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Opioid Settlement Funds Belong to the Public: Communities Want Healing, Not Punishment
This money was won because communities suffered extraordinary harm and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, so funds should build and expand capacity of much-needed health infrastructure and create lasting systems of care.
Aug 31, 2026
Nearly $58 billion is now flowing into states and local governments after the recent settlement with Purdue Pharma and other companies whose actions fueled the overdose epidemic, one of the deadliest public health crises in American history. For the first time in a generation, local communities have a critical opportunity to decide how this money is spent and allocate funding to build systems on their own terms, systems that actually save lives and provide care rooted in dignity.
The question is whether state, county, and municipal officials will actually take that chance.
The settlement money belongs to the people that paid the price. It is restitution for those lives lost, for families devastated, and for communities harmed not only by addiction and overdose, but by decades of failed punitive policies that criminalized suffering instead of treating it. It doesn’t belong to politicians, hospital systems, police departments, or consultants.
That means people directly impacted by overdose, addiction, incarceration, homelessness, and family separation should help decide how these dollars are spent. Too often, they are shut out of that decision entirely. In many states, opioid settlement decisions are made in private meetings with little public awareness, minimal reporting requirements, and limited opportunities for ordinary residents to participate. Some local governments still have no meaningful public process at all.
As federal health and social service funding faces growing cuts, many states and localities are quietly eyeing opioid settlement dollars to backfill budget gaps or prop up systems that should already be publicly funded.
When people get involved, the results improve. More states are passing legislation requiring reports on opioid settlement spending. In Hancock County, Maine, there was initially no public framework for opioid settlement spending. After a local advocate stepped forward to engage county officials, authorities created a committee of community stakeholders, including people with firsthand lived experience, to help advise how to spend those funds. In Buffalo, New York, public scrutiny and press attention around the use of settlement spending on things like police equipment and snowblowers pushed local leaders toward better investments, such as recovery coaches and treatment clinic upgrades, in later funding rounds. We can see how public engagement changes outcomes.
New Jersey committed nearly $119 million to expand harm reduction centers offering naloxone distribution, syringe access, mobile outreach, and connections to care. Kentucky continues to invest in a network of legal aid providers helping people impacted by drug use expunge their criminal records. Portland, Maine spreads its opioid funds across three efforts: a needle buyback program that removes used syringes from public spaces; a housing first program that gets people into stable housing without requiring sobriety first; and contingency management, which rewards people with incentives like gift cards for staying off stimulants such as meth and cocaine.
We also know what does not work. Nevertheless, across the country, settlement dollars are still being spent on police equipment, surveillance technology, jail expansions, and outmoded treatment programs that forbid modern medications, and ineffective "just say no" style prevention campaigns. Some jurisdictions have purchased drones, tasers, license plate readers, police dogs, and narcotics detection equipment using funds that were supposed to heal communities harmed by overdose.
The most insidious trend may be one the public cannot easily see: supplantation. According to best practice guidance from Johns Hopkins University and endorsed by more than 60 organizations including my own, supplantation advises that opioid settlement funds must not replace existing funding sources. But as federal health and social service funding faces growing cuts, many states and localities are quietly eyeing opioid settlement dollars to backfill budget gaps or prop up systems that should already be publicly funded. Settlement dollars should not replace Medicaid; they should not compensate for cuts to public health infrastructure. They were never meant to become a government slush fund.
This money was won because communities suffered extraordinary harm and hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. Funds should build and expand capacity of much-needed health infrastructure and create lasting systems of care, not patch holes created by shifting political priorities. It’s not that settlement funds should never stabilize existing programs; in some cases, communities may need to use these dollars temporarily to sustain lifesaving services that would otherwise disappear. But those decisions must happen transparently, with public input, and with a clear understanding of the trade-offs involved. Advocates have issued guidelines that can help jurisdictions think through these challenging decisions.
There is reason for cautious optimism. Advocates, impacted families, and community organizations across the country are building models for transparency, accountability, and evidence-based investment. A new National Roadmap for Spending Opioid Settlement Funds can help communities understand their local processes and push for smarter spending. It also documents problematic and promising spending across the country. Advocates in Maine, New York, and New Jersey have created websites to help community members get involved in directing opioid settlement funds. The Maine Recovery Action Project has created a national toolkit that anyone can use to start organizing residents to have a say in spending decisions.
Residents should ask simple but critical questions, such as: Where is the money going? Who benefits? What evidence supports these investments? Who was consulted?
The overdose crisis was perpetrated by decisions, made over the course of decades, that never faced accountability. We cannot afford to repeat that mistake now with resources made available to repair the damage.
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New Database Documents Over 100 Cases of Cops Abusing Flock Surveillance Cameras
Police have used Flock cameras to stalk their exes, track abortion patients, and spy on protesters—among other abuses.
Aug 12, 2026
A new database launched Wednesday that details more than 100 cases of alleged abuse by law enforcement officers using Flock Safety's nationwide camera network is adding fresh urgency to the growing backlash against automated license plate readers.
The database, published by the Institute for Justice (IJ)—a libertarian nonprofit public interest law firm based in Arlington, Virginia—documents "romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct."
"Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) were sold to American communities as a targeted tool for catching car thieves and finding missing people," IJ said in an introduction to the database. "What they actually purchased has grown into something far broader and more frightening: an AI-powered network of cameras that photograph and log the movement of every driver who passes, whether or not they are suspected of any crime."
"Companies like Flock Safety have now blanketed thousands of communities with ALPRs, quietly assembling powerful mass surveillance systems that can reconstruct where people have been, when, and how often, all without a warrant," the institute continued. "This dragnet surveillance threatens the freedoms the Fourth Amendment was adopted to protect. These concerns aren’t just abstractions: Every day, innocent people are harmed by officials’ abuse and misuse of these ALPRs."
