests at “drug corners” — areas known for narcotics and gun possession. Brown urged the courts to keep people in jail over the weekend. But local advocates have decried the approach as ineffective and harmful to people of color. “If criminalization and incarceration made communities safer, the United States would be the safest country in the world,” the head of a city bail fund told WBEZ. “The communities most impacted by gun violence need resources and investment, not more policing and jailing.”
Madison, Wisconsin, school board votes to cancel police contract. The unanimous vote nixes the district’s $350,000 agreement with the Police Department and pulls officers from the city’s four public high schools. The City Council plans to introduce a resolution next month to finalize the arrangement. School boards in Minneapolis; Denver; Seattle and Edmonds, Washington; and Charlottesville, Virginia, have taken similar actions. Last week, the Chicago Board of Education narrowly voted to keep officers in city schools.
Four-year-old awaiting heart surgery is Kansas City, Missouri’s youngest gun violence victim this year. On early Monday, LeGend M. Taliferro was sleeping when a bullet punched through the apartment where he was staying. He had survived heart surgery when he was 4 months old and was waiting for a second procedure. On a fundraising page for the upcoming Kansas City Heart & Stroke Walk, his mother wrote that her son “is a trooper and lives life to its fullest.” Police haven’t identified any suspects.
The New Hampshire’s legislature sent a red flag bill to the governor. The measure approved along party lines by the state Senate would allow police or family members to petition a court to temporarily remove guns from people deemed a risk to themselves or others. The bill passed the state House earlier this year. The Republican governor hasn’t announced an official position but is expected to veto it. Nineteen states currently have red flag laws.
DATA POINT
Nearly 60 percent of mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 were either domestic-violence related or perpetrated by men with a history of intimate partner violence, according to a new analysis of 749 incidents (defined here as four or more people shot). — Bloomberg Graphics
