Law enforcement agencies across the country have spent the last year lying about being defunded while enjoying a cooked up false narrative—with the complicity of traditional news outlets and pundits—that crime is scary out of control now that the police have not been defunded. Meanwhile law enforcement agencies have been fielding the avalanche of civil lawsuits, civil rights lawsuits, and criminal prosecutions we have come to expect from a historically unaccountable and abusive apparatus. Another issue being faced as a result of law enforcement’s corruptions and abuses of power has fallen to our judicial system. Earlier this month, Melinda Katz, the district attorney for Queens, New York, asked a judge to throw out 60 criminal cases and their convictions. The reason? Some of the “essential witnesses” in the cases included at least one of three former New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives who have been convicted of true dirtbaggery themselves. Read more