Miami Police Carried Out Daily Racial Profiling, Harassment and Humiliation—All Caught on Tape [View all]

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AlterNet / By Janet Allon

Miami Police Carried Out Daily Racial Profiling, Harassment and Humiliation—All Caught on Tape—Outside a Black-Owned Store
Officers knew they were being filmed, and they harassed and brutalized customers anyway. Now the store owner has filed a federal civil rights suit.


November 28, 2013 | Outside the 207 Quickstop, a convenience store in the suburban city of Miami Gardens, surveillance cameras have caught a lot of action. Only, the crimes that have been committed, on a regular basis, have been committed by cops, who appear to have made a sport out of harassing and humiliating the largely African American clientele of the store.

Curiously, the Miami Herald reports, the officers have known they were being filmed. "They not only knew, the videos show, but in some cases, they relished it, taunting the store’s owner by waving open beer cans and cups, taken from customers, directly in front of the cameras as if the cans were trophies," writes reporter Julie K. Brown. Fed up, and loaded to the gills with videos for evidence, the store owner and a group of his customers and employees filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the local police of racial profiling, illegal search and seizure, harassment and intimidation of the store’s largely African American employees and customers.

The videos show officers roughly confronting an elderly woman, dumping the contents of her purse on the sidewalk and intentionally scattering the items, handcuffing an older man and forcing him to sit on the sidewalk despite his inability to do so because of a bad back, officers grabbing drinks just purchased and tossing them. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/investigations/miami-police-carried-out-daily-racial-profiling-harassment-and-humiliation-all-caught