Report Card
Corson, Ross
REPORT CARD Ross Corson To Serve and Protect KNOW YOUR LOCAL POLICE: A GUIDE FOR CITIZENS by Mae Churchill of the Urban Policy Research Institute National Council on Crime and Delinquency,...
...More than anything, it appears to be largely irrelevant to the flow of technology between U.S...
...A first step for improved accountability," Mae Churchill explains, "consists of asking questions of police agencies and getting answers directly from them...
...What sorts of equipment and tactics are used for surveillance...
...The guide is intended to help citizens and the police answer together three critical questions: What do police do...
...suppliers and South African users...
...How are complaints dealt with...
...In 1977, the Federal Government banned arms sales to South Africa, and a year later it extended the embargo to cover all sales to Pretoria's police and military...
...COMPUTER EXPORTS TO SOUTH AFRICA AND THE ARMS EMBARGO by the National Action/Research on the Military-Industrial Complex Team of the American Friends Service Committee 1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102...
...Do they have a union...
...The South African government's] stake in multinationals is very large, not only for obvious economic reasons but because they exercise a restraining effect on policy makers abroad...
...What should they do...
...Automating Apartheid details how the South African military'and police are using supposedly neutral technology fabricated, if not always sold directly, by American companies...
...Refugees are the victims of politics—of man-made disasters—points out Roger P. Winter, director of the Committee for Refugees...
...Know Your Local Police poses the crucial questions: Whom do police arrest...
...Poles outside of Poland...
...Afghans in Pakistan...
...The survey includes articles by prominent officials in refugee affairs who, as a group, write in a thoroughly uninspiring manner about refugees in Africa...
...Nevertheless, these questions do make for an intelligent guide to citizen involvement in creating and operating an accountable police force, if commitment from both civilians and the police is present...
...How are officers recruited and trained...
...Do arrests result in convictions...
...According to this survey, the worldwide total of people generally recognized as refugees increased by almost 800,000 in 1982, bringing the total number to slightly more than ten million...
...Drawing heavily on official U.S...
...What information is collected about citizens' activities...
...What disciplinary procedures do departments have...
...How are they led to arrests...
...The guide also recommends other sources of information...
...and Haitians and Salvadorans seeking refuge in the United States...
...A brief look at the questions in this booklet— and it is composed almost entirely of questions—will instantly relieve one of any suspicions...
...Winter detects among nations "a greater tendency to push small groups of refugees back across international boundaries, notwithstanding their fate on the other side, and to treat refugees within their borders with a harshness not generally exhibited in the recent past...
...World Refugee Survey 1982 provides comparative statistics on world refugees and the internally displaced, as well as on the economic commitments various nations are making to international refugee aid...
...The report offers seven major policy recommendations, most notably a ban on any sales to South Africa unless the American exporter can prove that the goods have no military or repressive application...
...How do departments allocate their personnel...
...It concludes that the embargo is "at best an occasional mild irritant to the South Africans...
...and South African documents, this report demonstrates that American high-tech companies are providing "the white minority the tools it needs to run the government and monitor the population...
...How is the chief of police chosen and to whom is he responsible...
...Some police departments may not like to have these questions asked and some people who think the professionals should run the show may be hesitant to ask them...
...The specific questions in Know Your Local Police are tough...
...By invoking the Freedom of Information Act, the authors of Automating Apartheid got to see a confidential cable from the U.S...
...Indochinese refugees in Thailand...
...What does the police commission do...
...The title of this guide and the fact that its foreword was written by the Minneapolis chief of police may suggest that Know Your Local Police provides the usual stale slogans and bromides dispensed by the public relations divisions of police departments...
...They are "ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances," and many countries deal clumsily, if not unwillingly, with the task of assisting them...
...Committee for Refugees 20 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018...
...Who decides when excessive force has been used...
...However, as Automating Apartheid makes clear, American corporations have been able to continue selling, leasing, and servicing computers and other advanced technology useful to the South African state...
...The Homeless WORLD REFUGEE SURVEY 1982 by the U.S...
...What kind of force do police use...
...Accordingly, the World Refugee Survey 1982 tends to focus on host countries confronted with refugees seeking asylum...
...What can they do...
...Computerized Oppression AUTOMATING APARTHEID: U.S...
...2.50...
...The U.S...
...4.00...
...The problem of refugees is more severe now than at any time since World War II...
...It includes brief summaries and updates on the refugee situations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America...
...subsidiaries, are determined to undercut any sanctions and have already made plans to camouflage their operations through subterfuges arranged with affiliates in other countries...
...they are meant to provoke a dialogue between the public and the police...
...It concludes with a directory of international, public, and private helping agencies...
...embassy in Pretoria which reported that "Multinationals, including U.S...
...That restraining effect has already become apparent in the Reagan Administration, which has been lenient in enforcing the embargo and in granting exceptions to the sanctions...
...Government's policy on high-tech exports to Pretoria is studded with contradictions, loopholes, and blindspots...
...4.00...
...The most incisive article in the survey is a reprint of the Committee for Refugees' own Senate testimony on the bungled American response to the influx of 130,000 Cubans in April 1980...
...REPORT CARD Ross Corson To Serve and Protect KNOW YOUR LOCAL POLICE: A GUIDE FOR CITIZENS by Mae Churchill of the Urban Policy Research Institute National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 411 Hackensack Avenue, Hackensack.NJ 07601...
Vol. 46 • November 1982 • No. 11
