“Why y’all trying to kill me?” Lowery asked several Paterson police officers on his Facebook Live video feed. “If I’m dead in the next hour or two, they did it.”

As Lowery sounded off, police stood back and summoned an ambulance to take the 27-year-old Black man to the hospital. What happened in the ambulance remains a flashpoint in the Black community’s deteriorating relationship with the city’s 400-plus-member police department, an agency so troubled and distrusted that state officials last year took it over.

Lowery arrived unconscious at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center handcuffed to a gurney and died two days later. Officials would later say that officers forcefully restrained and punched Lowery when he kicked and struck them. His sister and activists believe that police acted with excessive force because of his race.

Lowery was among more than 330 Black people who died after police stopped them with tactics that aren’t supposed to be deadly, like physical restraint and use of stun guns, The Associated Press found. Black people of non-Hispanic descent accounted for about a third of the 1,036 deaths that AP catalogued across the nation, despite representing just 12% of the population.

The investigation into a decade of such deaths, led by AP in collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism, comes as studies by criminologists and public-health researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that Black people endure discrimination in all aspects of the criminal justice system, accounting for high rates of unjustified police stops, arrests, uses of force and incarceration.

Lowery’s case also highlights how hard it can be for families to hold officers accountable and to pry loose information about encounters where officers use body blows and other types of force that are easier to obscure than a shooting.

Due to weak public information laws and other restrictions, it can be difficult to find out what happened in such incidents. Officials in New Jersey, like those in some other states, inconsistently release information about deaths related to police action. In Lowery’s case, AP obtained an autopsy report, a prosecutor’s statement, police reports and a 10-page report prepared by an expert hired by the family that offers considerable new detail not yet made public about police actions in the ambulance.

The high-profile fatalities of George Floyd, Freddie Gray and Eric Garner sparked nationwide protests over the use of force and a reckoning over police interactions with people of color. Advocates in Paterson had hoped Lowery’s death would provide a similar catalyst to reform the city’s police force. But five years later they say they remain disappointed.

“It’s kind of inconceivable to think that a person would go to an agency — in this day and time anyway — for help, and end up being dead shortly after,” said Casey Melvin, a community activist who works with an anti-violence program.

Paterson’s racial unrest

New Jersey’s third-largest city, Paterson has a population of nearly 160,000 and sits about 20 miles northwest of Manhattan. Like many other industrial cities, its demographics have shifted since the middle of last century when the vast majority of its residents were white. Today, Black residents account for nearly 24% and Hispanics just over 60% of the population.

As Paterson’s Black population grew, it found itself repeatedly clashing with the city’s white power structure, particularly its police force.

In the mid-1960s, Paterson was the site of civil unrest between police and Black residents. Paterson was also the inspiration for the 1975 Bob Dylan song “Hurricane,” about the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a Black man who was convicted by an all-white jury in 1967 of killing three white people at a city bar. A federal judge later threw out the conviction, writing that it had been “predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason.”

In subsequent decades, tensions between the city’s Black residents and police have flared again and again. A few years ago, the force came under withering criticism for allowing a rogue group of officers to form a “robbery squad” that for three years beat residents and stole their money.

Since the start of 2019, city police have fatally shot four people; two others, including Lowery, have died after being restrained.

Many Black residents learned at an early age to look over their shoulders for police, said Ernest Rucker, a community activist.

“At 8 years old, because of the color of my skin, I would be stopped by law enforcement because I crossed the wrong street,” he said. “That type of treatment especially at that young age would always have you mistrust the police, not like the police — hate the police — to a great degree.”

This was Jameek Lowery’s hometown. One of 17 children, he was raised by his mother and stepfather in a series of crowded houses in Paterson’s Fourth Ward. The family moved a lot during his childhood.

Relatives said Lowery enjoyed school, especially music. His stepfather was a DJ, and as a kid, Lowery loved dancing and singing to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” As he grew, he loved ‘90s R&B and wanted to be a singer like Usher.

Life was not easy for Lowery. He was diagnosed as a child with bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that resulted in extreme mood swings. As long as he took his medication and regularly saw his doctors, he was fine, said Shavontay McFadden, an older sister.

As an adult, he used and sold illicit drugs, leading in 2013 to a drug distribution conviction and three-year probation sentence. During a jail stay in 2016, Lowery banged his head against a cell’s wall and was sent to a medical center for mental health treatment. By late 2018, Lowery was unemployed — and his mother was managing his Social Security disability income.

