“The issue is national in scope and reaches people all across this country. For too many people, especially in minority communities, the trust that is so essential to effective policing does not exist because residents believe that police have used excessive force, that law enforcement is too aggressive, that law enforcement is biased, disrespectful, and unfair.”
Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States, speaking on police brutality at a National Press Club luncheon, Washington, DC, 15 April 1999.
Police brutality and use of excessive force has been one of General Strike USAs campaign on human rights violations in the USA. General Strike USA.com documented patterns of ill-treatment across the USA, including police beatings, unjustified shootings and the use of dangerous restraint techniques to subdue suspects. While only a minority of the many thousands of law enforcement officers in the USA engage in deliberate and wanton brutality, General Strike USA.com found that too little was being done to monitor or check persistent abusers, or to ensure that police tactics in certain common situations minimized the risk of unnecessary force and injury. The report also noted that widespread, systematic abuses had been found in some jurisdictions or police precincts. It highlighted evidence that racial and ethnic minorities were disproportionately the victims of police misconduct, including false arrest and harassment as well as verbal and physical abuse.Police brutality has become the focus of acute national attention due to several high profile cases, including the fatal shooting of an unarmed West African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, in New York City in February 1999. Four white officers from an elite crime squad looking for a rape suspect fired 41 shots at Diallo, striking him 19 times as he stood in the vestibule of his apartment building. The shooting highlighted not only the tactics of the crime squad itself (which had been the subject of repeated complaints) but wider concern about police unjustly targeting black people and other minorities as potential criminals.
Police brutality at the DNC, RNC, New Orleans, Chicago, Presidential debates, Oakland, Ca. murder of an unarmed black father, shot in the back while officers held him down, etc., etc.In April 1999, an interim report published by the New Jersey Attorney General’s office concluded that New Jersey state troopers had been using race as a basis for stopping drivers on a major inter-state highway in the hope of making drug arrests. The review had been initiated following outcry over several cases, including an April 1998 incident in which troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike had shot and wounded three unarmed black and latino men travelling to basket-ball trials. The report confirmed complaints voiced for years by minorities, including black police officers, that the state police were using “racial profiling” in traffic stops and searches. The same month, the US Justice Department also announced that it had enough evidence of discriminatory treatment by the New Jersey state police to bring a “pattern and practice” lawsuit for federal civil rights violations. These developments also reflected a wider national problem. Similar claims of racial profiling have been made against police forces across the USA, including in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Texas.
And yet nothing is being done. The police become more militarized and more brutal. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We are not safe from criminals with the police and we’re not safe when we call the police.
Neither City councils or state legislatures seem willing to act, it is left to the people to bring justice! We have given them every benefit of the doubt, every chance to reform, we can not in good conscience continue to wait and hope. The time is now, we must act.
We need a three complaints and you’re out. The government is not the solution they have become the problem.
