A Black Lives Matter protest more accessible to those in the disabled community is being organized for next Friday in Portsmouth.
State Trooper Michael Arteaga was parked in an unmarked cruiser on the north side of the Hampton tolls on a clear spring evening in 2018, when he noticed two men driving north in a late model Cadillac sedan with Connecticut plates.
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The trooper eventually turned on his blue lights and had the Cadillac pull over, ostensibly for going 67 mph in a 50-mph zone and for making a lane change without timely use of signals. What followed was an interrogation and a search that turned up contraband.
[Pretextual stops are] when an officer pulls over a motorist for a minor traffic or equipment violation and proceeds to investigate more serious crimes, usually drug related. Many in law enforcement insist the stops are useful for investigating a variety of crimes, especially drug trafficking, while civil rights and racial justice advocates say the stops disproportionately target people of color.
The issue of pretextual stops was front and center in the deliberations of a commission appointed by Gov. Chris Sununu over the summer, tasked with improving law enforcement accountability and transparency after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
Members of New Hampshire’s Commission on Law Enforcement Accountability, Community and Transparency (LEACT) attended Fridell’s program last year to help brainstorm a new two-day seminar on implicit bias training in the Granite State that launched at the police academy on January 14.
The expanded program for police recruits is one of 48 recommendations the LEACT committee advanced after meeting during the summer months. The 16 hours of implicit bias training draws on the philosophies from the FIP program. It also models lesson plans from Ohio’s Peace Officer Basic Training for Community Diversity & Procedural Justice.
Cardona is a Puerto Rican immigrant who works a day job at J.C. Swain Enterprise, a telemarketing firm, while pursuing a career in politics. He’s raising a daughter with his husband, John Swain, and is a fierce political advocate for LGBTQ and minority rights. Over the past two years he’s hosted several Democratic presidential candidates at his home, and last year he was the subject of an article in The Washington Post, which discussed his “startling political power” against all odds. This is all despite the fact that Cardona has never actually held elected office -- he was defeated in a run for New Hampshire House of Representatives, Merrimack 2 in 2010.
A century has passed since women won the right to vote, enshrining suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as crusaders of equal rights. However, the work of writers and educators like Sojourner Truth, Mary Ann Shadd Cary and Nannie Helen Burroughs are often left off the pages chronicling the passing of the 19th Amendment.
Eva Castillo has worked with Nashua and Manchester police departments to implement policies against asking for immigration status upon traffic stops or arrests, but those policies vary widely across New Hampshire communities. Many immigrants fear that they could be profiled and asked for immigration status upon calls to the police for help or routine stops, actions that could lead to detainment and deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Eva Castillo/Inklink File Photo)
Law enforcement officials, minority leaders and members of the public are taking a hard look at the way police officers are trained in New Hampshire, how that compares to other states, and what can be done to improve instruction time and mandatory curriculum surrounding race relations, proper use of force and deescalation techniques.
A Black Lives Matter protest more accessible to those in the disabled community is being organized for next Friday in Portsmouth.