At that point, Lowery decided he wanted to move with his three children to North Carolina. He explained to friends and family members he wanted to be closer to his mother in Virginia. But he also said he was tired of the Paterson police, of being worried he was going to be arrested or hassled.

He sent relatives strings of texts and left them messages that complained “certain cops were harassing him,” said his sister, Jamilyha Lowery. “He said they were going to hurt him.”

His family had no reason to doubt him. But it was not always easy to separate his real-life concerns from his growing paranoia.

He was increasingly hallucinating and acting paranoid, they said. Lowery believed that people were out to get him. He imagined he had become an FBI informant providing tips about corrupt and violent police officers, Jamilyha Lowery said, although there is no evidence that he called the FBI.

It was in this state of mind that he called 911 for help on a dreary and chilly January Saturday.

‘Help me’

Just after 2:40 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2019, Lowery told a 911 dispatcher that he had taken “ecstasy and was paranoid.” Paramedics took him for observation to St. Joseph’s University Medical Center.

After Lowery was examined and discharged, he jumped on furniture in the hospital lobby, causing a commotion, officials said. Hospital security staff escorted him to a taxi that had brought a friend to take him home. When the cab stopped at a red light in downtown Paterson, Lowery leapt out of an open window and ran toward city police headquarters.

At 3:45 a.m., Lowery opened the front door and walked barefoot into the lobby. He began broadcasting on Facebook Live. When he looked into the camera, he was sweating. Spit had gathered in the corners of his mouth. He sounded desperate, at times breathless.

As he rambled about threats and dangers, he asked police again and again to “help me.”

When the ambulance called by police arrived, Lowery at first said he didn’t want to get into it and return to the hospital, but changed his mind. By the time he got to the hospital, he was fighting for his life. He never regained consciousness.

Lowery’s relatives only learned he was at St. Joseph’s after coming across his archived livestream and calling local hospitals.

“He always said his safe haven is a hospital,” Jamilyha Lowery said.

They raced to his bedside and were aghast at what they found — he was unrecognizable. His face seemed bruised and swollen. Dried blood and fluids crusted his eyes, nose and face. Doctors told them he had gone into cardiac arrest, his sister said, and his brain and organs had gone without oxygen for quite some time.

Lowery died on Jan. 7.

‘Not the result of force’

In the days after his death, the video of his encounter with police went viral. Black residents, in particular, pointed to his eerie foreshadowing of his death, and noted he had been talking and his face looked untouched before he got into the ambulance.

Convinced police must have done something to end Lowery’s life, hundreds of protesters descended on City Hall. Their signs read “Justice for Jameek Lowery,” and they chanted, “We want answers!”

As community pressure built, Mayor Andre Sayegh suggested Lowery had died from the infectious disease meningitis, not police force.

Passaic County Prosecutor Camelia Valdes investigated the death. In August 2019, she reported that police and fire personnel escorted Lowery from police headquarters to a waiting ambulance. Once inside, police restrained Lowery when he became “physically combative.” She didn’t elaborate on what exactly he had done but said the force required “compliance holds” in which officers held down Lowery. Officers also struck him with their fists, she said.

Valdes cited a ruling by the state medical examiner — which was also obtained by AP — that said Lowery’s death had been a cardiac arrest while under the influence of bath salts, a psychoactive stimulant.

“The investigation has concluded that Mr. Lowery’s death was a medical event and not the result of police use of force,” Valdes wrote in a press release. That was similar to how a Minneapolis prosecutor had initially characterized George Floyd’s death in 2020, alleging he had succumbed to underlying health conditions and drug use, not police force.

Valdes, the Paterson Police Department and attorneys for two of three officers involved did not respond to a request for comment. The officers’ attorneys either declined to comment or did not respond to interview requests. In court papers, the attorneys argued the officers had acted appropriately and within the scope of their duties.

Family’s investigation

Activists and family members did not buy the official explanation. Worn down by decades of racist policing in Paterson, they believed police felt they could act with impunity because Lowery was Black.

Shaquana Duncan, the mother of one of Lowery’s children, sued the city and three police officers, alleging police had used excessive force on someone who was “unarmed and posed no danger.”

