Columbus Police Accountability Project- Jonathan Beard & David Harewood

Carolyn Harding with Jonathan Beard and David Harewood, organizers with the Columbus Police Accountability Project, “To provide information for empowered citizens to learn more about how to exercise our collective power to ensure police accountability. Finally..” Jon Beard's life goal is to help make the world a better place. He now works in the field of career technical education after working for 22 years in community-led redevelopment of distressed neighborhoods. He has helped lead multiple citizen ballot initiatives to reform Columbus City Council and regulate campaign contributions, coached and then ran a youth baseball league, and volunteered with many social welfare associations in his 30 years in Columbus. David S. Harewood is an advocate and artist who’s spent the last decade in Columbus to give voice to the voiceless and help shorten the ”long arc of history” toward justice with every project and campaign. Having forged alliances and friendships with multiple organizations addressing, and victims of, police abuse, he joined with the Columbus Police Accountability Project as a way to provide protection for and a voice to those long afraid to speak out about the wrongs committed against them in the name of “law and order”. This is from the Columbus Police Accountability Website: “We are a collection of African American community leaders and involved citizens and our allies who are calling for the federal protection from a rogue division of police that has a pattern and practice of violating our community’s rights under the Constitution of the United States of America and the country’s various federally-ensured civil rights. We seek federal protection because for the past decades city political leadership has failed in that task. We will support our call for federal oversight by providing collecting and the testimony of Columbus residents who have experienced such lawless policing since the DOJ last investigated Columbus in 1998.” Columbus is a dangerous city, the Columbus Division of Police’s violenc