"When the government can track the everyday movements of ordinary people—to their jobs, their churches, their doctors, their protests—it holds a kind of power over private life that the Constitution does not allow," IJ added.
Among the cases highlighted in the database are those of a Florida sheriff's deputy who allegedly used an ALPR to track and pull over a woman after seeing her at a television shoot, a Texas deputy who reportedly searched tens of thousands of Flock cameras while trying to locate a woman who had allegedly obtained a medication abortion, and a Georgia police chief who reportedly tracked his former girlfriend and her teenage daughter hundreds of times.
The database's authors warn that even those 100-plus cases may represent only a fraction of the actual misconduct. Officers often provide vague explanations when searching ALPR databases, making systematic detection of abuse difficult. In one case in Norfolk, Virginia, for example, IJ found that three generic search terms accounted for nearly one-third of roughly 230,000 searches over two years. One officer repeatedly entered “la la la la” as a justification without apparently attracting scrutiny.
Growing public angst over ALPRs is increasingly transcending partisan lines. As Common Dreams reported last month, the backlash has prompted dozens of communities to cancel or reject Flock contracts. According to Ban Flock Cameras, 82 contracts across 28 states had been terminated between August 2021 and May 2026, including 39 cancellations during the first five months of this year alone.
"It's my professional opinion that Flock is a dystopian violation of our rights," Ohio State University professor Viet Trinh said Monday during a public safety audit in Columbus.
"What I mean by that is that it inverts the very nature of how police are supposed to function," he explained. "So in traditional investigations, a crime is supposed to happen first, and then detectives are supposed to identify a list of plausible suspects, and then those suspects are placed under investigation."
"But under Flock, we are all—everybody in this room, every day, every time we get into our cars—we are all under investigation at all times for all crimes," Trinh continued. "Then, when a crime actually does occur, the police have a list of pre-investigated suspects. That's you, that's me, that's everybody in this room who gets in a car, that's everybody in this city."
"So today in Columbus, our constitutional rights—especially our Fourth Amendment rights—are flagrantly violated every single day as a matter of regular government policy," he asserted.
Trinh contended that Flock "is not a tool for investigating crimes, and that misnomer has apparently bamboozled several people in this room."
"Flock is, at its very foundation, a tool for investigating pre-crimes," he stressed. "Not crimes, but pre-crimes."
"So others in this room have implied that we can reform Flock, we can have Flock and preserve our civil liberties, we can make this technology work for us," Trinh noted, adding that "it is not a technology that can be made righteous."
"On this matter, we cannot and we can never have our cake and eat it too," the professor added. "To believe otherwise is hubris."
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'Madison, Wisconsin Police Murdered a Man': Protesters Take to the Streets
Noting that "this is not the first, not the second, but the third life that was taken" by police in the area, one local candidate declared that "this is no longer an accident or a tragedy. It is a choice."
Jul 23, 2026
WARNING: The following article contains graphic content that some people may find disturbing…
Protesters have taken to the streets in Madison, Wisconsin since Wednesday afternoon to decry violence by law enforcement, especially against people of color, since police fatally shot a man, whom they said had a knife, while attempting to arrest him in an intersection.
"Madison Police Department officers typically don't wear body cameras," The Cap Times reported, and MPD Chief John Patterson said there are no bodycam videos of the shooting. However, bystander footage swiftly spread online, spurring alarm and outrage.
The footage shows four officers trying to wrestle a Black man—identified by residents and multiple elected officials as Corey Ruiz—to the ground. At least one officer shouts "taser," and three gunshots can be heard when Ruiz is already on the ground.
Patterson said during a Wednesday press conference that an officer deployed a taser, but was "unsuccessful," and an officer injured by the knife "fired his weapon" at the intersection of South Baldwin and Williamson, or "Willy," around 1:30 pm Central time.
The police chief did not name any of the officers—who were placed on administrative leave after the killing—and did not confirm Ruiz's identity, only describing him as a man in his 30s. However, he said that "I want to take a moment to honestly and sincerely offer my heartfelt sympathies to his family for this loss."
Patterson also acknowledged that the deadly shooting "occurred in a neighborhood that has experienced a lot of trauma in the past." As Madison-based Isthmus detailed, "Tony Robinson was shot and killed by Madison police officer Matt Kenny in 2015 a block and a half away; Paulie Heenan was fatally shot by a police officer in 2012, on nearby South Baldwin Street."
Noting that "this is not the first, not the second, but the third life that was taken" by police in the past couple of decades, Juliana Bennett, a democratic socialist running to represent District 76 in the Wisconsin State Assembly, said that "this is no longer an accident or a tragedy. It is a choice."
In addition to community members, people around the world who have seen the various videos of the shooting—that "looks like a gang execution" by police, according to one critic—are demanding the arrest of the officer who fired the shots on Wednesday.
"Madison police killed Corey Ruiz, shooting him three times in the head at point-blank range after tasing him, while he was constrained on the ground," said the Party for Socialism and Liberation on social media. "Despite MPD's attempts to distort the truth, the people of Madison immediately took to the streets to demand transparency and justice."
"Corey Ruiz's life matters, and he should be alive today! The police and ICE are the biggest threats to public safety!" the party continued, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has also fatally shot several people nationwide this year. "The cops who carried out this execution in broad daylight should be jailed! End all racist police terror!"
As The Cap Times detailed:
Protesters who first gathered on Williamson Street chanted, "Arrest that cop." They later marched to the Capitol, where they took over the area where the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra typically performs during the free weekly summer series Concerts on the Square.
Joe Loehnis, CEO of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, announced the orchestra would stand in solidarity with Madison's Black community and canceled the concert Wednesday as hundreds of people listened to protesters while waiting for the event to start. There are currently no plans to reschedule.
The concert series takes place on the lawn of the Wisconsin State Capitol. Protesters outside the building chanted, "Black Lives Matter!"
Later Wednesday, mourners gathered at the intersection—where candles and flowers were laid on the ground—and came together in song.
The memorial remained in the road as of Thursday morning, according to footage shared on social media by local press.
Among the politicians who have weighed in are Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who said after being briefed on the shooting that "there must be transparency and accountability in any investigation moving forward."
"We will continue to keep the loved ones and family of the individual who was killed in our hearts and prayers. His life mattered," Evers added. "As folks exercise their First Amendment rights tonight and in the days ahead, we urge them to do so peacefully and respectfully."
Evers declined to seek a third term this cycle. The Democratic primary is next month. Multiple candidates running to replace him also spoke out on Wednesday. Mandela Barnes said he was "deeply disturbed and pained by the video footage," and called for an "independent and transparent" investigation.
A similarly "horrified" David Crowley said that "while the details are still emerging and a full accounting of what happened is still needed, these reports are painfully reminiscent of the tragedies we have witnessed in Kenosha, Minneapolis, and far too many communities across our country."
Candidate Joel Brennan noted that "this neighborhood carries a deep pain and a history of all too recent similar violence," and demanded a probe by the Wisconsin Department of Justice to provide the community with "a full, transparent, and independent accounting of what happened."
At the site of the shooting, another gubernatorial hopeful, Francesca Hong, faced calls from the crowd to condemn the shooting as "murder." She said into a bullhorn, "This state-sanctioned violence was an execution."
State Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-78) said that "I am deeply saddened and disturbed to hear of the death of Corey Ruiz after he was fatally shot by a member of the Madison Police Department. This never should have happened. Mr. Ruiz should still be alive. My heart and my prayers go out to Mr. Ruiz's family, friends, and loved ones in their time of unimaginable grief. Madison has been profoundly shaken by this tragic incident."
"My thoughts are also with our community members who witnessed and were traumatized by this shocking and distressing event, especially the brave individuals who recorded footage with their phone cameras," she continued. "This is a grave example of the need for body-worn cameras. If Madison Police Department had body cameras, we wouldn't need to look to civilian footage for answers."
After pointing to her record of pushing for racial justice and "more community-based approaches to our justice system," Stubbs stressed that in the wake of this latest shooting, "it is critical that community members are kept informed and receive updates in a timely manner. There must be a thorough, impartial investigation into the circumstances that resulted in a man unnecessarily losing his life."
Madison's Democratic mayor, Satya Rhodes-Conway, said she was "angered and saddened by what happened," adding that "it's an absolute tragedy when a member of our community is killed by anyone, but especially by the police. I understand the anger, grief, and fear people are feeling—because I am feeling that too."
"The State Department of Criminal Investigation will be conducting an independent investigation, and the officers involved have been put on administrative leave until the investigation is concluded," according to the mayor. "The Madison Police Department is cooperating fully and is not in charge of the investigation."
Ruiz's family has retained civil rights and personal injury attorney Ben Crump, who has secured settlements for relatives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
"The video gives us a clear picture of what happened. Corey Ruiz was tased, taken to the ground, and then he was shot multiple times at close range, including in his face," Crump said in a statement. "This case has to be examined for excessive force. It happened in broad daylight, in front of dozens of witnesses. The family deserves the truth, and the public deserves accountability."
This article has been updated with comment from Ben Crump and to correct the timeline for the three men killed.
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'Get the Flock Out': Nationwide Backlash Grows Against AI-Powered Surveillance Tech
Since 2021, 82 Flock contracts have been canceled across 28 US states—39 of them during the first five months of this year alone.
Jul 03, 2026
Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety's cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.
State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company's automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.
“We have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,” Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company's Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.
“There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things," Cox added.
Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people's travel across states—even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.
The ACLU—which recently launched a "Get the Flock Out" campaign to "fight creepy ALPR cameras"—says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.
Automatic license plate readers track our every move and funnel our personal information into enormous databases that police can access to spy on us without a warrant.Surveillance company Flock Safety is the largest provider of these cameras — it's time we get all of them out of our communities.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) June 28, 2026 at 11:15 AM
"Flock's ALPR cameras aren't like your normal traffic cameras," the ACLU explained. "This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search—with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find."
The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.
“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan," ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.
There is growing action—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country.
According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.
Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.
Susie O'Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California's nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company's national network without city officials' knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.
O'Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.
"I have goose hbumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis," she said. "And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing... It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all—just no way."
Less than a week after Good's killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city's Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.
“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.
Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin—which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock—told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue."
"There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant," he added.
At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.
Krishnamoorthi and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety "for failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal."
Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.
In May, US Reps. Jesús "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.
It's not just Flock. Axon, Vigilant Solutions—a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions—Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.
"It doesn't matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood," the ACLU said, "they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it."
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Family Seeks Answers, Justice After Mississippi Cop Kills Toddler Kohen Wiley in Walmart Lot
"A 1-year-old child is dead because police officers in Mississippi opened fire on a car in a crowded Walmart parking lot," said attorney Ben Crump.
Jun 16, 2026
Relatives of a toddler shot dead on Sunday by police in rural Mississippi are demanding answers and accountability.
"I don’t know anything right now," Carlos Haynes told Memphis channel WMC. "My grandson gone. I just want justice."
Carolyn Sokes, the slain toddler's great-grandmother, said: "The police department not telling us anything. They removed the baby's body without anybody seeing it. All we know is that a car was shot up and a 1-year-old baby was killed, and then nobody tells us anything, like we're not anybody."
One-year-old Kohen Wiley, who was being held by his mother in the front passenger seat while his aunt was behind the wheel, was shot and killed by police in Senatobia, 40 miles south of Memphis, during an incident in a Walmart parking lot. The baby's aunt was also shot and critically injured.
Cellphone video footage obtained by Fox 13 Memphis shows a vehicle driving away from officers, but does not appear to capture the moment of the shooting. A photo of the car shows bullet holes in the windshield.
An eyewitness told WREG that “I seen the officers take off running, not in the car, I’m talking about on feet."
“They’re running through the parking lot and I see the car take off, you know, so in my head, I’m like, I know they’re not chasing the car, they don’t think they’re going to catch the car. Then I hear gunshots, and I’m like, I know they’re not shooting at a car that’s leaving in public; this is Walmart."
Another witness said that he heard two gunshots fired by officers who were already waiting in the Walmart parking lot as the two women left the store holding a box of diapers and the baby.
According to the Mississippi Department of Public Safety (DPS):
Law enforcement officers responded to a shoplifting call at Walmart on US 51. Upon arrival, officers encountered two subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store into a vehicle. Officers attempted to stop the vehicle, but the driver drove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one. An officer then discharged their weapon and the vehicle fled the scene. The subjects arrived at a local hospital where one juvenile child in the vehicle was pronounced deceased, and another subject had critical injuries. No law enforcement officers received any serious physical injury.
The responding law enforcement agencies—the Senatobia Police Department (SPD) and Tate County Sheriff's Office (TCSO)—have yet to release the names of the involved officers or any video footage of the incident.
TCSO said deputies were in the area investigating an unrelated matter when their assistance was requested. On Monday, Tate County Sheriff Luke Shepherd declined to comment about the shooting, including whether anyone had been charged, citing pending investigations, according to Mississippi Today.
SPD issued a statement saying it is "committed to full transparency" and "will share as much information as possible" with the public.
Walmart said in a written statement, “We’re saddened by what took place at our Senatobia, MS store."
Relatives of the slain toddler said his mother and aunt were not shoplifting and expressed wariness about local police, who have been embroiled in multiple brutality scandals involving Black victims in recent years.
“Senatobia Police Department get away with too much stuff,” Stokes, the great-grandmother, told WREG. “I hear about it all the time, it’s in the news all the time."
Licole Wiley, the child’s grandmother and the sister of the critically injured woman, lamented that the toddler died "allegedly over some Pampers."
"Whatever the incident may have come to, it still didn’t need for you to shoot two adults and a baby that was not even a threat to you," she added.
Another one of the child's grandmothers, Lasandra Williams, said that “everybody that was involved needs to be held accountable."
"I’m not giving up until I get justice,” she added. “Justice will be served. If it has anything to do with me, it will be served.”
Mississippi Today reported Tuesday that Wiley's relatives have hired national civil rights attorney Ben Crump.
"A 1-year-old child is dead because police officers in Mississippi opened fire on a car in a crowded Walmart parking lot," Crump said in a statement. "Kohen Wiley was a baby. His mother, who has not been charged with any crime, says she was trying to communicate to officers that there was a baby in the car. They fired anyway, leading to the death of an innocent 1-year-old. We intend to seek justice for baby Kohen and the life that was stolen from him.”
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Florida Man's Wrongful Arrest Suit Highlights Dangers of AI Facial Recognition in Policing
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," said Robert Dillon.
Jun 10, 2026
A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Middle District of Florida by a Fort Myers resident wrongfully arrested nearly two years ago highlights the risks of police agencies relying on facial recognition tools.
"This case is about what happens when police let an error-prone artificial intelligence (AI) system stand in for an investigation," explains the complaint, filed by attorneys with the state and national ACLU as well as the firm Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney. "A facial recognition algorithm flagged Robert Dillon as the man who tried to lure or entice a child under 12 years old at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald's. It was wrong."
The 52-year-old "lives more than 300 miles from" and "had never set foot in Jacksonville Beach," the complaint continues. "But rather than test the machine's answer against the evidence that would have cleared him, the officers built a case to confirm it. Mr. Dillon was arrested and prosecuted for one of the most stigmatizing crimes a person can face."
Dillon—one of at least 15 people wrongfully arrested in the United States due to police reliance on incorrect facial recognition results—is suing the city of Jacksonville Beach as well as law enforcement officers from the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (JSO), and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Reporting on the case Wednesday, Wired noted that while the Pinellas agency did not respond to a request for comment, a JSO spokesperson simply said that "due to pending litigation, we would be unable to comment further on the incident."
The actual suspect allegedly approached a girl at the McDonald's shortly before midnight on November 2, 2023. The following month, Dillon was flagged as a possible match by the Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System (FACES)—which "has been operated by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office since 2001, making it one of the oldest police face-recognition systems in the country," according to Wired. "At its peak in 2021, its tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver's license photos were accessible to more than 260 agencies."
After denying any involvement in the case in December, Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife the next August, "held overnight in jail, forced to borrow money and pledge the title to his truck to post bond, subjected to months of criminal prosecution, and publicly branded with a mugshot that remains accessible online, long after the charges were dropped," the complaint states. "Community members still approach him in public to ask about the case. He no longer feels comfortable being friendly to children."
"He had no connection to the McDonald's, to the child who was targeted, or to anyone involved in the crime. He became a suspect for one reason: a facial recognition algorithm included him in a list of possible matches to a suspect captured on grainy surveillance footage at the restaurant," the document emphasizes. "The investigating officer treated that algorithmic output as a near-certain identification, omitted critical exculpatory evidence from his arrest warrant application, and failed to pursue routine investigative steps that would have immediately excluded Mr. Dillon as a suspect."
"The arrest warrant that deprived Mr. Dillon of his liberty was the product of a cascade of investigative failures by the lead investigator, Jacksonville Beach Police Department officer (now corporal) Scott O'Connell," according to the filing. Among them was the officer's "complete failure to consider that the suspect was alleged to have been a 'regular' customer."
The complaint also notes that "O'Connell is an officer with a documented history of volatility and poor judgment, having previously been terminated from the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office for threatening to 'blow up' the agency, later reinstated, then arrested for domestic battery before resigning under the weight of those charges. Jacksonville Beach PD hired him anyway, assigned him as lead investigator on a sensitive child-luring case, and later promoted him to corporal after his investigation resulted in the wrongful arrest and prosecution of an innocent man."
Dillon said in a Wednesday statement that "the night I spent in jail after they arrested me for a crime I did not commit still haunts me to this day. I will never get over how terrified and worried I was, wondering if I'd ever go home to my wife and daughter again."
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," Dillon added. "Florida police must implement safeguards and ensure this never happens to anyone else, because until they do, nobody is safe."
Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, stressed that "no one should lose their freedom or be scared to leave their house because an algorithm got it wrong."
"These Florida police departments owe it to Mr. Dillon to make amends and to take serious steps to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else," he argued. "Police across the country are on notice: Unreliable face recognition technology is hurting people, and we will keep fighting to hold them accountable for these abuses."
The ACLU has previously sounded the alarm over other cases, including those of Robert Williams, a Black man wrongfully arrested in 2020 after software owned by Michigan State Police misidentified him as a shoplifting suspect, and Randal Reid, who spent nearly a week in jail in 2022 after he was falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana authorities.
The legal group on Wednesday also pointed to the reported role of FACES in the 2025 wrongful arrest of New Smyrna Beach resident Beau Burgess, as well as another case involving the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office: Jalil Richardson told Action News Jax earlier this month that after being misidentified as a vehicle thief, he "sat in there for over 50 days, in the most worst jail ever."
"There was no proper investigation done... to even reach out to me or to see if I was even in Florida," said Richardson, whose charges were dropped after he provided time sheets showing that he was at work in North Carolina when the vehicle was stolen.
In his case, JSO provided a lengthy statement, saying in part that "facial recognition software is just one tool in a large toolbox for investigators," and "calling the arrest the result 'police AI misidentification' is a catchy headline but does not provide accurate context," including that "the victim chose Mr. Richardson out of a photographic lineup to include other potential suspects."
Nicholas Warren, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said Wednesday that "one wrongful arrest is one too many."
"Florida's growing reliance on facial recognition technology threatens us all," he warned. "We must stop this dangerous pattern before it traps more innocent people. No one should have their freedom taken away because the police rely on faulty technology."
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The Promise of Radical Municipalism in New York City
What kind of power and solidarity is built and transformed in New York City’s municipalist moment will depend on whether or not the remaking of public and civic infrastructures is guided by participatory democracy.
May 15, 2026
It is an inspiring time to be a New Yorker. Over the last year, thousands have been mobilized by a vision for a more just city, where the interests of the people, not the 1%, are at the center of social and economic policies. Driving this vision is a city that is affordable, one where public infrastructures are not indicative of neglect, exclusion or harm, but are life-affirming institutions grounded in principles of participatory democracy: where everyday residents have a direct say over the public policies that govern their lives.
It is a beautiful vision, especially in a city that has long been plagued by corporate and private interests, and one that draws from models of what is termed new or radical municipalism and experiments with mass and co-governance in cities including Barcelona, Jackson, and Porto Alegre, among others.
Distinguishing New York City’s municipalist moment is its political geography: It is a global city, a center of global finance; a metropole in the Global North, at the center of the imperialist core, and the home of Wall Street; and it is an urban center long defined by uneven development and inequity. The city with the highest concentration of wealth in the world runs on a workforce where only 33% of workers have “good jobs” (qualified by living wage pay, full-time, and year-round employment, employer sponsored health insurance, and safe working conditions). Over one-quarter of New Yorkers struggle with poverty, and nearly two-thirds are economically precarious. Adding to this context is intensified fascism, integral to which has been the bipartisan project of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has termed the anti-state state: The structured expansion of corporate interests and privatization schemes coupled with the shrinkage of the public infrastructures, entitlements, and services alongside the increased entanglement of policing, surveillance, and punishment into nearly every vestige of the public that remains.
Transforming Public and Civic Infrastructures
On one hand, the renewed interest in public infrastructures grounding radical municipalism signals an important turn from neoliberal consumer citizenship, exemplified recently by former New York City Public Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina’s description of parents as the Department of Education’s “clients.” On the other hand, New York’s wealth, part and parcel of its long-standing and structured class- and race-based inequity, presents a real challenge to the reinvigoration of civic and public life, to what kind of power, what kind of public, will be built and transformed—and to what ends. How do we ensure that the promise of a more just city is truly and actively guided (not just informed) by New Yorkers whose experience of the public has long been shaped by histories of organized abandonment (or the intentional divestment of state and private capital that shape particular places), by the harm, exclusion, and violence of the anti-state state?
Often, what people are fighting for is not a “failing school” but rather, a place through which they have grown community and practiced care, where they have made meaning and collective life despite and within state divestment.
The promise of radical municipalism to enliven deliberative spaces that build capacity for protagonism and expand practices of citizenship needs to be guided by what Celina Su understands as epistemic justice, “actively questioning what bodies of knowledge are counted as expert, rational, and valuable.” More than an advisory role, epistemic justice must actively structure deliberative spaces. In its absence, Su notes, deliberative spaces run the risk of perpetuating already existing inequities. The urgency of this approach is captured by the now infamous New York City District 3 CEC (Community Education Council) meeting, when City University of New York Professor Allyson Friedman’s racist remarks, in response to an eighth grade student who was speaking out against their school being closed, were captured by an open mic. As many recognize, Friedman’s remarks are not a unique case, but emblematic of the changing same in the district.