Her attorneys obtained police reports and other documents not available publicly that they say call into question the county prosecutor’s conclusions. They hired Dr. Michael Baden, a former chief medical examiner for New York City who also conducted the second autopsy on George Floyd, to review the documents and perform a second autopsy on Lowery. Relying on his own autopsy, the state’s autopsy, X-rays, medical records, police reports and interviews of officers by investigators, Baden produced a detailed report that has not before been made public.

Due to New Jersey’s public disclosure laws, AP was not able to obtain documents cited by Baden other than the state autopsy and two police reports filed as exhibits in the federal lawsuit. To reconstruct what happened in the ambulance, AP relied upon those records and the county prosecutor’s statement:

The trouble started when Lowery changed his mind about going back to St. Joseph’s because he told officers, “you guys are gonna kill me there.”

Concerned Lowery might pose a threat to himself or others, two officers restrained him and tried to strap him to the gurney inside the ambulance, according to police reports. As they did, an officer wrote, Lowery kicked an officer in the groin and punched two others in the face.

Officer Mucio Lucero told investigators he punched Lowery two or three times in the rib cage in response to the man’s behavior, according to Baden’s report. Baden added that Officer Kyle Wanamaker said he hit Lowery in the face “more than once.”

Baden wrote that an emergency medical technician told investigators an officer placed Lowery’s sweatshirt over his mouth to stop the man from spitting on them. Officers managed to handcuff Lowery to the gurney by holding down his wrists, arms and legs. Wanamaker and Officer Michael Avila rode in the ambulance with Lowery to St. Joseph’s.

In his report, Baden wrote that his own autopsy revealed Lowery had suffered “traumatic blunt force” injuries to his face, jaw, arm and chest and found evidence of “compressive choking.” Further, while the county prosecutor had said publicly that Lowery had no broken bones, Baden wrote that X-rays taken before the state autopsy revealed “multiple fresh traumatic fractures” of fingers on Lowery’s left hand.

Baden also noted that hospital records showed Lowery was bleeding from his nose and mouth upon arrival, and his face was bruised. Baden added that a hospital chart stated there was “a question of possible assault.”

Baden wrote that lab tests showed only recreational levels of bath salts in Lowery’s blood, enough to cause bizarre behavior but not to stop his heart. Baden concluded that Lowery died from cardiac arrest and kidney failure from being restrained and beaten by police.

The death wasn’t accidental, Baden wrote. It was homicide.

Reform?

Under pressure from the community, Paterson’s mayor announced in 2019 he was launching an outside audit of the police department.

The audit by the Police Executive Research Forum — a respected law enforcement training nonprofit — found the community distrusted the police and called on the Paterson Police Department to update its use-of-force policies and improve oversight of officers.

Researchers identified at least 602 use-of-force incidents from 2018 to 2020. Black people accounted for 57% of the residents whose race was known in those incidents, even though they only represented only about a quarter of Paterson’s population.

The most common types of force involved tactics that were not supposed to be lethal, like holds, blows and pepper spray, according to the audit published in 2022.

There was no indication that supervisors investigated such incidents beyond affixing signatures on use-of-force reports submitted by officers, the audit found. Of the 73 excessive force complaints filed during the three-year period, only one was sustained by the department.

The audit found that the force was fairly diverse but its supervisors were mostly white men. As recently as 2022, state statistics show, about a third of Paterson officers were white, while just 11% were Black. Hispanic officers made up more than half of the force.

The audit “validated through data the need for change, the need for additional training, the need for compassion, the need for the community voice to be heard,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, who has represented Paterson in the state Legislature since 2012.

But some advocates, and even a few city officials, said the audit was not robust enough and they didn’t trust the police to reform.

“No one really believed that the police would hold themselves accountable,” said the Rev. Kenneth Clayton, pastor at St. Luke Baptist Church in Paterson. “It’s the belief that police don’t really police themselves.”

Advocates convinced state officials to take their complaints seriously following the fatal police shooting last year of Najee Seabrooks, 31.

It began when police responded to a call from family members concerned that he was hallucinating after taking drugs. When police arrived, they found the Black man barricaded in a bathroom. He had used a knife to cut himself and warned that he had a gun. Police said they fatally shot Seabrooks when he came out of the bathroom and lunged at them with a knife.

Distrust

Three weeks later, relying on state law, New Jersey’s attorney general took extraordinary action: His office took over the Paterson police force. Attorney General Matthew Platkin told the AP that he ordered the takeover, in part, because communities of color in Paterson have long complained about police discrimination.

