UN Condemns U.S. Police Brutality, Calls For ‘Stand Your Ground’ Review

Finally the UN has mus­tered the courage to chal­lenge the United States of America to halt the police abuse and killing of African-American people.

The American Press has done a ter­ri­ble job of high­light­ing what is an epi­dem­ic of abuse, and mur­der of African-Americans by police all across the Country. For decades blacks have com­plained of inequities in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Today it is just as bad with stud­ies show­ing that even in grade schools African-American chil­dren are much more like­ly to be dis­ci­plined, sus­pend­ed and expelled from school. This con­tin­ues through­out the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Police tar­get, pro­file, and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly abuse and kill blacks as a mat­ter of course. For the most part, whites remain silent, and in many cas­es are sup­port­ive of the bru­tal­i­ty met­ed out to their black and brown neigh­bors. Many peo­ple of col­or argue it is much more dif­fi­cult to deal with the police than the Klux Klux Klan, how do you fight back against the law they bemoan?

The courts are not much bet­ter, in many cas­es Judges mete out longer sen­tences to black offend­ers than they do for white offend­ers for sim­i­lar offences. Even at the high­est lev­el, the Supreme Court, there is sys­tem­at­ic and insti­tu­tion­al­ized Racism. Just recent­ly that body stripped away key sec­tions of the vot­ing rights act, which pro­tect­ed the rights of minori­ties to vote.

It is not get­ting bet­ter, in fact it has arguably got­ten much worse since President Obama was elect­ed to office in 2008. It appears to be a white-lash[sic] against African-Americans being exe­cut­ed by the police. This page has con­sis­tent­ly called for Human Rights Agencies to stop play­ing favorites by ignor­ing the atroc­i­ties being car­ried out by police in the United States. We have demand­ed that these Agencies risk irrel­e­vance if the con­tin­ue to ignore what is hap­pen­ing in America while they trum­pet abuse in small­er less pow­er­ful nations.

American offi­cials will seek to min­i­mize and dis­cred­it the UN con­dem­na­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly the reac­tionar­ies on the Political Right. They will do so as they did while they beat the drums of war against Iraq. This spot­light from the UN may not mean any­thing to many white Americans, but to the rest of the world it means a hell of a lot.

RECENT PUBLICATION

Where are the Human Rights Agencies in America? http://chatt-a-box.com/​human-rights-agen­cies-amer­i­ca/​

There is a seri­ous and ever increas­ing threat to cit­i­zens rights as a result of Police aggres­sive­ness and dis­re­spect of the very cit­i­zen­ry they sup­pos­ed­ly serve. It is shock­ing that after serv­ing 10 years myself as a Police Officer I am now loathe to encour­age a young per­son to serve as a law enforce­ment officer.

Law Enforcement is no longer pub­lic safe­ty, it is now Government con­tain­ment of the mass­es through bru­tal and mur­der­ous police depart­ments. We are unable to divest our­selves of the Police as an enti­ty, after all the police are nec­es­sary in a civ­i­lized soci­ety. there is a huge prob­lem when the police can­not be trust­ed to act with civil­ity and are seen as an equal offend­er to peace and good order.

As the father of black sons, my great­est fear when my sons get in their cars to enter the streets, is not for reg­u­lar crim­i­nals but for some of the crim­i­nals now wear­ing badges and parad­ing as police offi­cers. There is a grow­ing trend by police in the United States to charge peo­ple they do not like with resist­ing arrest. Unwitting law mak­ers attach seri­ous penal­ties to the charge to encour­age cit­i­zens to sub­mit peace­ably to being arrested.

What police have done is use it to send cit­i­zens to prison unjust­ly, as well as to jus­tify using exces­sive force on those they want to admin­is­ter a beat­ing to. In New City alone the New York city Police Department filed over 55,000 resist­ing arrest charges against New Yorkers over a 10 year peri­od. Even though the first charge was for a minor offense. Thankfully some Judges are not blind­ed by police sup­port, most of these cas­es have been tossed out along with the under­ly­ing charge.

