California police unions are leading a fight to stop a landmark police transparency law from fully taking effect. If they win, the public will lose the right to know whether police officers have been accused of excessive force, sexual assault, and other official wrongdoing that took place before this year. Until January 1, 2019, California police officers' disciplinary records were kept under lock and key. Journalists couldn't find out whether a police officer had a record of excessive force complaints. The public wasn't permitted to learn if the cops in their neighborhood had been accused of sexual assault on the job. Even attorneys defending their clients in court couldn't directly find out whether an officer had a record of lying on the stand or falsifying reports. That all changed when Senate Bill 1421 took effect. California's police unions are fighting to prevent SB 1421 from applying retroactively. In Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elsewhere, police unions have filed lawsuits to prevent disciplinary records from being released. Citing the police unions' efforts, the California Department of Justice has not honored public records requests from news organizations. Some police departments have even destroyed old records, preventing the public from ever accessing them. And some activists have reported exorbitant fees for disciplinary records requests meant to discourage requests. Making disciplinary records publicly available helps us hold police officers accountable for bad behavior, hold police departments accountable for appropriate training and discipline, and hold city governments accountable for exercising appropriate oversight over police forces. Police unions want to help their members avoid accountability when they act out of accordance with community standards, even at the cost of public safety and good relationships between police departments and the communities they serve. This has to end. We call on California's police unions, police departments, and public officials to immediately begin fully complying with SB 1421. They must drop any legal opposition to retroactively releasing police disciplinary records, and quickly honor public records requests at a reasonable cost to the public.

Right now, Nowata County prisoners are being held in Washington County after a carbon monoxide leak at the jail in February. On Monday, Gibson ordered Sheriff Terry Sue Barnett to bring the prisoners back to Nowata. She refused and resigned, along with the entire sheriff's office. At first, Gibson seemed concerned about the cost of housing prisoners elsewhere. He stated that the prisoners being housed elsewhere could be “putting the financial integrity of Nowata County, perhaps, at risk.” However, he did not list any reasons or provide inspection results that showed the jail was now safe and fixed. He did call some witnesses in law enforcement to testify. However, some of the questions veered away from the jail and focused more about what the former sheriff did or said. “That was one of the most bizarre proceedings; I’m not sure what the judge thinks he was doing," said Paul DeMuro, the attorney representing Barnett. "No orders were issued. It was just his personal vendetta, attack, with no notice of what he was doing.” Throughout the hearing, DeMuro questioned the legitimacy of what was happening, at times appearing both visually and verbally frustrated. DeMuro said he was not told what this hearing would entail and that it seemed more like an “evidentiary hearing.” At one point, he told the judge, “I don’t know what’s going on here.” After the judge finished calling his witnesses, he asked DeMuro if he’d like to call any witnesses. DeMuro declined, saying that the hearing was an “ambush.” He even questioned the judge’s motives during the hearing, saying he was entitled to “cross examine [the judge],” and that he was “concerned about [the judge's] communications” with the witnesses the judge called to testify. DeMuro questioned the judge’s authority to control the budget and the jail, saying it’s the County Commissioner's job to do so. Judge Gibson argued that what he was doing was for the safety of the community. He said, “Anybody who tries to say I don’t have the authority to do it your move sir.” After about an hour and a half, the judge decided to end the hearing. The judge did not make any decision or come to any conclusions. Even Nowata County Commissioner Burke LaRue said he didn’t know what the future of the NCSO may be. “I don’t think we gained anything,” said LaRue. “I just know we destroyed this county.”

To get rid of Capital Punishment in the United States

There have been a number of cases where innocent people have been executed by the state. There have been cases where the mental and psychological capacity of the accused was severely limited. As a Catholic, we believe capital punishment is “inadmissible” and an attack on the “dignity of the person.” The state of Georgia needs to join with the other 20 states and the District of Columbia in ending this immoral practice.