“I don’t blame anyone who has lived in Paterson for a long period of time for being distrustful,” Platkin said, adding that reforming the force won’t be quick or easy.

Activists said they recognized the need for change but were skeptical the force could be reformed.

“What happened to Jameek is happening to people all across the country,” said Zellie Thomas, a Paterson native who leads a local Black Lives Matter organization. “It’s not just about this one police officer, or the three police officers that assaulted him inside of the ambulance. It’s about a system that we need to be able to take down.”

The city’s public safety director and police chief have sued Platkin, seeking to overturn the attorney general’s control.

Meanwhile, Jameek Lowery’s family and friends say they are still seeking answers.

On a weekday in mid-January, a dozen members of Lowery’s family and local supporters held a vigil on the ice-and-snow covered grounds of St. Peter’s Cemetery in Garfield, New Jersey, where their friend and brother was interred five years ago.

“Say his name,” an aunt exclaimed as they released nearly two dozen blue balloons.

The mourners replied in unison: “Jameek Lowery.”

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The Korean National Police Agency announced measures for “special policing against serious crimes,” Friday, and urged front-line officers to use firearms and stun guns against culprits at the scenes of stabbing rampages.

The minister’s statement came amid criticism against an order discouraging police officials responding on site from actively arresting suspects of violent crimes for fear of allegations of police brutality.

“The recent series of random violent crimes led some innocent civilians to die and heightened public concerns,” the minister said explaining the order’s background in a released statement.

Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon attends a special cabinet meeting at Seoul Government Complex, Friday. Newsis

“However, some past cases where (police) use of force during arrests resulted in assault charges have troubled police and law enforcement officers to actively use force and interfered with immediate apprehension of suspects,” the minister said.

Han said that according to the law and precedent, “A just use of force against a brutal criminal is a legal self-defense, thus can be subject to conflicts of justifications, which is free from criminal prosecution.”

The minister ordered the prosecution to actively consider granting conflicts of justification to police officials and regular citizens who use force to stop violent crimes. Conflicts of justification refers to a special pardon given to an act of crime by not admitting its illegality.

Police plan to actively apply exemption provisions to officials who use firearms to control and arrest dangerous suspects.

Police announced, Monday, that as of 7 a.m. that morning, 187 internet murder threats had been found online and 59 people in connection to menacing posts are under investigation, with three already detained. Over half of the arrested suspects, or 34 out of 59, were teenagers, police said.

Meanwhile, crime experts call for fundamental solutions to better understand and prevent violent attacks targeting random crowds of strangers.

“We need to study and understand which series of life events made Choi and Cho (suspects arrested for recent deadly rampages at Sillim and Seohyeon stations) who they are today,” Lee Yoon-ho, a professor of Police Administration at Korea Cyber University told The Korea Times, Monday.

Lee said the police and scholars should analyze the nature and cause of random attacks to prevent future rampages by identifying those with potential risk factors and provide social care to those in need so that they won’t express their frustration and anger against random victims.

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Young rioters clashed with police overnight and targeted a mayor’s home with a burning car as France faced a fifth night of unrest sparked by the police killing of a teenager of North African descent, but overall violence appeared to lessen compared with previous nights.

Police had made more than 700 arrests nationwide by early Sunday after a mass security deployment aimed at quelling France’s worst social upheaval in years.

Tens of thousands of police were deployed in cities across the country on Saturday after the funeral of Nahel M.

President Emmanuel Macron postponed a state visit to Germany that was due to begin on Sunday to handle the worst crisis for his leadership since the “yellow vest” protests paralyzed much of France in late 2018.

“A calmer night thanks to the resolute action of the security forces,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin tweeted early on Sunday.

However, the mayor of Paris said rioters in France rammed a car into the home of the mayor of a town south of Paris.

Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun wrote on Twitter that protesters “rammed a car” into his home, before “setting a fire”. “My wife and one of my children were injured,” he said.

Some 45,000 police were on the streets with specialized elite units, armored vehicles and helicopters brought in to reinforce its three largest cities, Paris, Lyon and Marseille.

As of 01:45 am (23:45 GMT, Saturday), although the situation was calmer than the previous four nights, there was still some tension in central Paris and sporadic clashes took place in the Mediterranean cities of Marseille, Nice and the eastern city of Strasbourg.

The biggest flashpoint was in Marseille where police fired tear gas and fought street battles with youths around the city centre late into the night.

