“Get used to the idea of significant portion of the population walking around with high-speed Internet connections on their person, with sophisticated video cameras built in. They will be shooting all kinds of events all the time. Crime. Crashes. Speeches. Sports. And the footage won’t be the short, sanitized and safe versions we usually see on television, courtesy of the old media gatekeepers. The user-generated pictures and video will be raw and real. It will be disturbing, yet illuminating. And it will be shared over the ‘Net almost as it happens, and available for everyone to see.”
― Ian Lamont
Adj. 1. in league – (usually followed by `with’) united in effort as if in a league; “they found out that some press were in league with the people”
united – characterized by unity; being or joined into a single entity; “presented a united front”
-When Kelly Thomas was beaten to death in Fullerton, California in 2011 we came together to help tell the story that wasn’t being told. Knowing that, despite video evidence showing what happened, there would be no push from the city and their police department to hold their public employees accountable for their behavior.
We needed to make sure that the issue didn’t just waft away like many similar stories in the past. We needed to assist in ensuring that the public voice was heard. We wanted to maintain pressure on a department that would have done nothing but file away an incomplete police report and continue on as if nothing wrong had occurred.
Sadly, they seem to get away with this kind of thing time and time again. We have many examples in our nation’s history, some that made headlines and many more that didn’t, that have given us a reasonable expectation on what happens in cases of police brutality. The media, as it does now in highly publicized cases of recent, has a tendency to misreport facts or misrepresent them. At times, they ignore them in favor of focusing on the character background of the victim in order to quash a reasoned focus on police officers who are human and just as susceptible to human bias and outbursts. They are defending an outdated ideology – that the police are always good and always in the right.
That is the crux of the issue. That police officers are human too. That we are governed and policed by people and they are not always right. Innocent people get hurt, have their lives adversely impacted, and are never given a voice. Their side of the story goes unheard because we are only intended to view events and people through the lens of the police officer – the one who takes a salary from taxpayers and who has a vested interest in not having that questioned. Some officers are bullies. Some are not. While we would like to acknowledge that there are good police officers we are forced to recognize that they still function silently along side those who either do not care about the people they serve or are too caught up in the blue line to see them.
We would rather focus on the countless number of individuals who live in a system that indirectly targets them and holds them accountable for noninclusive societal circumstances.
The internet is a very useful tool. Before widespread use of the internet, the people were disconnected and the only ‘reliable’ information we had was presented to us through the media’s filter. It has been said many times before, that the advent of smartphones capable of taking video and broadcasting it to an instantly available audience has been largely responsible for the influx of police brutality cases reaching national scrutiny. It has been said because it is true. It gives the people a voice, it gives victims a voice and it has allowed us to communicate what many of us have known has been going on in communities for a very long time.
We formed InLeague Press in order to facilitate this function – to ensure that the voices of the people and their families are heard and not swept underneath the rug of police union lobbying and justice system influence, or The Blue Line.
We formed InLeague Press to stand with people that are denied justice, to film and livestream important incidents and protests so that the other side of the story, the one not filtered through the media, can be heard, so that future generations have access to more than just media blurbs and footnotes.
We were part of a disconnected nationwide effort to place body cameras on police officers in addition to communicating instances of injustice as they have taken place.
Change is necessary and we need to see more of it. The key is to get the story out, to interview the families, to organize actions and protests, to speak at Council meetings, and to let them know that what was tolerated before, can now cost you your job.
We do not stand for complicity, and we do not stand alone. We utilize EVERY aspect of new technology to present live streams, raw content, and articles that present true reactions from the people who our laws are intended to be protecting.
We organize protests and actions in addition to attending/supporting others to document and cover this changing world.
We teach those that are involved in these tragedies HOW to use the tools of social media – Ustream, Youtube, Bambuser, Podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, and emerging platforms.
Most importantly we give people a place to turn when The Thin Blue Line becomes their worst nightmare.
We are inLeague with the people….
Freedom of press WILL be respected.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sweet1eaf
https://www.facebook.com/InLeagueThePeoplesPress
http://inleaguepress.com
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That's us, filming the police for seven years now!
you have a good start my friend
when you get this together let me know k and I will check it out k
welcome from another newbie ;)
thought i would touch base and see how you were doing ?
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