Everyone Should Be Concerned About Police Brutality

A Lack of Police Accountability

In February 2012, George Zimmerman shot bullets into a young Trayvon Martin that were felt by African-Americans everywhere. The tragedy set off a course of events that not only resulted in the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2012, but also a heightened awareness and sensitivity to the subsequent shooting of Michael Brown and the police response to Ferguson protestors after the tragedy. Similar to the Zimmerman case, Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown, was never brought to justice.

Over the next five years, while most police shootings did not reach national awareness, many have. The mysterious 2015 death of Sandra Bland while in police custody and the re-invigorated interest in the tragic death of seven year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones (2010), reminded the public that black women are at risk to the whims of police brutality.

Yet in 2016, then Attorney General Lorretta Lynch admitted that the federal government currently has little to no oversight over local police forces, and does not, at a minimum even have data on how many individual’s are killed by police every year. The Obama Justice Department planned to have the FBI begin data collection on civilian deaths while in police custody, by 2017. However given the pro-militarized police sentiment of the Trump Justice Department, there should be real doubt about whether the public will ever see numbers on the amount of fatal force that is occurring at the hands of police in the United States.

The Data

As a stop-gap, news outlets like the Washington Post and the Guardian have begun to collect their own data on police violence in the U.S. However, as entities that do not have the access  to concrete data from police departments, their good faith efforts will always have limitations. But in the face of a federal government (and a public) that lacks a real commitment to addressing the issue of police brutality, it is important to put to good use, the data being collected by media organizations.

According to the Washington Post Fatal Force database, as of September 2, 2017 663 have been victims of “fatal force” by the police. These victims encompass every identity that can be found in the United States, black, white, male, female, young and old. According to The Counted a database compiled by The Guardian, 1146 people were killed by police in the US in 2015 and 1093 were killed in 2016. In 2016, 1.17% of those killed by the police were Asian/Pacific Islander, 2.9% of these folks were white, 3.23% were Hispanic/latino, 6.66% were black and 10.13% were Native American.

Fatal force by police that goes unchecked, lacks oversight and fails to be held accountable to the communities where these deaths happen puts all of us at risk.

Yet, in the face of the unrelenting evidence of the dangers of militarized police forces nationwide, activists have failed to garner the hearts and minds of most non-black Americans in the fight against police brutality. In fact, most republicans currently support the efforts of the Trump Justice Department to roll back Obama Era guidelines and limits meant to discourage the use of military equipment against U.S. populations by local police forces.

White Women Fall Victim to Police Brutality

However, during the summer of 2017 the victims of police brutality had a different face. Surprisingly, the terror of police brutality was embodied in the forms of white, middle-class women.

At the end of July 2017 Justine Ruszczyk was killed by a Minneapolis police officer after calling about a domestic disturbance in her apartment complex. When the officers arrived, Ruszczyk approached the driver side window of the squad car, startled, Officer Muhammad Noor, on the passenger side, shot her through his partner’s window. Although the officers reportedly scrambled to save her life, the shot proved to be fatal.

Also during July 2017, Alex Wubbels a nurse at the University of Utah hospital was doing her job in the Burn Unit. According to the body camera of Detective Jeff Payne, he insisted that he be allowed to take a blood sample of a injured, unconscious patient. Because the detective did not have a warrant, and the individual was unconscious, Wubbels followed hospital policy and the law, by calmly letting the detective know that he could not take the sample at that time. After being told by multiple personnel at the hospital that a blood sample could not be taken, Detective Payne appears to go into a fit of rage, grabs Wubbel, and aggressively arrests her and takes her into custody as she screamed with fear.

In September 2017 Scout Schultz a 21-year old Georgia Tech student, was killed by campus police “outside of a Georgia Tech dormitory.” While the circumstances of her death remain unclear, her death illustrates the dangers of campus police who carry firearms within the residences of students.

Finally, a dash-cam video from July 2016 that became public during the summer of July 2017, shows a Georgia police officer, Lt. Greg Abbott, pulling over a couple on the highway. Abbot can be seen telling a woman on the passenger side who was obviously nervous about an encounter with the police, “but you’re not black,” the officer said. “Remember, we only kill black people. Yeah, we only kill black people, right?”

Police Brutality Puts Us All in Danger

As every year passes, we continue to be given example after example of what happens to our citizens when police forces are able to pick and choose their own forms of oversight and accountability. They turn body cameras on and off at will, they submit incomplete data to the FBI about the extent to which their departments are having fatal encounters, and the public increasingly develops a fearful posture towards an institution with whom they should feel a sense of community.

Until the Trump justice department reaffirms a commitment to police oversight and de-militarized police forces, neighborhoods across the United States will continue to fall victim to the needless tragedy of fatal force at the hands of police.