America
From Ferguson to Baltimore: A problem of lawless law enforcement? (News Analysis)
By
Arun KumarWashington, April 29
US President Barack Obama has called for some "soul-searching" and
Hillary Clinton described it as "a tragedy that demands answers", but
what happened in Baltimore in the aftermath of a black man's death
points to a much larger problem.
Monday's eruption in Baltimore,
less than an hour's drive from the American capital, nine days after
peaceful protests over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in police
custody a week after his April 12 arrest, goes beyond simply black and
white.
The unrest in Baltimore followed a spate of protests across the country over the deaths of black men at the hands of police.
The
influential Time magazine recently listed 14 major instances of a white
policeman shooting dead a black person since 17-year-old Trayvon Martin
was fatally shot on February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida.
But
according to a Wikipedia compilation, as many as 157 people - of all
colours and races - have been killed by law enforcement officers this
year alone, with or without justification.
The Killed By Police
Facebook page puts the number of people killed by US police this year at
381 and 1,101 in 2014, with a total of 2,249 since it started posting
news reports of officer-involved homicides starting May 1, 2013.
In
December, the Washington Post fact-checked a viral claim that a black
person is killed by police 'every 28 hours' based on an April 2013
report titled "Operation Ghetto Storm" by the Malcolm X Grassroots
Movement.
The report looked at the deaths of 313 African-American
men, women and children in 2012, who were killed by police officers,
security guards or "vigilantes".
"If you divide the number of
hours in a year (8,760) by 313 deaths, it does come out to one death per
28 hours. But the rest of the claim is problematic," the Post
concluded.
But "among those killed in 2012, 136 people (44
percent) had no weapon on them when they died", it said. "That negates
the claim that people who were killed 'every 28 hours' were unarmed."
The
Post also cited an article written by the report's author, Arlene
Eisen, in September saying that the use of "every 28 hours" as a
standalone figure oversimplifies the point made in her report.
It
was, she was quoted as saying, intended to "prevent future
extrajudicial killings of black people by those paid or sanctioned
(security guards and vigilantes) by the national security state, it is
important to know that these killings are a result of the perpetual war
on black people".
In an April 20 report on what it called
America's "1.5 million missing black men", the New York Times noted that
"for every 100 black women not in jail, there are only 83 black men".
Among
cities with sizable black populations, the largest single gap is in
Ferguson, Missouri -- which saw days of unrest and looting after the
fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer last August -- with
40 missing black men for every 100 black women.
This gap -- driven mostly by incarceration and early deaths -- barely exists among whites, it said.
As
Obama said at a Tuesday press conference, a lot of the tension between
law enforcement and the black community stems from "a slow-rolling
crisis" that has been brewing for decades.
"Fixing it will
require more investment in cities, criminal justice reform, better
funding for education and soul-searching for some police departments,"
he said hitting the nail on the head.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])