(ThyBlackMan.com) Of motives but because racial profiling, use of physical force in excess, and lethal force by police officers have become a norm in many of the lower economic regions of America, many critics have come to an understanding that police brutality /misconduct may be more racially motivated than not.
Data accumulated and analyzed by government agencies and independent auditing mechanisms have also arrived at similar conclusions, of bigotry on behalf of many urban law enforcement agencies.
To illustrate, according to Kenneth Jost’s CQ Press article, “Police misconduct” he states, “The newspaper’s analysis of more than 100,000 traffic stops, found that Blacks and Hispanics are being far more likely to get a citation than whites stopped for the same offense. For example, Blacks were twice likely and Hispanics four times as likely to be ticketed for improper taillights as whites stopped for the same reason”. Additionally, out of 684,330 persons stopped by NYPD officers in 2011, 87% were either Black or Hispanic (NYC ACLU).
Andrea M.Burch from the U.S. Department of Justice published a report,”Arrest-Related Deaths, 2003
2009—statistical tables “, dated November 2011. Burch’s report revealed that from 2003-2009 2,931 arrest related killings were committed by law-enforcement officials. Fifty-two percent of those killed were Black or Hispanic people, 41.7% of these arrest related killings were White, non-Hispanic. In New Orleans, investigators found that police shot 27 civilians during a 16-month period, all of which were African American (Jost).
Some critics forward-rush to a conclusion that race is not the predominated factor here. But they fail to acknowledge that arrest related killings are only a part of the broader scope of law enforcement’s misconduct. In Texas there have been multiple recent arrests where black women were stopped, searched and rapped by police officers on the scene. They disguise this heinous act as a “cavity search”. And according to Sam Cammack, an attorney for Charnesia, Corey a Texas woman then,twenty years old, who endured the horror of an eleven-minute long “cavity search”, “When you stick your fingers in somebody without their effective consent, that’s rape in any state that I know of,” said Cammack.
Furthermore, Police misconduct appears to have a flair for attacks bearing little or no discretion at all. As is illustrated in a Texas, court document describing how four undercover police officers of the Galveston, Texas, police department were dispatched to a report of three white female prostitutes soliciting men.
Somehow, those officers never made it to where they were dispatched to, but ended up at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Emily Milburn. There these four officers targeted the Milburn’s 12-year-old daughter Dymond Milburn as a prostitute. Dymond was beaten with flashlights and kicked by these four officers who claimed 120 pounds, five foot six inches tall twelve years old child resisted arrest for prostitution.
Dymond Milburn was playing in her own front yard when police attacked her, not out walking the streets or what prostitutes and pimps call the “the Blade”. It is sad to say it but cases like Dymond Milburn occur all too often, and many times unreported.
There are a plethora of reports that show police departments rejecting most citizens complaints of excessive force. Researchers at Michigan State University and Central Florida University did a study of eight local police departments and found out that six took no action on at least 90% of the complaints during the two year period studied. Only three officers were suspended and one terminated because of use-of-force complaints during the period.
Naturally, some form of profiling must occur in order for police work to be effective. In high crime areas that are comprised mostly of Blacks and Hispanics, in these segments of the community, there must be ethnic profiling of the offender. But in areas maintaining high ratios of racial amalgamation, Blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians, identifying impermissible profiling should not be difficult.
On several occasions, the U.S. Justice Department has intervened and investigated claims of police misconduct in dozens of law enforcement agencies over the past decade (Jost).
Upon discovering improper practices and other illegal activities. The Justice Department has offered suggestions on correcting the issue in broken law enforcement agencies. Maricopa County’s former Sherrif, Joe Arpaio, blatantly refused the Justice Department when they insisted he employ court-supervised changes in police and jailing policies.
Additionally, Mike McGinn the mayor of Seattle, Washington, once backed the claim of police chief John Diaz that there was nothing wrong with their police department or its conduct.
Later, Mayor McGinn recanted backing Diaz on that issue and directed him to engage some of the D.O.J’s proposed changes. It is clear to me that racism has ensconced itself in a disguised call police misconduct.
When agencies such as Maricopa County Sherriff’s office refused proposal (from DOJ) for necessary changes in it’s failed superstructure it undermind the integrity of the communities it swore to protect and serve. Without accepting and implementing proposed changes, the protectors will remain the predators.
As a result, community members must become more involved in pushing for law enforcement reforms regularly, not only when something bad happens. Vigilance on behalf of the community must begin early, as a sort of preemptive strike against poor police behavior and practices. There has to be an establishing of harmony between the communities and the law enforcement agencies who are sworn to protect them.
Consequently, programs can be created inside Black and Hispanic communities that would allow for members to interact with police on a more personal level, creating an intimacy between the two groups. In such a case, perhaps the police would become more reluctant to fire a shot or swing his/her baton at someone they have come to know and enjoy a friendship with.
There is a wall of separation between state agencies and its citizen that does not have to exist. The regional activist may consider employing ideas that will get communities, not under siege, to participate and to bat for an end to police misconduct. Let’s get them involved!
Furthermore, Andrea M.Burch’s U.S. Department of Justice published report showed that 41.7% of those killed while under arrest from 2003-2009 were white people. Paradigm shift! Can it be that police misconduct is shifting from “racial discrimination” as its primary impetus to dysfunctional persons as ill-trained power holders?
It is safe to say that this postulation of mine is in no way a novelty. I’m sure the mental state and competency of officers have come to surface before though obviously has not been taken seriously.
In conclusion, I believe that if there is an ensuing paradigm shift of this magnitude, it is important to consider the fact that previously unconsumed communities can expect the actuality of grim realities identical to those faced by the Blacks and Hispanic daily, imposed by police officers, if extreme changes are not made soon. As aforementioned, unaffected communities should become involved in helping to end police brutality in neighboring areas not as privileged as their own. And vice versa, those communities who are consistently burdened by police misconduct can come together and engage those unconsumed areas before the unthinkable happens to one of their twelve-year-old little girls like Dymond Milburn or an honor roll students gunned down by cops. If the problem with law enforcement is, dysfunctional interpersonal skill and ill-trained power holders, is allowed to persist unchecked they penetrate the upper echelon of society and bring harm to their men, women and children as well. We need to take a stand for law enforcement reform.
Staff Writer; Akira Lyons
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