The district, among the most segregated and unequal in the city, is where I have worked with others to build power, organizing, and leadership among low-income families of color for just and equitable public schools. There have been countless occasions in which “concerned parents” broadcast their racism sometimes in official testimony, sometimes in unofficial remarks. Most often, these remarks have not captured headlines. And in that mix (which included CEC, district, Community Board, and school-site meetings) poor and working class families of color were regularly told that they didn’t “understand” or might be “confused” by their own experiences—their own stories—and dismissed. Friedman’s comments implied the same: that the student speaking out against their school being closed simply did not understand (and, according to Friedman’s racist analysis, could not understand) their own circumstances or the value of their school community. Yet students, teachers, parents, and school workers have long recognized and resisted school closures as a mechanism of dispossession, racist violence, encroachment, and displacement. Often, what people are fighting for is not a “failing school” but rather, a place through which they have grown community and practiced care, where they have made meaning and collective life despite and within state divestment.
In our municipalist moment, deliberative spaces need to be reinvigorated and also reassessed. Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Sumathy Kumar, and Celina Su write that New York City has an extensive infrastructure for civic participation (which includes CECs, community boards, the Civic Engagement Commission, and more). However, they assess, “much of it is shallow, uncoordinated, fragmented, and symbolic. New Yorkers are rightly skeptical of consultations that go nowhere.” They note the need for an audit of such structures with a goal of repurposing and revitalization, guided by the knowledge and experience of community organizers and organizations. As such, the question raised by the winter meeting that went viral is not only if such remarks should be tolerated, but rather, how to intentionally transform the CEC and other infrastructures that are supposed to enliven participatory democracy from places that too often confirm and perpetuate inequity into places where the long-standing violence enacted by austerity and mechanized through school closures is interrupted. To do so, the voices, experiences, and analyses of those who have experienced such violence need to be active, understood as credible, and prioritized.
Epistemic Justice, The Presence of Abolition, and the Remaking of Social Relations
The transformation of our public and civic infrastructures requires both deep local knowledge and an understanding that such spaces are not static. Bonnie Honig reminds us that public things—libraries, schools, healthcare, and housing—as well as civic infrastructures through which they are governed, are “holding environments.” That is, they are simultaneously containers through which life is reproduced in the everyday (including making sure that all students have warm winter coats, that access to ultrasound mammograms is universal, and that lighting and heat work in public and subsidized housing) and spaces of contestation over what democracy, citizenship, and our social relations—not yet determined—might be.
These holding environments have been contradictory at best. More often, they have been vehicles through which the silencing, exclusion, and disenfranchisement that liberalism relies upon are administered, and where scarcity engenders social relations of competition and individuation, where it is assumed that one’s needs are only confirmed in opposition to the security of others.
Radical municipalism offers the promise to shift that configuration, and actualize Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s insight that “abolition is not absence, it is presence.” This insight directs us to the need not just to dismantle, but to build practices, structures, institutions, and experiments that affirm life. The perspectives of structurally marginalized communities are essential to determining what kind of presence is necessary: to mapping not only how harm works, but also to what kinds of alternatives are needed and might be capable of transforming our social relations.
A good example of why this is true comes from Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) and the Public Science Project’s (CUNY) report, We Deserve to Be Safe. Rooted in Participatory Action-Research (PAR), the project’s leadership team included CPR member-led organizations in over-policed communities, was grounded in long-standing relationships and an understanding of the multi-layered harms of policing, and anchored by the shared principle that highly policed communities need to be at the center of how safety and harm are understood and re-imagined. As they note:
Our findings illuminate that people in highly policed New York neighborhoods often hold deeply complex beliefs, attitudes and proposals for community safety, supporting this report’s approach of presenting data about the multiple truths that communities hold. Notably, our findings suggest that while police officers have provided moments of successful intervention and important services for New Yorkers, for many respondents the police are also a constant threat to safety.
The perspectives and findings outlined by the report provide insight that, as the authors note, reach beyond an “overly simplistic duality of either decreased policing and lawlessness or increased policing and safety.” The stories and experiences outlined make painfully clear the violence of policing while also centering participants' complex personhood not simply as anecdote, but as analysis and insight to understanding what kinds of alternatives to policing—informed by place-based histories and realities—might actually be transformative. Bound up in the stories that the report documents is the sobering reality that understanding what “successful interventions and important services” have actually meant is integral to disentangling policing with the provision of social services.
Examples of radical municipalism in other cities show the meeting of our material and everyday needs is deeply connected to the transformation of our social relations, rooted in structures and practices that expand (rather than shrink) how we understand ourselves in relationship to one another, and how we value life, its reproduction, and sustainability. Drawing on her work with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or Landless Workers' Movement (MST), Rebecca Tarlau terms this process contentious co-governance which “is not simply [about] more resources or policy changes but, rather, the prefiguration of alternative social and economic relations within… public institutions.” Importantly, in the case of the MST, Tarlau finds that prefiguration need not be outside of the state and that participation is not simply a means to an end, but rather invokes practices that expand and transform social relations through and within public and civic infrastructures, while also strengthening social movements.
New York City’s political geography—as a global city, as a metropole in the Global North and center of the imperialist core, and as an urban center long defined by uneven development and inequity—matters to how we navigate our current conjuncture. Chaumtoli Haq reminds us that in the context of the global city, radical municipalism presents a “powerful strategy for change… [that] enables communities, given their proximity to local governance, to mobilize for changes in law and policy.”