In Paris, police increased security at the city’s landmark Champs-Elysees Avenue after a call on social media to gather there. The street, usually packed with tourists, was lined with security forces carrying out spot checks. Shop facades were boarded up to prevent potential damage and pillaging.

Police said 719 people were arrested nationwide on the fifth night of rioting. The interior ministry said 1,311 people had been arrested on Friday night, compared with 875 the previous night, although it described the violence as “lower in intensity”.

Local authorities all over the country announced bans on demonstrations, ordered public transport to stop running in the evening and some imposed overnight curfews.

Rioters have torched 2,000 vehicles since the start of the unrest. More than 200 police officers have been injured, Darmanin said on Saturday, adding that the average age of those arrested was 17.

More than 700 shops, supermarkets, restaurants and bank branches had been “ransacked, looted and sometimes even burned to the ground since Tuesday”, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

Funeral held

Nahel, a 17-year-old son of Algerian and Moroccan parents, was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

For the funeral, several hundred people lined up to enter Nanterre’s grand mosque. Volunteers in yellow vests stood guard while a few dozen bystanders watched from across the street.

The shooting of the teenager, caught on video, has reignited longstanding complaints by poor and racially mixed urban communities of police violence and racism.

Nahel was known to police for previously failing to comply with traffic stop orders and was illegally driving a rental car, the Nanterre prosecutor said on Thursday.

Macron has denied there is systemic racism in French law enforcement agencies.

Fifteen-year-old Dgibril, a French citizen, told Al Jazeera in Paris that he was searched twice on Saturday, apparently because of his skin color.

“I was walking around the Champs-Elysee with friends. As soon as we got here, we got stopped and searched. We stayed, and five minutes later, I got searched again, and it just never stops,” he said.

“They are choosing who to search by the color of their skin. It’s always the same people being stopped.”

Salah, a tourist from Algeria, said his group was searched multiple times too.

“We are tourists, just walking around. We don’t know why they picked us, maybe because we look Arabs,” Salah said. “They only stop Arabs and Blacks, white people – they let them go.”

French riot police officers patrol streets in Paris [Juan Medina/Reuters]

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They include some of the most serious cases of criminality, including that of the serial rapist David Carrick.

An analysis of misconduct trials at 43 forces found the vast majority were either failing to publicize cases, despite a legal obligation to do so or deleting misconduct cases from their websites after 28 days. Misconduct hearings can relate to any reason an officer is fired from the job including cases related to sexual offenses or domestic violence.

The Police (Conduct) Regulations were introduced in 2020 to help forces act with “honesty and integrity”, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, in part by improving the transparency of misconduct hearings.

The law specifically calls on forces to publicize the results of misconduct hearings “as soon as practicable after the officer has been notified of the outcome of the proceedings”.

But analysis of the misconduct cases listed at every police force in England and Wales since December found that the records at 72% of forces were incomplete. Many were missing more than half or all of the misconduct outcomes.

While some forces openly declared on their sites that they removed all cases after 28 days, making use of a loophole in the regulations, in others, it was less clear as to whether they had removed cases or simply failed to upload them in the first place.

On March 16, when the Observer analyzed the records, 23 police forces, including some of the nation’s largest, had listed no outcomes online for 2023. Many forces listed no cases whatsoever.

Evidence from legal websites, regional news stories and other third-party sites show that many of them have conducted misconduct hearings in that period.

The Metropolitan police were one of the worst offenders. This newspaper found records of 31 officers dealing with misconduct hearings that occurred or were publicized during the period of late November to 16 March, roughly a quarter of the number listed nationwide. However, only 17 of those were still listed on the Met’s website on 16 March, when our analysis was carried out. The 14 purged or unreleased misconduct cases included many involving serious criminal misconduct, including that of serial rapist David Carrick.

In January, a hearing at the Met found Carrick, 48, guilty of gross misconduct and fired him from the force after he had pleaded guilty at Southwark crown court to raping at least 12 women over the course of a 17-year reign of terror. He was handed 36 life sentences and must serve a minimum of 30 years in jail.

The Met confirmed to the Observer that it had removed Carrick’s case 28 days after it was uploaded on 19 January.

However, a large number of misconduct hearings that have occurred before and since Carrick’s are currently on the Met’s site, potentially making it seem to those looking at the site that his case did not happen.

“Failing to share the outcome of misconduct hearings, or removing them at best shows a lack of candour and transparency and at worst, wilful obstruction of outside scrutiny,” said Kevin Blowe, campaigns coordinator for the police reform group Netpol.

