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| The black people killed by police are just one piece of a larger structural problem | The black people killed by police are just one piece of a larger structural problem |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| Darnell L Moore | Darnell L Moore |
| Black people are, and have been, overly targeted and abused by police in the United States – which helps explain a Gallup poll which, combining data from 2011-2014, revealed that black people in the US have significantly lower levels of confidence in the institution of police than white Americans. The same poll also suggests that black people are not as likely as white people to say the ethics and honesty of police is very high or high. | Black people are, and have been, overly targeted and abused by police in the United States – which helps explain a Gallup poll which, combining data from 2011-2014, revealed that black people in the US have significantly lower levels of confidence in the institution of police than white Americans. The same poll also suggests that black people are not as likely as white people to say the ethics and honesty of police is very high or high. |
| Police profiling and mistreatment, which could inevitably lead to our deaths, is not an exaggerated possibility for many black Americans. Yet, the insidious pattern of police abuse in the US is hard to track because there is no uniform data to mine. | Police profiling and mistreatment, which could inevitably lead to our deaths, is not an exaggerated possibility for many black Americans. Yet, the insidious pattern of police abuse in the US is hard to track because there is no uniform data to mine. |
| And while black Americans do not need a government database to verify our personal and vicarious experiences of ill-treatment at the hands of the police, the lack of a comprehensive countrywide police misconduct tracking system in 2015 should be recognized as a national public policy embarrassment. | And while black Americans do not need a government database to verify our personal and vicarious experiences of ill-treatment at the hands of the police, the lack of a comprehensive countrywide police misconduct tracking system in 2015 should be recognized as a national public policy embarrassment. |
| The Counted, an independent data collection project attempting to do the work the US government should have long been doing, has the potential to shift the ways that activists and thought leaders in the movement for black lives are confronting the seeming epidemic of police abuse. Every day, interested parties around the world can find out the names of victims of police killings and gather information on the contexts of their killings. But, though more information about those killed daily by police is a useful intervention, data on the people lost only allows us to analyze one part of a more complex structural problem. | The Counted, an independent data collection project attempting to do the work the US government should have long been doing, has the potential to shift the ways that activists and thought leaders in the movement for black lives are confronting the seeming epidemic of police abuse. Every day, interested parties around the world can find out the names of victims of police killings and gather information on the contexts of their killings. But, though more information about those killed daily by police is a useful intervention, data on the people lost only allows us to analyze one part of a more complex structural problem. |
| When individual police officers who have been accused of various forms of misconduct are acquitted, there are prosecutors, judges, grand juries and juries who were responsible for their exoneration. The fatal shooting of Mike Brown, an 18-year old black teen in Ferguson, Missouri by former officer Darren Wilson was a case that exemplified the powerful apparent collusion between prosecutors and police departments. Wilson was acquitted because St Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch lead a botched grand jury investigation that resulted in a lawsuit filed by a member of the jury. This is why Ferguson protestors have chanted since the hottest days of August 2014, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell!”; it’s not just Wilson, and it never was. | When individual police officers who have been accused of various forms of misconduct are acquitted, there are prosecutors, judges, grand juries and juries who were responsible for their exoneration. The fatal shooting of Mike Brown, an 18-year old black teen in Ferguson, Missouri by former officer Darren Wilson was a case that exemplified the powerful apparent collusion between prosecutors and police departments. Wilson was acquitted because St Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch lead a botched grand jury investigation that resulted in a lawsuit filed by a member of the jury. This is why Ferguson protestors have chanted since the hottest days of August 2014, “The whole damn system is guilty as hell!”; it’s not just Wilson, and it never was. |
| The effects of an enduring problem are always easier to assess than the varied complex causes. Police abuse and the acquittals of officers are a few effects of a faulty system – one that is founded upon what James Baldwin aptly labeled an “arrogant autonomy” that is guaranteed the police. As we seek redress, we must move beyond the institution of law enforcement and address all the legal apparatuses that safeguard those state agents who might unlawfully kill us even after they have sworn to protect us. | The effects of an enduring problem are always easier to assess than the varied complex causes. Police abuse and the acquittals of officers are a few effects of a faulty system – one that is founded upon what James Baldwin aptly labeled an “arrogant autonomy” that is guaranteed the police. As we seek redress, we must move beyond the institution of law enforcement and address all the legal apparatuses that safeguard those state agents who might unlawfully kill us even after they have sworn to protect us. |
| Alicia Garza | Alicia Garza |
| It is estimated that in 2015 alone, police are killing black people at the rate of one every 27 hours, and 8 out of 505 total people killed (at the time of publication) are black women. | It is estimated that in 2015 alone, police are killing black people at the rate of one every 27 hours, and 8 out of 505 total people killed (at the time of publication) are black women. |
| Related: 'Black women unnamed': how Tanisha Anderson's bad day turned into her last | |
| The number of black women killed by police doesn’t capture the other violence to which they are subjected: we know for instance that black women, while less likely to be killed by the police, are more likely to be sexually assaulted by them than white women. And black transgender women, who are largely locked out of the formal economy and who experience some of the highest rates of unemployment, are vulnerable to abuse and violence at the hands of those who are sworn to protect and serve them. | |
| The circumstances surrounding the deaths of black women at the hands of the police – domestic violence, domestic abuse, poverty, mental health crises – tell us a lot about the conditions that black women face. Take for example 43-year-old Monique Deckhard, who was killed by police after allegedly stabbing a woman in a laundromat: her family said that she a history of mental illness. Or there’s 38-year-old Yuvette Henderson, accused of shoplifting from a Home Depot and shot and killed by police. Or there’s 20-year-old Janisha Fonville, who was shot and killed by police who responded to a dispute between her and her girlfriend. | The circumstances surrounding the deaths of black women at the hands of the police – domestic violence, domestic abuse, poverty, mental health crises – tell us a lot about the conditions that black women face. Take for example 43-year-old Monique Deckhard, who was killed by police after allegedly stabbing a woman in a laundromat: her family said that she a history of mental illness. Or there’s 38-year-old Yuvette Henderson, accused of shoplifting from a Home Depot and shot and killed by police. Or there’s 20-year-old Janisha Fonville, who was shot and killed by police who responded to a dispute between her and her girlfriend. |