GENEVA, Aug 29 (Reuters) — The U.N. racism watch­dog urged the United States on Friday to halt the exces­sive use of force by police after the fatal shoot­ing of an unarmed black teenag­er by a white police­man touched off riots in Ferguson, Missouri.

Minorities, par­tic­u­lar­ly African Americans, are vic­tims of dis­par­i­ties, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said after exam­in­ing the U.S. record.

“Racial and eth­nic dis­crim­i­na­tion remains a seri­ous and per­sis­tent prob­lem in all areas of life from de fac­to school seg­re­ga­tion, access to health care and hous­ing,” Noureddine Amir, CERD com­mit­tee vice chair­man, told a news briefing.

Teenager Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police offi­cer on Aug. 9, trig­ger­ing vio­lent protests that rocked Ferguson — a St. Louis sub­urb — and shone a glob­al spot­light on the state of race rela­tions in America.

“The exces­sive use of force by law enforce­ment offi­cials against racial and eth­nic minori­ties is an ongo­ing issue of con­cern and par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the shoot­ing of Michael Brown,” said Amir, an expert from Algeria.

“This is not an iso­lat­ed event and illus­trates a big­ger prob­lem in the United States, such as racial bias among law enforce­ment offi­cials, the lack of prop­er imple­men­ta­tion of rules and reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the use of force, and the inad­e­qua­cy of train­ing of law enforce­ment officials.”

The pan­el of 18 inde­pen­dent experts grilled a senior U.S. del­e­ga­tion on Aug. 13 about what they said was per­sis­tent racial dis­crim­i­na­tion against African-Americans and oth­er minori­ties, includ­ing with­in the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.

U.S. Ambassador Keith Harper told the pan­el that his nation had made “great strides toward elim­i­nat­ing racial dis­crim­i­na­tion” but con­ced­ed that “we have much left to do”.

Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, who shot Brown, has been put on paid leave and is in hid­ing. A St. Louis County grand jury has begun hear­ing evi­dence and the U.S. Justice Department has opened its own investigation.

Police have said Brown strug­gled with Wilson when shot. But some wit­ness­es say Brown held up his hands and was sur­ren­der­ing when he was shot mul­ti­ple times in the head and chest.

“STAND YOUR GROUND” LAWS

In its con­clu­sions issued on Friday, the U.N. pan­el said “Stand Your Ground” Laws, a con­tro­ver­sial self-defense statute in 22 U.S. states, should be reviewed to “remove far-reach­ing immu­ni­ty and ensure strict adher­ence to prin­ci­ples of neces­si­ty and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty when dead­ly force is used for self-defense”.

Ron Davis, father of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old shot dead in a car in Jacksonville, Florida dur­ing an argu­ment over loud rap music in November 2012, attend­ed the Geneva ses­sion. Sybrina Fulton, moth­er of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen killed in Miami, Florida by a neigh­bor­hood watch vol­un­teer, testified.

The U.N. pan­el mon­i­tors com­pli­ance with a treaty rat­i­fied by 177 coun­tries includ­ing the United States.

“The Committee remains con­cerned at the prac­tice of racial pro­fil­ing of racial or eth­nic minori­ties by law enforce­ment offi­cials, includ­ing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Transportation Security Administration, bor­der enforce­ment offi­cials and local police,” it said, urg­ing investigations.

The experts called for address­ing obsta­cles faced by minori­ties and indige­nous peo­ples to exer­cise their right to vote effec­tive­ly. This was due to restric­tive vot­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion laws, dis­trict ger­ry­man­der­ing and state-lev­el laws that dis­en­fran­chise peo­ple con­vict­ed of felonies, it said.

Jamil Dakwar of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the U.N. rec­om­men­da­tions high­light­ed “short­com­ings on racial equal­i­ty that we are see­ing play out today on our streets, at our bor­ders and in the vot­ing booth.

“When it comes to human rights, the United States must prac­tice at home what it preach­es abroad,” he said.

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