theroot | As of this
writing, almost 500 people—138 of them African American—have been shot
and killed by police in the United States this year. These numbers come
from The Guardian’s investigation that is literally counting the dead.
Outrage against the epidemic of police killings of unarmed black men helped spark a national #BlackLivesMatter protest movement that called for comprehensive reform of the criminal-justice system. The Obama administration’s Task Force on Policing in the 21st Century is, so far, the major policy response to these shootings.
But as many have pointed out, police violence against black women, girls and transgender people of color is often missing from national discussions. In response, thousands of people
have taken to the streets, social media and elsewhere to affirm that
the lives of black girls and women matter as much as those of black men.
The latest case of police brutality against unarmed black people took
place in McKinney, Texas, on Friday, when a police officer brutalized a
group of black teens attending a pool party. A camera phone caught
McKinney Police Cpl. Eric Casebolt pummeling a 15-year-old black girl on
the lawn of a suburban neighborhood and pulling out his gun and
pointing it toward unarmed teenagers.
Systematic police violence against black and Latino communities, in
the form of killings, overt brutality and general harassment, requires a
national database. Anecdotal evidence from social media, personal
stories and public documents suggests that we have only scratched the
surface of widespread illegal use of force by law enforcement that is
directed against the African-American community.
A federal
database—one that could be publicly accessed by law enforcement,
community activists and citizens—is vital to comprehending the depth of
police misconduct and fashioning a cure to a national crisis that new
technology has made visible to the world.
Our heightened national sensitivity to anti-black violence is a
direct result of information sharing, or crowdsourcing, on social media
that has turned small cities such as Ferguson, Mo., into a metaphor for
racial injustice in the 21st century.
Information, during the civil rights era and now, is power.
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