Why a Killer Cop is Not Arrested

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4279
Date Written:  2014-11-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2014
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX20822

Miah analyzes the grand jury system and police conduct in the United States to explain why the large number of African Americans killed by police are considered justifiable homicides in court.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

NEARLY TWO TIMES a week in the United States a white police officer kills a Black person during a seven-year period ending in 2012, according to the most recent accounts of justifiable homicide reported to the FBI.

"While the racial analysis is striking, the database it’s based on has been long considered flawed and largely incomplete. The killings are self-reported by law enforcement and not all police departments participate, so the database undercounts the actual number of deaths…(T)he numbers are not audited after they are submitted to the FBI and the statistics on 'justifiable' homicides have conflicted with independent measures of fatalities at the hands of police." (USA Today, August 15)

Darren Wilson, the killer of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, continues to receive full pay and freedom. At the Ferguson police department many cops are wearing "I am Darren Wilson" bracelets to mock the chants of Black men and women who chant "I am Michael Brown" at city council meetings and on the street.

Cops and prosecutors assume that Wilson used "reasonable force" and only faces scrutiny because of the public outrage and protests. The struggle is between the historical pattern of African Americans shot by white cops, and the collective fightback to win justice. It is far from settled who will win this tug of war.