The news comes after a report last week from Baroness Casey, which labeled the Met institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic. The report specially called on the capital’s main police force to crack down on rogue officers and take a tougher stance in misconduct cases.

A previous Guardian investigation found only 1% of complaints about police officers have led to formal misconduct proceedings.

“When it comes to police misconduct, it’s difficult to believe that the police are sincere about systemic change when they’re constantly trying to find ways to avoid admitting the extent of the problem and evade public scrutiny,” said Holly Bird, a researcher and policy officer at the police reform group Stop Watch.

Last month, an Observer investigation found one in 100 police officers faced a criminal charge last year.

The Met told this newspaper that it had recently changed its policy from publishing cases for 28 days to put them online for three months. “This is because we want to be more transparent around misconduct as we strive to improve standards and rid the Met of those who should not be here,” a Met spokesperson said.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We expect the police to be transparent when officers have fallen below the standards the public expects of them and, where required to do so by the hearing chair, forces must publish details of the outcome of each hearing for a minimum of 28 days.”

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Live television footage on Saturday showed protesters throwing rocks and projectiles at police who used tear gas to disperse the crowd who had gathered earlier at Place de la Republique square, a traditional venue for demonstrations in the city.

Cars were overturned, at least one vehicle was burned, and shop windows were damaged and small fires set alight.

Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said there had been a sudden violent turn in the protest but it was not yet clear why. Speaking on news channel BFM TV, Nunez said a few dozen protestors were responsible for the violence, adding there had been 11 arrests and around 30 minor injuries.

A gunman carried out the killings on Friday as he fired on people at a Kurdish cultural center, a nearby cafe and a hair salon in a busy part of Paris’s 10th district. Three other people were also wounded in the attack, which was aimed at foreigners, according to authorities.

The suspected attacker, 69, was wounded during the incident and is now in custody. Last year, he was charged with attacking migrants and was released on bail earlier this month. Investigators considered a possible racist motive for the shooting.

After an angry crowd clashed with police on Friday afternoon, Kurdish community leaders called for a gathering from midday (11:00 GMT) on Saturday.

Reporting from the protest, Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid said there was frustration among members of the Kurdish community, many of whom believe they were deliberately targeted in Friday’s attack.

“They are still looking for answers from the police: Why did it take so long for them to arrive, why have they not designated this a terrorist attack and why they didn’t provide security to the cultural center, which they had asked for earlier,” he added.

“People here are calling for justice and they want it now,” Bin Javaid said.

The Paris police chief met members of the Kurdish community to try to allay their fears before Saturday’s rally.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the suspect was clearly targeting foreigners, had acted alone and was not officially affiliated with any extreme-right or other radical movements.

The suspect had past convictions for illegal arms possession and armed violence.

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Clashes have erupted between Tunisian police and demonstrators against President Kais Saied as about 100 people protested a referendum slated for July – a year after Saied staged what critics call a coup.

Police blocked protesters as they marched on Saturday towards the headquarters of the electoral board, whose chief Saied replaced last month in a further move to extend his control of state institutions.

At the protest in the Tunisian capital Tunis, organized by five small political parties, some demonstrators held up placards reading, “The president’s commission = fraud commission”.

On July 25, 2021, Saied sacked the government and suspended parliament, which he later dissolved in moves that sparked fears for the only democracy to have emerged from the Arab Spring uprisings.

He laid out plans for a referendum to take place next month on a replacement for a 2014 constitution that had enshrined a mixed parliamentary-presidential system often plagued by deadlock and nepotism.

Saied fired 57 judges on Wednesday, accusing them of corruption and protecting “terrorists” in a purge of the judiciary. The move came just after he appointed three of the seven members of the Independent High Authority for Elections (ISIE) electoral commission, including the president.

In May, he appointed former ISIE member Farouk Bouasker to replace Nabil Baffoun, a critic of his July power grab.

‘Free voices will never be silenced’

Tunisian judges said on Saturday that they plan to suspend work in the courts for a week and hold a sit-in to protest against a purge of their ranks.

In a session attended by hundreds of judges, some of the dismissed judges said the purge came after they rejected interventions from the justice minister and in some cases from people surrounding the president.

Anas Hamaidi, president of the Association of Judges, said the strike will start on Monday in all judicial institutions and could be extended.

“This injustice will not pass in silence …. These free voices will never be silenced,” Hamaidi said. “The attack was not only against judges, but on the law and freedoms.”

