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from Racial and Ethnic Discrimination in
the United States, The Status of Compliance by the U.S. Government with
the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
Compiled By THE WORLD
ORGANIZATION AGAINST TORTURE USA
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prepared
by
Center
for Constitutional Rights
Movement
Support Resource Center
Police
brutality against people of color has become one of the most significant
human rights problems in the United States.Many
local police departments throughout the nation engage in discriminatory
conduct against people of African, Latino and Asian descent.National
attention has been given to a number of recent police brutality cases,
such as the Rodney King incident in 1991, the Abner Louima incident in
1997 and the Amadou Diallo shooting in 1999, awakening Americans to the
extent that racism remains a major element in the culture and practices
of police departments.
Examples
of the pattern of human rights violations against people of color by police
include: use of excessive force (e.g. beating, shooting and torture of
civilians while in police custody); racist and other offensive language
and racial harassment; arrests and searches based solely on race and ethnicity;
overuse of police checkpoints and roadblocks in communities of color; the
arrest of minority group members, particularly youth, for “quality of life”
crimes such as loitering; racial profiling – the stopping of individuals
because of their race or ethnicity; and racial discrimination and reprisals
against police officers of color by other police officers.Police
brutality against people of color is not an isolated event carried out
by a few “bad apple” police officers.It
is an ingrained and thoroughgoing part of police practices demonstrating
a pattern of violence and abuse targeted to people of color.
Despite
recent progress by the U.S. Department of Justice in the civil prosecution
of law enforcement officials and police departments for police brutality
in a few major cities, the federal government overall lacks the commitment,
financial resources, personnel and funding to eliminate and prevent patterns
of racial and ethnic discrimination by police and police departments nationally.
Current federal law is failing to protect people of color against police
brutality, eliminate racism in police training and prevent police practices
that seek to avoid accountability by covering up abuses. The Federal Government
has not even complied with the statutory requirement that it compile and
publicly release statistics on police brutality on an annual basis.
State
and local governments also are failing to do enough to curtail police brutality
against people of color by their law enforcement agencies.Local
prosecutors are failing to pursue criminal cases against abusive and corrupt
police officers.Police officers
and departments continue to evade accountability by not dealing with cases
through their internal review process on an effective basis. Civilian review
boards, established in some communities, generally lack sufficient authority
and funding to effectively investigate and punish police misconduct.
