Article Image

IPFS News Link • Police Accountability Report

The Line Between Black and Blue

• http://blog.simplejustice,

This will bring no comfort to their families, even if it gives PBA boss Pat Lynch an excuse to blame Mayor Bill de Blasio, protesters, for the war about to come.

But another story, a tale of an internal rift between black police officers and their lighter skinned brothers, suggests that having a shield isn't enough to protect them.  So if there's a war, which side are they on?

Reuters interviewed 25 African American male officers on the NYPD, 15 of whom are retired and 10 of whom are still serving. All but one said that, when off duty and out of uniform, they had been victims of racial profiling, which refers to using race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of having committed a crime.

The officers said this included being pulled over for no reason, having their heads slammed against their cars, getting guns brandished in their faces, being thrown into prison vans and experiencing stop and frisks while shopping. The majority of the officers said they had been pulled over multiple times while driving. Five had had guns pulled on them.

There is a perpetual curiosity.  In the aftermath of Michael Brown's killing in Ferguson, one of the significant issues raised was the racial composition of the community as compared with that of the police force. Hint: one was whiter than the other.  Implicit in this distinction is that if the police better reflected the racial makeup of the people it served, it would be more sensitive. Or to put it another way, it would be less violent and oppressive.

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by Lucky Red
Entered on:

"The execution of New York police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, came at a politically expeditious time." Indeed. The perfect timing of the event has not gone unnoticed. Neither has the manner in which the crime was committed, execution style. That some whackjob drove from FL to NY to do that for absolutely no reason except "mental illness" is a story for another day.



thelibertyadvisor.com/declare