source: IRR News
published: 11 December 2014
Not for the first time, our outrage at American racism goes hand in hand with complacency about Britain’s own history of institutional racism and its manifestations in police violence.
The surging protest movement in the US centres upon two cases of black men killed by the police: Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager from Ferguson, Missouri, who was shot dead by police in August, and Eric Garner, the Staten Island man killed in July in a chokehold by New York Police Department officers, who had arrested him on suspicion of selling cigarettes.
In both cases, anger has been fuelled by the failure of the system to prosecute the officers involved and the callous indifference with which officers stood around while a man lay dying or dead – in Michael Brown’s case, his body lay uncovered on the street for over four hours.