When I ring Hamid Khan, Los Angeles has just been hit by a hurricane. Fortunately, the onslaught of natural disasters hadn’t inflicted too much damage to his neighbourhood. ‘It’s all good, allll good…’ he tells me, in a rolling LA accent.
Khan is used to being in the eye of the storm. For over a decade the 66-year-old has been on the frontline of the fight against expanding police surveillance in LA, home to one of the most technologically-resourced forces in the US. In 2011 he co-founded the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an abolitionist group which has been among the most effective at challenging the encroachment of surveillance into the every-day lives of Angelinos, especially the city’s Black, brown and poor communities who are disproportionately targeted.
I spoke to Khan and fellow organizer Matyos Kidane about their work to expose and confront the Los Angeles Police Department’s practices – from facial recognition and drones to datadriven policing – and why they want to abolish police surveillance
