Source: https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com/resources-all/how-to-clean-up-copaganda
Publisher: Interrupting Criminalization (Lewis Raven Wallace)
Date Published: October 15, 2025
Relevant To: Comprehensive media-accountability toolkit re: police disinformation; directly applicable methodology for BPA’s approach to law-enforcement/vendor claims
Verification Status: Verified
Notes: Confirmed via full-text fetch of the complete online toolkit (the resources-all page was a thin landing page; the actual guide is at interruptingcriminalization.com/how-to-clean-up-copaganda). By Lewis Raven Wallace (Interrupting Criminalization’s Abolition Journalism Fellow), this is an extensive, heavily-cited toolkit for journalists/communicators/organizers on countering law-enforcement disinformation (“copaganda”). Structure: (1) Evidence that police lie — cites Guardian, BuzzFeed News, Washington Post, USA Today, and a former SF police commissioner all documenting systemic police deception in public statements; (2) A journalist checklist: assume law enforcement statements may be false, especially where officers face potential liability; do shoe-leather reporting rather than repeating statements; seek alternate sources; contextualize police statements explicitly as “according to police” rather than fact; avoid passive-voice/euphemistic police phrasing (e.g. “officer-involved shooting”); avoid blaming terminology like “excited delirium” (rejected by the American Medical Association and American College of Medical Toxicology as a legitimate diagnosis, cited in 142+ police-custody deaths per AP); (3) Two detailed case studies with before/after coverage analysis: the July 2024 police killing of Sonya Massey in Springfield, IL (initial police statement omitted that officers fired the shots; body-cam footage released 16 days later showed Deputy Sean Grayson shooting her in the head after she was compliant, then discouraging first aid; Grayson had worked 6 police departments in under 5 years with a DUI history) and 2023 Capitol Police violence against ~150 pro-Palestine DNC protesters (police claimed protesters were violent; a subsequent lawsuit detailed strangulation and pepper-spray assaults, including protesters strangled with keffiyehs; only one arrest resulted despite police claims of protester violence); (4) specific question banks for officer-involved shootings, deaths in custody, and post-protest coverage; (5) sample qualifying/disclaimer language journalists can use when publishing police statements, each backed by citations; (6) FOIA/public-records guidance including MuckRock resources (already cataloged elsewhere in this library, ID 3567) and the National Freedom of Information Coalition. HIGH VALUE for BPA — directly reusable methodology for BPA’s own approach to law-enforcement statements about surveillance technology (e.g., treating Flock/police claims about accuracy, ALPR search justifications, or incident narratives with the same evidentiary skepticism), and the FOIA/alternate-sourcing sections parallel BPA’s existing PRA-based verification standards closely.