In a recent article, ProPublica focused on one’s chances of being shot by a police officer based on skin color.
It
explicitly shows that black males are more likely to be shot by a police
officer than white people. Using the data from reports, it was found that black
men are said to be 21 times as likely to be killed by the police as white
males. This is true at all ages and increased in the last couple of years; in
2010 to 2012, 14 out of the 15 teens shot fleeing arrest were black.
The
investigation takes into consideration many factors such as the race of the
officers involved, the circumstances cited for the use of deadly force and the
age of those killed. 90% of those killings were made by white police officers.
67% of those who were killed because they were fleeing an arrest were black.
77% of the ones killed without any specific circumstances, listed as
“undetermined”, were black. These numbers are explicit enough to point out the
problem. On the opposite side, 62% of these police killings were justified by
“officer under attack”.
Some
people argue that this article does not take into consideration that a lot of
African Americans’ killings happen within a gang or drug dealing background. To
these comments, the example of Tamir Rice could be answered. He was a 12
year-old boy who was killed in a city park in Cleveland, Ohio by two police
officers after a 911 call saying there was a boy with a gun which was “probably
fake”. A video of his murder is available online; there we can see a boy
playing with a toy gun with no one around. The police car stopped right in
front of the child and within a few seconds, he was shot dead. Then, four
minutes passed before Rice could receive any kind of medical attention. It is
hard to give an opinion or even judge as we can never know the whole story but
the video shows clear events; the police car pulled up and shot him within
seconds, Rice had no time to explain or to talk: what if the car had been
parked a bit further?
These
are a few examples of racial disparities in the American judicial system. The
United States of America conveys worldwide the image of an open-minded and
evolved country when it comes to human Civil Rights since the election of
Barack Obama in 2008. Why does the country need to put up a façade when the
reality is fairly different?
Following the protests that have happened in the
country, president Obama recently proposed initiatives to increase trust
between police officers and their communities such as the implementation of
50,000 body cameras which would be worn by police officers at all times. These
cameras could provide evidences and ease the tensions in disputed cases.
Your last comment about the body cameras is interesting because the issue has come up a lot in the relatively new incident with Eric Garner. There was a camera filming the whole incident, the officer was not indicted, and the lady filming the incident was indicted. I think body cameras are a step forward, but as we discussed in class, progress could mean being beat once a day instead of being beat twice a day. Obama's suggestion is not moot, but it obviously is going to take a much larger change to prevent incidents such as Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner.
ReplyDeleteWhy these protest, both violent and non violent are necessary and need to continue in order to enact some actual change. The police are only acting at the behest of the society that they are policing. Our society at large is ok with these unjustifiable killings just like it is ok with the fact racially profiling is an ok practice of law enforcement.
ReplyDeleteTyler Jones
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