African American Claims Receive Validity

ST. LOUIS - March 4, 2015 - PRLog -- I have watched and been a victim of targeting by the police. When you try and tell people, White people in partiular, that the police specifically target African Americanns, they say "no they don't" or "you must have been breaking the law."

Well, the U.S. Justice Department has concluded that the Ferguson (Missouri) Police Department routinely engages in racially biased practices. This is not new, but it s about time that someone made it official.

The investigation into the police department began in August after the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teen, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson sparked national protests.

Analysis of more than 35,000 pages of police records found racist comments from officers as well as statistics that showed African-Americans make up 93 percent of arrests while accounting for only 67 percent of the population in Ferguson, the official said.

African-Americans also made up most of incidents in which officers used force and all incidents where police dogs bit citizens. Nationwide protests of police actions that resulted in deaths of African Americans in Ferguson, New York and Cleveland laid bare racial tensions and what President Barack Obama called “simmering distrust” between police and communities.

The DOJ will use the findings to negotiate policy changes with Ferguson officials and enter a consent decree, or to sue the city to force change. That decree could come with a substantial cost, which in the past has been financially devastating to cities who have experienced it.

Previous federal investigations into police departments have resulted in such changes as reporting arrest data to the Justice Department and installing federal monitors to oversee operations. The report's findings vindicate and validate critics who have cited a pattern of abuse in Ferguson. But they are unlikely to restore full trust in the Ferguson police by citizens who were angered when a grand jury decided not to indict Brown's killer, officer Darren Wilson. Wilson, who said he acted in self-defense, will not face criminal charges in a separate Justice Department investigation. That is the real crime here.

The thing is we already knew all this was going on. The problem is nobody is being prosecuted, nobody has been terminated. The racist undertones of the city have long been swept under the rug. They have even had the arrogance to make those undertones public at times. One email sent by a Ferguson police officer or municipal court official joked in 2008 that Obama would not stay in office long because, "What black man holds a steady job for four years?"

The fact that police officers and municipal court officials are using their public emails to tell racial jokes reeks of arrogance and ignorance. It truly is unbelievable that these officials think they are untouchable. I wonder if the  taxpayers will respond to the fact that these officials have been getting paid for that racial bias.

Furthermore, in the Ferguson court system, African-Americans were less likely to have their cases dismissed by a municipal judge and made up 95 percent of people held longer than two days in the Ferguson jail.

Many whites who are always quick to point to blacks killing blacks are moved less by concern for black communities than by a desire to fend off criticism of unjust white cops. They have the earnest belief that they are offering new ideas to black folk about the peril we foment in our own neighborhoods.

A lot of white people truly don’t (or don’t want to) understand the violence and harrassment that the black community is facing at the hands of the police. These aren’t harmless, isolated incidents. Innocent people are being stopped, incarcerated and dying and no one is getting punished. Children are being gunned down and our justice system thinks that’s cool. The people meant to protect us are actually killing us. If you’re not angry, then you are willfully not paying attention.

If you choose to believe what I, and the thousands of people of color am telling you, you’d have to accept that our justice system and in particular various police forces around St. Louis are racist, that inequity still exists, and the game is rigged for people of color to lose. White people have to face the fact that you are privileged because other people are not. That the police force was designed to protect your power, your life. That people are dying so that you can feel comfortable with how you move in this world.

I know what you are saying. "Not all the officers are racist." I would totally agree with that, but when good people fail to step up to the plate, be vocal, and expose those who are bringing down the system, then they are as gulty as those committing the crime.

Not all, but many White people in St. Louis put unbelievable amounts of energy into propping up the myth that racism no longer exists. I’ve read arguments that defy all logic, looking past centuries of evidence. Really? Ask yourself? Why are you more willing to believe that thousands of people are protesting across the country for no reason than to believe that our criminal justice and law enforcement systems are fundamentally racist? I’m here to tell you that the mental backbends can stop. You can rest.

John Parker is a senior public relations, communications and marketing professional, activist, journalist, author, and President of Evolution Commuications Group, a minority owned public relations firm in St. Louis, MO. He is also the Founder of the organization Evolution Today (www.evolutiontoday.org). He is well experienced in crisis communications, and public affairs with over 15 years of diverse experience in media relations, political operations, social activism and connecting individuals and corporations with the world through communications.