Among the judges fired this week was Youssef Bouzaker, the former head of the Supreme Judicial Council whose members Saied replaced this year. The council had acted as the main guarantor of judicial independence since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution that introduced democracy.

Rahed Ghannouhci, the speaker of the dissolved parliament, called in a statement for “national forces, parties, civil society, to stand by the judges in resisting the brutal dictatorship to preserve an independent judiciary”.

‘Raised alarm bells’

Political analyst Amine Snoussi said Tunisians will likely see the “emptiness of Saied’s project” as the current crisis plays out and there is “no one left to blame”.

“That’s the moment that Tunisians will realize that he had no project whatsoever for social and political issues,” Snoussi told Al Jazeera.

Fadil Aliriza, founder and editor-in-chief of Meshkal.org, an independent news website, noted all of Tunisia’s political parties have come together in opposition to Saied’s decisions.

“Many people have raised alarm bells about the president’s moves. They’re concerned about the referendum and parliamentary vote in December not being as free and fair as in the past,” said Aliriza.

Scuffles broke out between police and demonstrators who were protesting a 
referendum planned for July by 
President Kais Saied [Fethi Belaid/AFP]

‘The real problems’

Saied’s opponents have accused him of seeking to remake the political system after consolidating one-man rule and putting in place a compliant electoral body in advance of the July referendum and parliamentary elections in December.

Saied said his moves were needed to save Tunisia from crises and his intervention initially appeared to have widespread public support after years of economic stagnation, political paralysis and corruption.

However, nearly all Tunisia’s political parties have rejected the move to hold a referendum along with the powerful UGTT labour union.

With Tunisia’s economy failing, and with public finances in crisis, Saied faces the prospect of growing popular anger about high inflation and unemployment, and declining public services.

The UGTT said this week that public sector workers would go on strike on June 16, posing the biggest direct challenge to Saied’s political stance so far.

Al Jazeera’s Elizia Volkmann, reporting from Tunis, noted Saied has targeted critics with accusations of “terrorism” and even adultery, which is a criminal offense. She said there will likely be more protests to come.

“The thing is Saied isn’t really solving any of the real problems that Tunisians are facing, which is shortages of grain and an economic crisis that is getting worse with rising prices,” said Volkmann.

“What he seems to be doing is ramping up the populist narrative that it’s all the corrupt politicians’ fault. He’s raising that agenda again, appearing to do something by pushing for more prosecutions and longer jail sentences for what he says are corrupt people who caused all the problems.”

The post Skirmishes as police block Tunisia protests against July referendum appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

Other videos painted more horrific scenes. The man was earlier seen outdoors slashing a woman with a chopper, leaving her bleeding profusely. People desperately hurled chairs, dustbins and standees at him, hoping to fend him off.

The Singapore Police Force currently uses the Taser X26P, produced by Axon 
Enterprise. (Photo: Axon)

The Taser X26P with its laser, probes and copper wires is visible during 
discharge. (Photo: Axon)

SPF officers training with the mobile taser training target. 
(Photo: Home Team Academy)

The post What influences the Taser’s effectiveness? Police explain after recent high-profile incidents appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

On Wednesday night (8 December) the Cotswolds had over 65 sheds broken into and numerous items stolen in the Cirencester area.

The post Police in the Cotswolds launch scheme to prevent and tackle burglaries appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

Starting next week, public safety agencies interested in accessing Ring videos will have to reach out via a publicly viewable post on the company’s community app called Neighbors, according to a blog post.

They were previously able to make such requests privately.

“Posts will be publicly viewable in the Neighbors feed, and logged on the agency’s public profile,” Ring said in its blog.

“This way, anyone interested in knowing more about how their police agency is using request for assistance posts can simply visit the agency’s profile and see the post history.”

Ring’s internet-linked video doorbells and security cameras let users see and record activity in or around their homes using the devices. It is up to owners whether they want to share imagery with neighbors or police.

Privacy advocates have expressed concerns about the surveillance power that unbridled access to Ring cameras could give police departments, along with concerns over potential abuses such as the profiling of people based on factors such as race.

“Whether you’re a Neighbors user, Ring device owner, or both—you always have total control over your experience,” Ring said.

Responding to police requests “are opt-in, nothing is shared with any agency unless you actively go through the steps of choosing to do so.”

The post Amazon’s Ring to make police video requests public appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.