The strength of this strategy has already been demonstrated by the historic campaign to elect Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Rooted in strong partnerships with grassroots organizations including CAAAV Voice, DRUM Beats, and New York City Communities for Change, the material conditions of these organizations’ members shaped the policy platforms of the campaign. What kind of power and solidarity is built and transformed in New York City’s municipalist moment will depend on whether or not the remaking of public and civic infrastructures is guided by participatory democracy and deliberative spaces that are grounded in epistemic justice and contentious cogovernance: whose knowledge, experience, and know-how actively shapes those processes; what kind of protagonism and popular shared analysis propels momentum and movement; and what kinds of social relations are enlivened to expand political horizons and protracted struggle.
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Blueprint For Solidarity: Community Organizations Build the Public Good
In the shadow of federal failure, there’s a hopeful truth emerging in cities and states across our country: When communities act in solidarity, they can reclaim government and transform it to serve the people.
Feb 27, 2026
Our government should make life better for all people. Local and federal elected leaders should ensure we all have enough to eat, a roof over our heads, the opportunity to learn and grow, and access to care when needed.
Instead, Congress cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and nearly $200 billion from food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while committing a staggering $85 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This administration has chosen to fund fear over food, detention over dignity, and the interests of billionaires over the well-being of working people.
In the shadow of this federal failure, there’s a hopeful truth emerging in cities and states across our country: When communities act in solidarity, they can reclaim government and transform it to serve the people.
This is evident in the work of countless community organizations, including Chicago-based Equity and Transformation (EAT). EAT creates space for working people across race and language to take action to advance collective worker safety and justice.
Housing, public transportation, public schools, healthcare, and food are the foundations of a dignified life, and must be guaranteed for all.
Thanks in large part to EAT’s community organizing, Cook County has established permanent funding for guaranteed income. This vital work can serve as a protective non-carceral form of community support that addresses some of the economic harm and exclusion EAT’s members face. Especially for communities disproportionately harmed by the violence of policing, a basic guaranteed income can provide material stability that helps ensure essential needs, healthcare, housing, and food are not trade-offs, and that acts as a buffer against criminalization and the trauma of overpolicing.
Now, EAT is scaling its Cook County win, leading a statewide campaign for a permanent guaranteed income program that would support all SNAP-eligible households. The Illinois Future Fund Act would direct 25% of cannabis tax revenue toward direct cash assistance of $500 per month to SNAP-eligible residents in communities disproportionately impacted by decades of drug war policing. If passed, this legislation would be a step toward progress and show Illinois's commitment to using public resources to make people’s lives better.
A Blueprint for a Government That Works for All of Us
We are clear about what's at stake at this moment and what leaders are being asked to do. Leaders of community organizing groups are being asked to meet the pressing needs of their members as services and benefits are cut, fight government overreach as police and ICE target their neighbors, and continue demonstrating that solidarity is central to building the country we want.
Marguerite Casey Foundation is committed to staying in lockstep with grant recipients like EAT and remaining clear about the role of funders supporting grassroots leadership as their communities create a new blueprint for how the government should work.
So, how can we scale this solidarity through the work of community organizing groups and ensure policy choices improve the lives of residents?
1. Create a universe of public goods that belong to all of us. Housing, public transportation, public schools, healthcare, and food are the foundations of a dignified life, and must be guaranteed for all. We have seen global proof that access to public goods reduces poverty and precarity. It’s time our public dollars are used for the public good across our country.
2. Hold corporations and lawmakers that are exploiting our communities accountable. Those who make policies that starve our schools, close our hospitals, and detain our loved ones always find another billion dollars for corporate subsidies and surveillance giveaways. We must create penalties for those who are stealing from the poorest and whose fortunes are built on systems of harm.
3. Continuously practice a politics of solidarity. For Marguerite Casey Foundation, acting in solidarity means using our endowment to surge funds to frontline groups like EAT. Philanthropy’s resources are meant for moments like this. For EAT, it means organizing not just for services but for the power to define and deliver on solutions.
How to Help Build Solidarity Through Community Organizing
If you are a funder, building real solidarity means moving beyond transactional grantmaking. Funders must support bold and creative actions, not only by funding larger efforts but by standing with our partners when they take risks to protect their communities. Solidarity also requires us to bring more than money to the table. We should leverage all of our resources, from our extensive networks to our role as institutional investors, and be intentional about activating those assets in ways that generate momentum to meet the urgency of this moment.
If you are a nonprofit leader, ask for what you need and refuse to settle. Urge funders to meet this moment with courage and capital to fuel the bold experimentation needed. Can they give more, commit to multiyear grants, frontload payments, reduce reporting hurdles, provide no-interest loans, or organize pooled funds with their colleagues in philanthropy to raise the resources needed to fully fund your initiatives?
And if you’re not a funder or nonprofit leader, find an organization to support with your money, time, and talent.
Local organizations building community power are mapping a new way forward in these dark times. They are proving that the government can and must keep its promise to improve people’s lives—to be a means to collective thriving. Nonprofits, funders, and community members, acting in solidarity, can make this promise real.
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'It Has to Stop': Minnesota Police Chief Says Off-Duty Cops Racially Profiled by ICE
"Every one of these individuals is a person of color," said Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley—whose own department has been criticized for racial policing.
Jan 20, 2026
A Minnesota police chief said Tuesday that off-duty officers are being racially profiled by federal immigration agents deployed as part of US President Donald Trump's deadly anti-immigrant blitz targeting Democrat-led cities.
"Immigration enforcement is necessary for national security and for local security," Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley told reporters while flanked by other area police chiefs. "But how it's done is extremely important."
Bruley said that his department has "a long history of working exceptionally well" with "federal partners" including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"With that said, recently, these last two weeks, we, the law enforcement community, have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from US citizens," Bruley continued. "What we're hearing is they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause."
