Finding Good Cops

1. “Make it Stop”

That’s what Philonese Floyd told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, a day after burying his brother George, who was killed in police custody on Memorial Day in Minneapolis. Philonese Floyd called on Congress to pass legislation holding police officers accountable for excessive force. Watch him speak, here. Amazon has meanwhile banned police from using its facial recognition technology.

2. Seattle Standoff

It’s tense. On Twitter at least. President Trump accused Washington state’s governor and Seattle’s mayor of not doing enough to “take back” a cop-free “autonomous zone” created by protesters in the city, threatening to intervene himself. They hit back, with Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan telling Trump to “go back to his bunker.”

3. The Show Must Go On

Most European nations waited until they had crossed their peak in coronavirus cases before starting to reopen. Not so with India, Mexico and many other major nations that are relaxing lockdowns even as their daily caseload is still rising. With a far greater population, India is now behind only the U.S., Brazil, Russia and the U.K., with nearly 300,000 known cases.

4. Knocked Down

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is projecting a 6 percent global economic contraction in 2020 — the worst peacetime recession in a century. The U.S. Federal Reserve is warning that the recovery will be slow, with unemployment in America still as high as 9.3 percent at the end of 2020.

5. Food Fight

European food delivery firm Just Eat Takeaway.com is buying Grubhub for $7.3 billion, after an attempted acquisition by Uber hit a regulatory roadblock. Just Eat and GrubHub will merge to form the world’s largest food-ordering firm outside of China.

It isn’t easy to speak up for the police these days. But what if the problem isn’t with police officers themselves — but with America’s approach to policing? These countries offer lessons.

1. Finland

It’s a relatively homogenous, sparse country. But its lessons could apply globally. Officers train longer before joining the force — three years compared to a maximum of 36 weeks in the U.S. Cops in Finland need to seek permission from superiors before shooting, where possible. The result? Finns trust their police to secure law and order more than inhabitants of any other country — even though police collectively shoot their firearms only 10 times a year on average.

2. Georgia

This nation had a terrible reputation for corruption until 2003, when it abolished its entire police force, and rebuilt it, ground up, with help from the EU, the U.N. and the Soros Foundation. Police salaries were raised from about $50 a month to $200 a month — but the message was clear: corrupt officers would be fired. It’s an approach Camden, New Jersey followed in 2012, similarly dissolving its police force and recreating it. Georgia has also built see-through glass-paneled police stations, so officers inside know they can be seen from the outside.

3. Rwanda

The credibility of law enforcement was at rock bottom after the 1994 genocide, in which police officers were implicated, too. But the country’s cops have since trained with police from Sweden and then South Africa to build a force that in 2017-18 was rated as the most trusted in Africa by its citizens — though the country’s police have faced accusations of targeting political opponents of President Paul Kagame.

4. Chile

Sometimes, a quick response is what’s needed. The country’s police has for years been the most trusted among its peers in Latin America. After an officer shot dead an indigenous man in 2018, President Sebastián Piñera sacked his national police chief. And amid anti-government protests last year, the police suspended the use of rubber bullets after a study showed that they had more lead than rubber. Police in several U.S. cities have used rubber bullets against protestors in recent days.

1. Jewel Burks

Google’s head of startups, Burks recently co-founded Collab Capital, an Atlanta-based fund dedicated to investing in Black founders, with the target of building a $50 million pot. Just 1 percent of venture capital funding flows to Black entrepreneurs in America. Burks and her colleagues want to change that.

2. Gwynne Shotwell

The 54-year-old president of SpaceX is one of Elon Musk’s longest-serving colleagues and the force behind the recent landmark launch of the firm’s spacecraft — the first time a commercial rocket has catapulted NASA astronauts into orbit. As private sector space exploration expands, keep your telescopes trained on her.

3. Kudzi Chikumbu

The Johannesburg native is TikTok’s head of content and partnership, and the brain behind the success of a platform that’s vaulted the personalities of James Charles, Loren Gray and Amanda Cerny to stardom. The Stanford business school graduate has previously worked with Hulu.

4. Bernardine Evaristo & Reni Eddo-Lodge

Evaristo on Wednesday became the first British women of color to top the paperback fiction charts in the U.K. with her Booker Prize-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other. Eddo-Lodge took the top spot in the non-fiction category for her book, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.

Because the past shapes our present, here are some fun…

1. 50 Shades of Grey … From the 19th Century

Murder. Bigamy. Lots of sex…and intrigue. Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s pioneering piece of fiction shook Victorian England, revealing the more scandalous side of the upper classes. Read more here.

2. How Pan Am Helped the Allies Win WWII in Africa

The first commercial carrier to connect the Americas with Europe and Africa, it helped the U.S. create vital supply lines to support forces battling Germany in North Africa. Read OZY’s feature.

3. The Origin of the Three-Course Meal

The credit goes to Persian polymath Ziryab, who in the ninth century insisted that the emir’s court in Cordoba serve a soup, a main dish and a dessert — in that order — forming the basis for what’s a global culinary practice. He also introduced crystal glasses — they were previously made of metal.

Hungry after reading about Ziryab? Or thirsty? We’ve got just what you need.