By Francisco Arias Fernandez on May 8, 2021
Photo: Bill Hackwell
Killer police, those who use inappropriate excessive “non-lethal” force, detentions, arbitrary arrests, attacks on people who are from ethnic minorities, border patrols that abuse children, youth, and women, the world’s most filled jails, with more than 2.3 million people, violations of rights to parole and to bail: these are some of the recipes for human rights made in the United States.
According to a commentary in the New York Times on April 18, since the beginning of the trial of the policeman responsible for the killing of George Floyd on March 29, 2020 there have been many new cases of deaths caused by police actions in the US. In only one day there were three incidents by the hands of the law, including a 13 year old immigrant child shot and killed by a police officer in Chicago.
A recent study concerning police violence in the U.S. showed that, between 2017 and September of 2020, the number of people killed by police shootings rose to 2,164, without even counting those victims, who, like George Floyd who was suffocated, were killed without the use of firearms. Others have been killed by being struck by vehicles, by knives and other police actions.
BBC News reflected the indignation aroused in the U.S. by the death of a Latino man who was pinned down face down for five minutes. The killing of Mario Arenales Gonzalez, age 26, occurred on April 19, one day before Derek Chauvin was found guilty for killing George Floyd. BBC went on to say that the numbers show that police violence in the U.S. is a “public health problem,” due to the number of incidents and the consequences that they cause.
The analysis of these situations show that these encounters between police and civilians not only have effects in terms of deaths and injuries, but also in long-term disturbances and problems that have an impact on whole communities.
The U.S. Public Health Association agreed that systematic violence on the part of the police “results in deaths, injuries, trauma and stress that disproportionately affects marginalized populations,” mainly African Americans and Latinos.
In the United States “annually more than one thousand people die as a result of police action – justified or not,” according to the data-base of the Washington Post, and in 2018 alone more than 85,000 people were wounded in police encounters, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
An expert at Bowling Green State University revealed recently that between 2005 and 2017, on approximately 1000 occasions per year, a police officer shot and killed someone in the United States, but only 29 police have been convicted of murder or manslaughter during this period.
The U.S. organization Human Rights Watch, in what they call their World Report for 2021, acknowledged that the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake caused massive protests to demand accountability for the police, a reduction of the scope of action and power of the police, the elimination of fines and exorbitant cash bail, and greater investment in Black communities.
The report says that “instead of dealing with the problems of poverty and health that contribute to crime, many jurisdictions of the U.S. insist on aggressive police surveillance in poor and minority communities, feeding into a vicious circle of imprisonment and police violence.”
Killer police, those who use inappropriate excessive non-lethal force, detentions, arbitrary arrests, attacks on people who are ethnic minorities, border patrols that abuse children, youth, and women, the world’s most filled jails, with more than 2.3 million people, violations of rights to parole and to bail: these are some of the recipes for human rights made in the United States, the country which, whether under the Democrats or Republicans, resorts to lies, cynicism, and false morality to attack or judge the rest of the world.
Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English