US condones police violence against African Americans: Journalist

The US government condones the systematic police violence against African Americans by white police officers, a black journalist in Detroit says.

“The consciousness level among people inside the United States and the world is increasing as it relates to police misconduct, brutality and terror,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, editor at the Pan-African News Wire.

“These incidents expose the United States government for its crimes against humanity; something needs to be done to put a halt to this type of abuse of the largest national minority in the United States,” Azikiwe said in a phone interview with Press TV on Monday.

The use of excessive force by police against African Americans in cities across the US has sparked nationwide protests in recent years.

Racial disparities in police officers’ treatment of black citizens have been well-documented.

Last month, jurors awarded only $4 to the family of a black man fatally shot in his home in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Gregory Hill Jr. was in his garage listening to loud music when a parent picking a child up from an elementary school across the street called in the complaint in 2014.

According to court documents, law enforcement officers responded and Hill eventually raised his garage door to answer them, then lowered it again. A sheriff’s deputy then fired through the door, hitting Hill three times. Officers testified that they saw Hill holding a weapon. An unloaded gun was found in the dead man’s back pocket.

The eight jurors decided that Christopher Newman, the deputy who killed Hill, was 1 percent at fault, while Hill was largely to blame for his death — at 99 percent — because he was drunk during the confrontation.

The jury awarded Hill’s relatives $1 for funeral expenses and $1 for each of Hill’s three children. That $4 was then reduced to 4 cents - or 1 percent, representing the sheriff’s liability. The other 99 percent was blamed on the dead man, under a Florida law that enables such decisions if a victim was under the influence of alcohol.

Authorities think that "perhaps in the short-term they will get away with these crimes, but in the long-term, they will be exposed, it will damage their credibility and prestige throughout the world and the US will become more and more isolated from the international community,” Azikiwe said.

Hill’s fiancee called the verdict a “slap in the face,” and the family’s lawyer is preparing an appeal, saying he can not tell whether the jury was angry, or just confused.

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