Three questions about U.S. police brutality in law enforcement

Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition

Americans demonstrate on the streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan, over the Patrick Leah affair. (Source: Associated Press)

On April 13, the Grand Rapids Police Department in Michigan released four videos of African-American Patrick Leah being shot by police, which immediately caused an uproar in American society. Hundreds of people gathered in the center of Grand Rapids city to protest police brutality and demand fairness and justice. Why are mostly Africans who have lost their lives at gunpoint in the United States? Why are U.S. police officers who enforce the law violently often given light sentences? Why are such incidents so frequent? In response to the various problems behind violent law enforcement in the United States, experts pointed out that violent law enforcement and racial discrimination, gun violence and political system abuses and other issues are intertwined and superimposed, and have become a deep-rooted "American disease", and there is no possibility of solving these problems.

Why were mostly Africans killed?

Four videos released by the Michigan Grand Rapids Police Department show that in the early morning of April 4, michigan state police intercepted a car driven by 26-year-old African-American Patrick Leah. After Leah got out of the car, the police asked him to get back in the car and show his driver's license. Unable to show her driver's license, Lyoa tries to escape, and the police begin to chase. During the fight between the two, the police tried to hold Lioya and pulled out a stun gun, and Leoya began to snatch. The police then drew their pistols and fired a shot at Leoya in the head.

Ben Klemp, a lawyer representing The Leah family, issued a statement saying there was absolutely no need for the police to use excessive violence against a black man with bare hands.

In 2020, African-American man George Floyd was suffocated by white police brutal law enforcement, triggering mass protests across the United States and provoking "black lives are lives" anti-racist demonstrations around the world. Data from the Independent Investigation Project Police Violence Map show that within a year of Floyd's murder, 181 more blacks died in police enforcement.

Why were mostly African-Americans killed? Sun Chenghao, a scholar at Tsinghua University's Center for Strategic and Security Studies, pointed out that the problem of violent law enforcement in the United States is inseparable from systemic racial discrimination. Objectively speaking, the crime rate of African American groups is higher than that of other ethnic groups, especially after the outbreak of the epidemic, the ECONOMIC DOWNTURN in the United States, the intensification of social contradictions, the medical resources, educational resources, and public welfare resources obtained by minorities are less than those of whites, and the conflict between races has intensified. U.S. police officers are biased against the African-American community, and their vigilance and nervousness are more pronounced, and they are more likely to use violent means and dangerous actions when dealing with African-American suspects. In this case, there are more and more violent crimes committed by African ethnic groups, the contradictions between the police and African ethnic groups are getting deeper and deeper, and the probability of violent law enforcement is increasing, which eventually leads to the vicious circle of "countering violence with violence", resulting in one tragedy after another.

"The problem of violent police enforcement in the United States is inseparable from the systematic racial discrimination in the United States, and further exploration can find that racial discrimination is essentially a problem of class inequality." Wei Nanzhi, a researcher at the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed that the gap between rich and poor between different races in the United States is large, the education gap between different income groups is large, and a considerable proportion of African-American groups in the United States have lived at the bottom of society for a long time, it is difficult to receive high-quality education and smooth employment, it is difficult to achieve class upward mobility through personal efforts, so it is easy to fall into the dilemma of being marginalized by mainstream society for generations. The long-standing and objective existence of police-civilian conflicts in the United States is related to the high gun ownership rate in the United States and the high crime rate of African Americans, and behind it is a deeper problem - the institutional mechanism of systematic discrimination faced by minorities, including African Americans, has never been effectively resolved.

Why are U.S. police brutality often given light sentences?

Derek Shawan, a former white American police officer who murdered African-American George Floyd in May 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was sentenced to 22 years and 6 months in prison, according to the BBC website. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Shawan was "one of the longest-serving officers ever sentenced to the longest sentence for exercising lethal force."

However, verdicts like the Floyd affair are rare. The Lancet report shows that between 1980 and 2018, about 30,800 people died of police violence in the United States, of which African Americans were 3.5 times more likely to die of police violence than whites.

