It’s not just police shootings that spark protests. It’s the denial of justice.

[Fozzledick]

Another summer, and police killing black men — both armed and unarmed — has made the headlines again. This time, it’s Baton Rouge and Minneapolis. Add those incidents to the horrific shooting of 12 police officers in Dallas, and it’s clear we’re seeing an escalating crisis.

And that crisis is reflected by the outrage in the streets. From Los Angeles to Detroit to Birmingham to New York, places where they have been no recent police shootings, protesters demand action, and some Americans ask: Why?

It’s not the killings alone. It’s the denial of justice, over and over, that follows.

This is the fundamental point that our civic and political leaders have failed to grasp, let alone address. Instead, they’ve offered generic responses, as if by rote. Speaking from Warsaw last week, President Obama again called for gun control and reminded us (again) of his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The Congressional Black Caucus renewed its call (again) for gun control. Hillary Clinton called for national guidelines on police use of force. Donald Trump declared himself “the law and order candidate.” Chief David Brown’s Dallas Police Department has successfully implemented the kinds of polices that Obama has called for.

But the solutions they’re touting never get to the heart of the problem. Maybe the roots of this marvelous new militancy aren’t just frustration over the needless deaths of so many, but over the seeming inability of our society, even when it can’t do anything about the violence, to mete out equal justice. In case after high-profile case, cops who kill black people aren’t convicted — or, often, even indicted — when the visual evidence, and common sense, strongly suggest that they should be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/14/its-not-just-police-shootings-sparking-protests-its-the-denial-of-justice/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-posteverything%3Ahomepage%2Fcard

[underahedgerow]

1. Exactly. It wasn't that Rodney King was beaten. It was that his assailants, even though caught

on tape, were acquitted.

The violence isn't new. The cameras are.

[SkeleTim1968]

2. Yes. The denial of justice is grotesque.

Last edited Thu Jul 14, 2016, 09:14 PM - Edit history (1)

There was another OP on here earlier that asked about justice and the outcomes of these cases. It sort of implied that because the public cannot see all the evidence then they can't discern what happened well enough to make a judgement. the judge didn't give the outcome some wanted and so that's the only reason people complain.

I have to say that it's already ludicrous to trust in the justice system based on grand jury farces like the one in Ferguson Missouri.
Also Freddy Gray was a young healthy man before his encounter with police . They lied on their report. They chased him and began arresting procedures without probable cause and "without the use of force or incident", according to Officer Miller. Clearly another lie after the video emerged.

The coroner assessed his death as a homicide. So someone killed Freddy between the time they apprehended him and the time they got to the police station. The only people who could have killed him were the police that arrested him. All of them knew about it and helped create the "illegal" knife story and argued it with the state’s attorney to make the arrest seem plausible. And, no one saw the knife until after they were pressing his neck into the ground and bending his legs back so there was no reason to apprehend him in the first place.
Those who say this was justified because these officers were found innocent in court can't explain away his death and the responsibility of those officers to get him to the station alive, but they'll try because they seem to believe that legal=moral or ethical, and it doesn't.

This case was easily proven to the extent that there could be no "reasonable doubt" in the mind of a "reasonable person" that the defendant is guilty.

[Nevernose]

3. There are people here on DU that claim

Freddy Gray broke his own neck in an effort to sue the city.

I'm with you: the ultimate cause of unrest isn't the police brutality, it's the lack of justice. Furthermore, the lack of justice just compounds the problem, making it easier to perpetuate.

[wildeyed]

4. They need a separate system to deal with police killings.

A civilian killed by an officer in the line of duty should AUTOMATICALLY trigger an inquest led by a coroner or judge. Prosecutors should have nothing to do with the initial process. They are already too involved and beholden to the police. An inquest gets all the facts on the table first. It would be helpful, even in cases that are not a result of police misconduct, because it allows us to see and correct systemic problems. In cases that were deemed possible police misconduct, local prosecutors should recuse themselves since they work with the local police all the time. It is a clear conflict of interest, no matter what they say.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/12/michael_brown_darren_wilson_inquest_a_better_way_to_pursue_justice_when.html

I would also like to see automatic drug and alcohol testing on the scene of any officer who is involved in a killing. If it turns out they were impaired.... well there it is.

And more power given to Citizen's Review Boards to conduct their own investigations.

I think that everyone knows that policing is a hard job that involves split second decisions. Sometimes those decisions will be wrong. But there is no transparency or consistency in the way we judge those choices, and the system is radically tilted toward the officers. The police themselves often resist any effort to make the system more transparent. If it were a case of just a few bad apples, then they should be grateful for tools to remove them. But since they resist, I can only conclude that there is widespread and systemic dysfunction. The media aids and abets too, with the "They Were No Angel" storyline they try to float after the fact to justify the killings.

We can SEE on the videos what is happening now. There is no way to sweep it under the carpet anymore. There must be justice.