More African American men and women are getting Killed Due to Police Brutality, Leading to Low Conviction rates and Unfair Trials
One of the most famous trials of a police officer shooting and killing an African American male was the Michael Brown case. In this case Michael Brown was unarmed, did not oppose a threat to the officer and was pulled over because of jay walking. With those factors the police officer was still found not guilty and received no jail time. One thing that shocked me the most when conducting my research was that a lot of the police officers who are arrested for killing an African American man or woman where not found guilty or received no prison time for the crime, especially in the Michael Brown case. Many researchers believe that there is a rise in African American men and women getting killed due to police brutality because of the lack of training for police officers, racial tensions, and lack of government discipline.
Statistics show that a high rate of police officers received little to know jail time when they have killed an African American man or women which is a huge lack of government discipline. In the article “Racism and Police Brutality in America” by Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson they state that only 64% of officers who went to trial for police brutality cases between April 2009 and June 2010 where convicted and received prison time. Out of that 64% the average time served was 14 months. This is an alarming low rate when it comes to these crimes, know officer should be able to not get the same treatment as a regular citizen for committing such crimes against the people they are supposed to be protecting. This demonstrates a huge lack of discipline on the government. George Sand “drew attention to the statistically high percent of murders by police, they indicated that police officers are 16 times more likely to murder” (qtd. Chaney, Robertson). This high rate of police officers that are likely to murder an individual is an alarming number. This shows that not only are these police officers not exercising their duties and the right way they are also not protecting the community. On the other hand, the low conviction rate goes back to unfair trials.
Trials are unfair in some cases because it is the polices word against the family of the victim especially in cases with no video footage. In the article “The trials of Ferguson” Pema Levy describes a case that happened 14 years before the Michael Browns case. Levy states that:
On the afternoon of June 12, 2000, two unarmed black me pulled into the parking lot of a Jack in the Box in the northern suburbs of St. Louis, just a few miles from where Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, earlier this month. In the car were Earl Murray, a small time drug dealer, and his friend Ronald Beasley. Waiting for them were a dozen detectives. By the time Murray realized it was sting, he was surrounded. Panicked, he put his car in reverse and slammed into a police SUV behind him. Two officers approaching the car from the front opened fire. Twenty-one shots rained down on Murray and Beasley. (24) When this case went to the grand jury the “story presented was that Murray’s car moved toward the two officers, who then fired out of self-defense. The grand jury declined to indict the officers” (Levy 24). The fact that the judge and the jury in these trials rely on video footage instead of the facts and evidence of the case to make a decision is not a fair trial for the victim and the victim’s family. The information provided in the trial should lead to the indictment of the officers because they were not harmed in the altercation, but two unarmed black men were shot at “twenty-one” times and killed, without posing a real threat to the officers. This is a lack of discipline on the government’s part because officers should be properly trained to understand when they really are dealing with a situation that may pose a threat to their lives. 14 years later the city of Ferguson is in the same situation again with the Michael Brown case. As well as in certain cases the judge may have some type of connection with the police department and may rule in favor of that officer because of this.
In some cases, the judge supports the police department and will most likely vote in their favor not to convict the officer, leaving the victim to an unfair trial. Jerryl Christmas, a local criminal defense lawyer explains that “he doesn’t believe that Bob McCullochs office is going to issue any charges” (qtd. Levy). Christmas explains this by stating that “McCulloch, 63, has served as St. Louis County’s prosecuting attorney since 1991. A democrat, he is running for reelection this November unopposed. His sympathies for the cops run deep. His father was a St. Louis policeman killed in the line of duty by a black man when McCulloch was 12. His brother, nephew and cousin all served with the St. Louis police. His mother worked as a clerk for the force for 20 years. And his loyalty to the police is exceptional” (Levy 25). With this information someone going to trial and having McCulloch as there prosecutor would automatically believe that he’s going to rule in the polices favor. This is leaving the victim to an unfair trial, a trial that has already been decided. This a huge problem in our legal system today, a lot of corruption plays a part in what may or may not happen in a particular trial. Although by law the judge is supposed to remain unbiased in a case like this where Bob McCulloch is so strongly tied to the police department of St. Louis and has a strong connection with racial tensions due to his father being killed by officer, his decision may be swayed. Someone should have noticed this and assigned this case to a different prosecutor. This a huge lack of government discipline and a failure to obtain the law of a fair trial. This also demonstrates how maybe racial issues can play a role in the prosecuting system. Not to mention that there are a lot of police officers that take advantage of the job they have.