According to the Police Violence Map, more than 1,124 people in the United States died of police violence in 2021, most of them by police in the case of nonviolent crime or even no crime. Between 2013 and 2020, 98.3% of police officers who violently enforced the law were not charged with crimes. In other words, only a tiny minority of U.S. police officers are legally punished for violent law enforcement.

"In the Floyd case, Shawan was convicted mainly to give an 'explanation' to the indignant American people." Wei Nanzhi pointed out that the United States is a police country, and the police are an important force in maintaining social order. Because the judicial system has always protected police enforcement, judgments in the United States on police violence cases often show a biased bias in the police. The United States is also a typical case law country, and cases that have been adjudicated in the past will become an important reference for the judgment of new cases. As a result, it has become the norm for police officers in the United States to be given light sentences.

According to the New York Times, the notion that "police officers can be forgiven for their actions based on reasonable fear" is widespread in the United States. If the police can reasonably explain their actions and prove that at some point they believe their lives or a colleague's life is threatened, the jury usually does not convict the police.

Sun Chenghao said that so far, the US judicial system has been relatively tolerant of police violence. The law is more favorable to the police, giving them the freedom to use force, and the police have the right to choose to shoot and other actions that are more dangerous to the suspect for security reasons without understanding the motives of the other party. In addition, Americans, including jurors, are more inclined to trust the police because they want them to keep them safe. Under the combined influence of these factors, the probability of the American people suing the police after encountering police violence is very low, and the cases of convicting the police after prosecution are even rarer.

Why are such incidents so frequent?

On February 26 this year, a commemorative event was held in New York, USA, in honor of the African-American youth Treven Martin. On this day 10 years ago, 17-year-old Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a white assistant police officer, and Zimmerman was eventually acquitted, a verdict that sparked protests across the United States. At the commemoration, Al Shapton, the leader of the American civil rights organization, pointed out that "racial discrimination in the United States is far from being eradicated."

"The problem of police violence and law enforcement is intertwined with social chronic diseases such as racial discrimination and gun violence, and has become one of the deep-rooted 'American diseases'." Sun Chenghao pointed out that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution stipulates that every U.S. citizen has the right to bear a gun. Recently, the problem of gun violence in the United States has become increasingly serious, and "ghost guns" have been repeatedly banned, and the crime rate is particularly high in communities inhabited by African Americans. In this case, the life safety of U.S. police officers is also more threatened, and it is easier to take harmful actions such as shooting when facing African-American suspects. At the same time, due to the different relevant regulations on police law enforcement in various states in the United States, the lack of unified restrictive standards, the binding force of the police system on violent law enforcement is obviously insufficient. In recent years, U.S. police officers have been required to wear law enforcement recorders while performing their duties, but this small improvement in technology has been a drop in the bucket to solve the problem of violent police enforcement.

Wei Nanzhi pointed out that after the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the violent crime rate in the United States has increased significantly, and the problems of violent police law enforcement such as the Floyd incident have emerged in an endless stream. This is not a phenomenon that has only happened in recent years. In fact, whenever the DOMESTIC ECONOMIC DOWNTURN, FINANCIAL CRISIS, AND EMPLOYMENT CRIY OCCURS IN THE UNITED STATES, SOCIAL PROBLEMS SUCH AS RACIAL CONFLICTS AND VIOLENT CONFLICTS WILL FREQUENTLY OCCUR. Racial contradictions are distorted into police-people contradictions, and the US government cannot solve the problem, so it covers up the problem and diverts the contradiction. Therefore, people will see a very paradoxical scene: the racial problem in the United States has been hyped, intensified, amplified, but has never been actually changed. It can be said that the social soil of violent law enforcement by the police in the United States has not been cleared, and the problem of violent law enforcement cannot be fundamentally solved.

As the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bachelet, put it, "Systemic racism in the United States requires a systematic response, a comprehensive, not piecemeal, approach to dismantling centuries of systemic discrimination and violence that has been entrenched." (Reporter Gao Qiao)

People's Daily Overseas Edition ( 2022-04-26 Edition 10)