| Put these murders alongside significant rollbacks in funding for mental health and domestic violence services, a nearly 11% unemployment rate for black women over the age of 20, and the fact that black women are the fastest growing population in prisons (predominantly for crimes of survival), and we see more clearly that black women are symptoms of a much larger socioeconomic problem – the canaries in our coal mine. | Put these murders alongside significant rollbacks in funding for mental health and domestic violence services, a nearly 11% unemployment rate for black women over the age of 20, and the fact that black women are the fastest growing population in prisons (predominantly for crimes of survival), and we see more clearly that black women are symptoms of a much larger socioeconomic problem – the canaries in our coal mine. |
| The killings of black women by police tell a story, albeit an incomplete one, about our conditions in this country: black women, who often hold the tatters of our economy and our democracy together, are being criminalized and brutalized – and in some cases, are having their lives taken. Until we address how these women’s stories began as much as how their lives ended, our communities and our families will continue to suffer. | The killings of black women by police tell a story, albeit an incomplete one, about our conditions in this country: black women, who often hold the tatters of our economy and our democracy together, are being criminalized and brutalized – and in some cases, are having their lives taken. Until we address how these women’s stories began as much as how their lives ended, our communities and our families will continue to suffer. |
| Patrisse Cullors | Patrisse Cullors |
| Policing has never been about public safety: its origins are rooted in social control, the denial of people’s human rights, securing the US borders, recapturing escaped, enslaved Africans, and upholding racist, homophobic, and transphobic laws. Policing was developed, created and implemented for the elite, and – in the case of the United States – the elites were and almost entirely remain white, upper middle class, cisgender straight men. | Policing has never been about public safety: its origins are rooted in social control, the denial of people’s human rights, securing the US borders, recapturing escaped, enslaved Africans, and upholding racist, homophobic, and transphobic laws. Policing was developed, created and implemented for the elite, and – in the case of the United States – the elites were and almost entirely remain white, upper middle class, cisgender straight men. |
| For example, slave patrols were first developed in 1704 in the Carolinas; these patrols were made of white men whose sole job was to police the lives of enslaved Africans. They purposely instilled fear in enslaved African populations by controlling their ability to move, and by becoming the violent enforcers of enslavement if Africans were able to flee to northern states that didn’t allow for the practice. Early sheriff departments in the American southwest were just white men who banded together to enforce the theft of Mexican land and patrol the US-Mexico border. | For example, slave patrols were first developed in 1704 in the Carolinas; these patrols were made of white men whose sole job was to police the lives of enslaved Africans. They purposely instilled fear in enslaved African populations by controlling their ability to move, and by becoming the violent enforcers of enslavement if Africans were able to flee to northern states that didn’t allow for the practice. Early sheriff departments in the American southwest were just white men who banded together to enforce the theft of Mexican land and patrol the US-Mexico border. |
| When we understand the origins of modern-day policing, the role that policing and law enforcement play in the 21st century becomes more clear. The killing of people – especially unarmed people, especially racially and economically marginalized people – by law enforcement, once placed in its historical context, no longer becomes an act of spontaneous rage from an individual officer, but rather a part of the culture and training of law enforcement that further marginalizes, criminalizes and dehumanizes communities that do not fit in the current model of power that exists in this country. | When we understand the origins of modern-day policing, the role that policing and law enforcement play in the 21st century becomes more clear. The killing of people – especially unarmed people, especially racially and economically marginalized people – by law enforcement, once placed in its historical context, no longer becomes an act of spontaneous rage from an individual officer, but rather a part of the culture and training of law enforcement that further marginalizes, criminalizes and dehumanizes communities that do not fit in the current model of power that exists in this country. |
| Over the last 10 months people have developed and used hashtag after hashtag on Twitter as the country noticed black and Latino people of all ages being killed by law enforcement at disproportionate rates compared to white people and while, disproportionately unarmed. Whether they are killed by guns, by physical force, or while in custody, communities of color bear the disproportionate brunt of police violence. And although white America is seemingly noticing the epidemic of police violence directed at black and brown people for the first time, we as black folks have understood that we are its target since the creation of this country. The brutal history of colonialism is one in which white people literally stole land and people for their own gain and material wealth. The only way to gain the kinds of often-generational wealth that the 1% has been able to gain is through controlling the populations it relied on to make its wealth. | Over the last 10 months people have developed and used hashtag after hashtag on Twitter as the country noticed black and Latino people of all ages being killed by law enforcement at disproportionate rates compared to white people and while, disproportionately unarmed. Whether they are killed by guns, by physical force, or while in custody, communities of color bear the disproportionate brunt of police violence. And although white America is seemingly noticing the epidemic of police violence directed at black and brown people for the first time, we as black folks have understood that we are its target since the creation of this country. The brutal history of colonialism is one in which white people literally stole land and people for their own gain and material wealth. The only way to gain the kinds of often-generational wealth that the 1% has been able to gain is through controlling the populations it relied on to make its wealth. |
| That control over communities of color has always been matched with extreme violence. We have seen it in our past. We are seeing it in the present. If nothing changes, we will continue to see it in our future. | That control over communities of color has always been matched with extreme violence. We have seen it in our past. We are seeing it in the present. If nothing changes, we will continue to see it in our future. |
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