There are a lot of cops that take advantage of their job and use unnecessary force against certain people or races. In the article “Armed and Dangerous? An examination of Fatal Shootings of Unarmed Black People by Police” by Cassandra Chaney and Ray V. Robertson state that “In an analysis of accounts more than 12,000 police homicides from 1999 to 2012 contained FBI’s supplementary homicide report, young African Americans men (ages 15-19) were twenty-one times more likely to get killed by police than their White counterparts (qtd. Gabrielson, Jones, Sagara 2014). This evidence exhibits some issue with White officers killing Black males, this is an alarming rate at which officers are likely to commit this crime. The lack of intervention from the government is displayed in these statistics. Although these statistics are true “Generally speaking, police officers do not serve time for killing African American men”(53), there is a huge low rate of convections of officers for the crime of killing an African American male or female, “since 2005 only 54 officers were only charged for killing civilians. This is not only blacks but also whites. In most of these cases one of the four where present: “(1) A victim was shot in the back;(2) there was a video recording of the incident; (3) incriminating testimony from fellow officers; and (4) allegations of a cover up” (qtd. Kindy & Kelly). A lot of the police officers commit crimes thinking they won’t be convicted because they are the law, and the government is supporting those ideas by not convicting officers in police brutality cases. Furthermore, in recent studies researchers have shown that police officers make certain decisions during high stressed situations that are not always logical.
Police officers are more likely to pull a weapon on an African American suspect than any other race. In Rachel Nuwer’s “When cops lose Control” she explains a study that was done at Florida State University and “In Correll’s experiments, too, cops generally made better targeting decisions than under-graduates did—they were no more likely to shoot unarmed blacks then they were unarmed whites—but they were still faster to pull the trigger at black avatars then white ones when they did fire.” This experiment shows the decision officers make when deciding whether or not to pull the trigger, the fact that they are faster to pull the trigger at black avatars shows that there is some underlying feelings or race issues. The fact that the research shows that more police officers are more likely to pull the trigger on African American males shows that there needs to be a huge change in the training programs. In many areas training programs are changing the way the train officers to look at certain situations “ In 2010 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency offered a $40-millon budget to design an evidence-based training course for teaching military personal how to handle people of different background’s in high risk situations. Now their company Polis Solutions, is providing similar coaching to local police forces across the country” (Nuwer) Nuwer explains that this program helps reduce negative interactions with police and public and help the social skills of the officers to avoid scenarios that deal with force. In “Imagining racial justice in America” by David Dante Troutt he explains the steps being taken to help prevent the huge amount of African American deaths due to police brutality. He explains how
“Cops must wear cameras and microphones to preempt exculpatory storytelling, cops must be well trained in avoiding implicit bias, so they don’t dehumanize the public they serve. In fact, judges should be urged to allow juries to hear evidence of implicit bias among police officers, prosecutors should more aggressively seek manslaughter charges rather than murder charges, so that lethal mistakes don’t go unpunished, police departments must finally keep reliable records on their use of deadly force so we can stop guessing at numbers, and the appointment of special prosecutors in questionable cases should be routine, to avoid the conflict of interest between prosecutors and police” (19). For these reasons there needs to be a huge change in our training programs, government discipline, and improvement on racial issues.
Overall the lack of discipline from the government, racial tensions, and lack of training have led to a number of killings of African Americans due to police brutality. Unless we improve the training these officer receive and give the victims of police brutality a fair trial, we will continue to see a number of killings grow over the years. The unfair treatment of African Americans is rising at an alarming rate, the only way we can stop this is to make changes to the government, and our police department. There needs to be better treatment of citizens of any race.
writing to share my voice 