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US police brutality amounts to racism: Columnist

Sunday, 24 May 2015 6:06 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 24 May 2015 6:08 AM ]

People join mothers who lost their children to police brutality during a protest in Washington, D.C., May 9, 2015. © AFP

Press TV has conducted an interview with Margaret Kimberley, a senior editor and columnist with the Black Agenda Report from New York, to get her thoughts on acquittal of a white police officer who was charged with murder of two black people in Cleveland in 2012.

The following is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What does this acquittal tell us of the American judicial system?

Kimberley: It tells us that lynch law ... that prescribes the way black people were treated so many decades lynch law was never repealed, and the laws that are supposed to protect human life in the United States do not apply to black people when the perpetrators are police. Even when they are indicted, as in this case, even when they go to trial, they are generally acquitted. It is very rare for police to be convicted. So, the laws in the United States do not protect us. We are supposed to have redress with the federal government, but the Obama Justice Department has not prosecuted any of these cases. If local and state courts do not, the federal government has the ability to do so, but the Obama administration is not interested.

Press TV: What is the main reason behind such police brutality in America especially against the people of color?

Kimberley: It’s just racism. It’s racism and white supremacy. It’s a legacy of days of slavery, when any white could join a slave patrol and apprehend or kill black people and that is literally what happened. A man was killed in Oklahoma on tape and the person who killed him was a volunteer sheriff. He wasn’t even a regular law enforcement officer. So, the slave patrol is alive and well in the 21st century. The issue is racism and it could be stopped. Racism perhaps can’t be stopped, but at the top if federal government made it clear that these cases would be prosecuted, they would stop.

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