Daily Times

Another grand jury’s decision not to indict yet another white police officer who had killed an unarmed black man in New York on November 22 justifies the fulminating anger of the US public against the authorities. Eric Garner (alias Big ‘E’), a 43-year-old African-American, was killed by a chokehold by a New York police officer, while the entire incident was being recorded by an onlooker. As the jury gave its verdict last Wednesday, people immediately took to the streets to protest against this travesty of justice. The remnants of recent agitations over the acquittal of Darren Wilson, who also had killed an unarmed black man in Ferguson this summer, had not abated yet and the recent decision only intensified the protests manifold. What cannot be denied here is the presence of an obvious pattern: the US police is riddled with racism and makes use of unjustified force against coloured people in general and blacks in particular. A report that reinforces this view as a result of an investigation carried out by the US Justice Department shows a clear excessive and unjustified use of force by Cleveland police. Cleveland is a town where a 12-year-old boy was shot dead for waving a replica gun that shoots small plastic pellets by a rookie police officer last week. The investigation, which covered 600 police encounters from 2010 to 2013, proved that the policing problems emerged from “inadequate training, insufficient accountability and ineffective polices”. Clearly, the US is in need of serious police reforms because the hostility between black people and white police officers is only increasing.

But this injustice has its grounds elsewhere as well. Though it can be said that the nation as a whole has put the dark era of slavery behind it, the element of discrimination against black people is still pretty much there. For instance, Cleveland’s population constitutes of 52 percent blacks and 37 percent whites, whereas the proportion of black to white people in the police department presents a diametrically opposite picture, i.e. 25 percent to 65 percent. To assert that this disproportion naturally leads to injustices would not be too far off the mark. White police officers adopt a fascist and brutal attitude towards African-Americans who have a number of stigmas attached to the colour of their skin. And then the lack of accountability of white officers by the judicial system provides them further immunity. However, this time around, when the entire nation, irrespective of their colour, is out on the streets to demand justice, a ray of hope seems to be appearing that will end this brutality. *