Change the licensing fees structure so that they are more affordable to those communities that were hurt most by the draconian drug sentencing of the 1980s and 90s. The program in Oakland is a good start but it is not working per this article: https://reason.com/archives/2018/07/19/oaklands-weed-equity-program-not-helping In the 1920s & 30s my grandfather, along with many black sharecroppers in the Dallas, TX area, were forced to risk their lives by growing marijuana to supplement his meager sharecropping income, due to Jim Crow laws, and were prosecuted for such offenses. Fast forward to the 1980s and 90s, this country passed a number of laws that increased drug sentencing in black and brown communities that resulted in disparate jail times for non-violent drug offenders based amount and form of the drugs possessed by offenders. Today many are affected negatively by such laws and are being barred from participating in the new legal marijuana industry because they have drug convictions under the aforementioned unfair laws that were levied against them. In effect, they are being penalized twice by the very laws that we know were unfair at inception. Black and brown communities were decimated by the incarceration under laws we know now to be both racist and immoral. Therefore, California should continue to be a leader in such reforms by changing the laws in light of past atrocities, and thus allowing these communities, to be able to operate on an equal and level playing field and use the funds from marijuana sales to rebuild their lives and their communities. Additional articles that support my position: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-african-americans-marijuana-industry-20170605-story.html http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/boehner-marijuana-blacks-prison.html

I have been volunterring for over 10 years doing legal research analysis for those WRONGFULLY CONVICTED , counties in New York state ( and across the country) that have CONVICTION INTEGRITY UNITS assist in getting the innocent exonerated. We need to make it MANDATORY for ALL NEW YORK STATE COUNTIES to have this UNIT as many counties have District Attorney's for decades that can compromise Wrongful Conviction Cases. PLEASE SUPPORT

Let Ce Ce Moore do DNA testing to get the killer or killers of Angie Housman. DNA testing has come such a long way. Most police have been waiting for this type of DNA advancement their whole careers. Now here we are where this type of DNA testing has helped to even get the Golden State Killer. Ce Ce Moore has offered her services to the Police for FREE! Yet her help is being denied. Please sign this petition so that police are forced to use Ce Ce Moore to do the Familial DNA testing in hopes it will get this little girl's killer or killers. Twenty-five years is too long. Imagine waiting 25 years not knowing who murdered and raped and tortured your child. Angie's mothered died waiting and never knew who murdered her daughter. It is time to stop waiting ! 25 years is long enough. It is time to help bring Justice for Angie Housman. Angie Housman was a 9-year-old girl who loved life. She wanted to grow up to be a nurse. She was very outgoing and loved others. Angie vanished into thin air getting off at her bus stop on November 18th of 1993. Angie would be kept somewhere for 9 days being tortured, raped, and given hardly any food or water. Her final fate was being left alive tied and her whole head duct taped with only her nose exposed. The temperatures were freezing and Angie died alone scared to death in the woods. Her wrists had been slit and a cut on her thigh was present. The final cause of death was hypothermia. It has been 25 years and her killer or killers have not been caught. The police have DNA and a fingerprint, yet there have been no arrests. The killer or killers have remained to walk free. It is Beyond TIME for Angie to get the justice she so deserves and to let the family and the public know who killed this precious girl, whether the killer or killers are dead or alive. Please sign this petition today.

Animal abuse MUST stop. My heart is with the animals; however, most serial killers start with animals. If there were harsher punishments for animal abuse, we would not only be saving these innocent animals, we would probably be saving human lives.

My son is looking at serious time for a crime he committed. We are asking the judge to consider his mental illness in any plea deal negotiations and include services not simply state prison.

I am tired of our young children being hurt and damaged in this type of way and their violators getting a slap on the wrist.

Angela is an addict and needs help. She is wanting the help now and willing to commit to rehab. We are asking for Rehab and a reduced or no sentence with probation, so she can get her life back in order. Angela is a good person that was trying to keep her home and work. She made several bad choices that she would not have made if she had been sober. She is/was an addict during all the troubles.

People in prison also have basic human rights. No one should be forced to go without heat in this freezing weather! It's up to us to make sure Metropolitan Detention Center turns on the electricity and heat immediately. We can't be silent. Take action now.