A-Infos (en) USA: Racism and Police Murder - Statement to the International Thematic Commission on Racism (WCAR)

["Lorenzo Ervin" <komboa@hotmail.com>]

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USA: Racism and  Police Murder

Statement to the International Thematic Commission on Racism in the
Criminal Justice Systems,The  International Criminal Justice Caucus,
World Conferece Against Racism, Xenophobia and Religious
Intolerence, gathered in Durban, South Africa, 09/06/2001

 Minority Rights Group International

To: Chairperson and panel members

My name is Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. I am at this conference
representing the Black Autonomy International. We have in turn
created a network of local groups in the State of Michigan (in the USA)
which primarily organizes around racism, police brutality and racial
profiling, called the Southwest Michigan Coalition Against Racism and
Police Brutality. It should be noted at the outset, that the city of Detroit
leads the United States in the number of police shootings and deaths
in custody (over 100 since 1991).

Although the U.S. government refuses to report on the exact number
of persons killed by police use of deadly force each year (NOTE: as it
is in fact mandated by the 1994 Criminal Code revision), we have
been able to document 500-1,000 cases per annum of police fatalities
filed to the U.S. Department of Justice, but only through the work of
local grassroots groups like ours, national activist groups like the
October 22nd Coalition, and others.

Through these organizations and our own efforts, we have learned
that there are thousands of cases of police shootings of racial
minorities, some of which often prove fatal in the United States. In
addition, numerous other Black and other non-white persons lose
their lives each year after beatings, strangulations and other violent
methods used by American law enforcement authorities. There is also
widespread racial profiling by American police agencies, who stops
hundreds of thousands of innocent raical minority group persons upon
the streets of American cities and highways, some of which stops
have turned into deadly provocations, fatal shootings, and other
encounters. 

Even where there are no deaths, racial profiling caused daily
humiliation and/or has resulted in illegal imprisonment and torture. 
For instance, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, it was discovered last year that
over 25 black males had been illegally arrested on minor offenses,
and then stripped naked at the jail, and made to remain that way for
hours on end. In New York city, similar "naked jailing" cases involved
over 60,000 black and Latino citizens, and there are such cases all
over the country. This humiliation and torture many times precede the
tragic loss of life.

Even though there are civil rights and criminal codes in the United
States which allegedly protect racial minorities and could be used to
punish excessively violent police offenders, they are invariably not
implemented if the accused is a law enforcement officer and the victim
is a racial minority. Neither the investigation by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (the agency used to perform "independent"
investigations by the U.S. Dept. of  Justice, or a civil rights lawsuit by
the family will go in their favor. They are left without any satisfaction at
all because of legal obstacles and judical collusion with police.

The case of Mr. Wadie Suttles is a case in point: Mr. Suttles, a 66 year
old African American grandfather, was arrested without legal cause in
Chattanooga, Tennessee during the Christmas season of 1983. He
was immediately beaten by the arresting officer, and then taken to jail
where he was beaten several times and ultimately killed by a
truncheonn-wielding Officer Mike Williams and other officers of the
Chattanooga Police Department. Almost immediately, when the family
and activist members of the black community demanded answers,
they were met with stonewalling and lies by local officals, and inaction
by the Federal Bureau of Invesstigation, who covered up his death for
years. When the family filed a lawsuit in 1984, the city government
officials claimed not to know how he was killed, but claimed invariably
that it was a "suicide", "heart attack", or other "natural method" of
death, when they knew for a fact he had died by homicide. The judge,
a political appointee of the Ronald Reagan administration named R.
Allen Edgar, conducted a sham civil rights trial, and promptly threw the
case out. Then the family conducted a 15 year campaign for justice,
through a civil rights group they had helped to create, called the
Concerned Citizens for Justice. But although the local authorities
knew full well that this man was unlawfully killed while in police
custody, no one has ever been arrested or prosecuted in this matter.
Mr. Suttles' case is typical of what the families of the victims of police
murder routinely go through in the USA: lies, evasions, and a criminal
coverup. The fact is that generally the American federal government
will not put police officers in jail for killing racial minorities.

Even though there are U.N. international codes of conduct for law
enforcement officers and an international covenant on police use of
deadly force, none of this has stopped the killings in the USA,
primarily because of the fear of the international community to
pressure the only remaining superpower. Thus, the U.S. government
stands defiant to any international law as it benefits the Black and
other minorities. The government only uses international law when it
can gain tactical advantages in an international dispute with another
nation or the United nations as a body. It does not see itself bound in
anyway to an international criminal code, or the UN code of conduct
for law enforcement officers.

Thus, what I am saying is that the USA  is an outlaw nation, a white
supremacy regime, hiding under the erstwhile cloak of democracy
and human rights (for the white population only), while it uses its law
enforcement agents to practice state terrorism against the Black
population and those of other racial minorities. It is a government
which withdrew from any participation in this conference and has
boycotted the two previous U.N. conferences on racism and racial
discrimination, in 1978 and 1983 respectively.

It uses its court system to railroad numerous poor and racially
oppressed national groups into the prisons of the U.S. and even into
the death chambers, where many have been killed in both an unlawful
and immoral fashion. Just last year, it executed a clearly innocent
man, Shaka Sankofa in the State of Texas, and Mumia Abu Jamal has
sat on death row in the State of Pennsylvania for the last 20 years as
the result of a severely flawed criminal prosecution, where his race
and past political associations were used to convict him. He is not
guilty of any crime other than being an outspoken Black militant and
journalist, who criticized the Philadelphia Police Department for its
routine use of excessive force against the Black community. The
governor, and other high officials of the state personally know he is
not guilt, but continue to hold him in prison because of racism and
political expediency. it is an example of the kind of pernicious white
racism which saturate the American cirminal justice system.

The country which postures as the champion of human rights is guilty
of genocide, racism, and torture. Police agents are allowed to torture,
kill and illegally detain racial minorities throughout the country. Neither
the individual states or the federal executive branch have vigorously
prosecuted any officer for committing murder while in uniform. Rather,
it has shown them the greatest deference.

We came here to Durban hoping that this conference will apply
sanctions against the U.S. government, and/or obtain an agreement
forcing it to abide by international law on the use of deadly force by
law enforcement officers. If it can do that, then our coming to the
WCAR will be well worth it. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, Acting Chair, BANCO/BAI


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