"We started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty," the chief said. "Every one of these individuals is a person of color."
"In Brooklyn Park, one particular officer who shared her story with me was stopped as she passed ICE going down the roadway," Bruley continued. "They demanded her paperwork, [but] she is a US citizen, and clearly would not have any paperwork. When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident. The phone was knocked out of her hands."
The ICE agent "had their gun drawn during this interaction, and after the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themself as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of... deescalating the incident," he said. "The agents then immediately left after hearing this."
"I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident," Bruley added. "In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers."
"We know that our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted," the chief claimed. "It has to stop."
A 2021 report prepared for the city of Brooklyn Park found serious concerns about racial disparities in traffic stops and other police interactions.
"Overall, some residents have had experiences in which police treated them with respect and dignity, and effectively deescalated stressful situations," the report states. "Others have had the opposite experience and have been threatened or intimidated by police. Themes also emerged about racial profiling and wrongful arrest that point to concerns of racism in the department."
Approximately 10 miles south of Brooklyn Park in Minneapolis, a US Department of Justice probe following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis Police Department officer Derek Chauvin found a "pattern or practice of conduct in violation of the US Constitution and federal law" among MPD personnel.
This included excessive force, violation of protesters' First Amendment rights, and illegal discrimination against Black and Indigenous people. A 2022 Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation also concluded that MPD engaged in a pattern of "discriminatory, race-based policing."
Bruley's remarks came as the Trump administration continued its deadly crackdown on undocumented immigrants and others suspected of being in the United States without authorization.
Last week, the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit aimed at ending “a startling pattern of abuse spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security that is fundamentally altering civic life in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota.”
As public outrage over ICE's heavy-handed tactics mounts after an agent shot and killed Renee Good earlier this month in Minneapolis, Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, and the Department of Defense has placed 1,500 active duty military troops on standby for possible deployment to Minnesota.
Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey—who famously told ICE to "get the fuck out" of the city after Good's killing and is among state and local officials subpoenaed by the DOJ Tuesday—said Sunday that Trump's threats are "clearly designed to intimidate."
"We're not going to be intimidated," Frey added.
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Michigan Organizer Speaks After Being Arrested Live on Camera for Protesting Trump Venezuela Attack
Jessica Plichta told a reporter that it is "the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime" just before she was arrested.
Jan 06, 2026
A 22-year-old woman who was detained for several hours by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday after speaking out against President Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela had allegedly "obstructed a roadway" and failed to obey officers—but she described an arrest in which the authorities appeared to be suspicious of her for protesting at all.
Jessica Plichta, a preschool teacher and organizer, told Zeteo on Monday that police officers repeatedly asked her why she was at a protest in Grand Rapids' Rosa Parks Circle, where hundreds of demonstrators spoke out against the US military's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—a violation of international law that has garnered worldwide condemnation.
Plichta had just finished speaking to a reporter with local ABC News affiliate WZZM about her opposition to the US invasion of Venezuela when two city police officers came up behind her and placed her under arrest.
It is "the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration, that are committing crimes both here in the US and against people in Venezuela," said Plichta just before the officers appeared on camera behind her.
Grand Rapids police arrest an antiwar activist live on air while taking an interview denouncing US military aggression in Venezuela pic.twitter.com/Zm16aFRDxq
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) January 5, 2026
Plichta told Zeteo, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as soon as I finished an interview speaking on Venezuela, I was arrested—the only person arrested out of 200 people."
She told the officers she was "not resisting arrest" as they led her toward a police car. A bystander approached and asked the police what Plichta was being detained for.
The officers replied that she had been "obstructing a roadway" and was accused of "failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer."
BREAKING: IN GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN, at approximately 5:30pm today, GRPD arrested local organizer Jessica Plichta on camera during a post-march press interview.
Plichta was sought out and targeted specifically by
GRPD for helping lead a U.S. Out Of Venezuela rally at Rosa Parks… pic.twitter.com/Uj6fLVba80
— Private IcedC81 Politics (@PvtIcedC81Pol) January 3, 2026
Plichta told Zeteo that the police drove her away from WZZM's cameras and then took her out of the car, patted her down, and confiscated her belongings. The officers told her she had been "making a scene" and asked her about her involvement in the protest: whether she was Venezuelan, "what she had to do with Venezuela," and what she was doing at the protest.
She also told Zeteo that the police asked her for the names of other demonstrators.
She was asked again what her connection to Venezuela was after she was taken to Kent County Correctional Facility, where she was held for about three hours and released after outcry from her fellow organizers.
"We are so accustomed to, and used to, repression when we speak out on anti-war topics,” Plichta told the outlet. “When we speak out for Venezuela, when we speak out for Palestine, we expect the police to want to shut that down.”
A spokesperson for the Grand Rapids Police Department told Zeteo that protesters had "refused lawful orders to move this free speech event to the sidewalk and instead began blocking intersections until the march ended," and said Plichta "was positively identified by officers," allowing for her arrest.
Though Plichta remained calm when she was arrested and suggested that she had taken her detention relatively in stride, supporters expressed shock that she had been targeted for speaking out against Trump's attack on Venezuela—which is broadly unpopular across the United States.
"What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?" asked Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official.
Friedman pointed out that among elected Democrats, there appeared to be little if any outcry over Plichta's arrest for participating in a peaceful protest.
If this happened to a conservative organizer, Republicans would make her a hero, a household name and a congressional candidate.Elected Democrats just pretend it isn't happening.
— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 11:29 AM
“Protesting in this country is sacred," Plichta told Zeteo, "and so it is important that our rights are protected and that we are not criminalized for peacefully protesting in a world full of escalating violence."
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