"If Eric Holder doesn't prosecute Michael Brown's killer any resulting violence ought to be called the Barack Obama Riots."
© Global Research
Black people in this country are brutalized by police on a daily basis. That has always been true but thanks to modern technology there is a steady stream of proof caught on video. Accessing the internet means inevitably being confronted with awful imagery such as Marlene Pinnock being beaten by a highway patrolman in California. We see Eric Garner murdered by the NYPD, pleading that he couldn't breathe.
These videos may or may not assist with prosecutions. Footage showed the late Rodney King being beaten by California police in 1991. The officers were indicted, a rarity, but a jury acquitted them anyway, making a mockery of the old saying "seeing is believing." Common sense wisdom doesn't count for much if it threatens to upend white supremacy. No matter how seemingly iron clad the case, police rarely face criminal charges.
Such was the case of
Milton Hall, a mentally ill black man shot to death by Saginaw, Michigan, police on July 1, 2012. A camera inside one of the patrol cars shows Hall, surrounded by police, armed only with a small pen knife. He is unable to harm anyone, given that he was surrounded by seven cops and a police dog, yet they fired forty-six shots with fourteen of them striking and killing Hall.
Local prosecutors did not charge the officers and the Obama/Holder Department of Justice
did not see fit to do anything either. After investigating they concluded that prosecution was not warranted.
"Even if the officers were mistaken in their assessment of the threat posed by Hall, this would not establish that the officers acted willfully, or with an unlawful intent, when using deadly force against Hall. Accordingly, this tragic event does not present sufficient evidence of willful misconduct to give rise to a federal criminal prosecution of the police officers involved."
"No matter how seemingly iron clad the case, police rarely face criminal charges."
The ACLU of Michigan not only pushed for local and federal action, but has taken its protest to a new and very important level. On October 27, 2014, Mark Fancher, Racial Justice Project Attorney for the ACLU of Michigan, testified before an international body regarding the federal government's refusal to prosecute Hall's "death by firing squad." The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is an arm of the Organization of American States. It is mandated to "promote the observance and protection of human rights in the hemisphere."
Comment: Whether it was intended to be racist or not, the damage done by the image of a lynching is real and it, and its undercurrent of racism, has horrific historical roots: