Philadelphia’s Killer Cops Prove the Necessity of Black Community Control of Police 03/25/2015
In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the U.S. Justice Department has attempted to position itself on the side of “reform.” Its new report on the Philadelphia police is one example. However, their version of reform is designed to perfect the system of mass Black incarceration, and to derail the movement. “It is critical that the movement put forward its own proposals that would fundamentally alter the power relationships between the police and the Black community.”
“Integrated city halls and diversity in police hiring have not altered the core police mission in Philadelphia or anywhere else in the United States.”
The Black experience in Philadelphia shows, definitively, that conventional assumptions undergirding “reform” of policing have no basis in the racial realities of the United States. Over the past eight years, Philadelphia cops shot at “suspects” 390 times, a rate of once a week, killing 65 of them. Fifty-nine of the human targets were unarmed and 80 percent of them were Black, according to a newly-released report by the U.S. Justice Department.
Philadelphia cops are five times more likely than New York City police to use deadly force against citizens. Despite having agreed four years ago to federal court monitoring of its stop-and-frisk policies, Philly cops made 200,000 such stops last year – about twice as high as the rate recorded in New York before that city’s program was officially halted. Ninety percent of those frisked in Philadelphia are minorities. Yet, the majority Black and brown city boasts a Black district attorney, a Black police commissioner and a 35 percent Black police force, and has had a mayor-appointed Police Advisory Commission since 1993. (Its first such board was set up in 1958.) Complete article
In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the U.S. Justice Department has attempted to position itself on the side of “reform.” Its new report on the Philadelphia police is one example. However, their version of reform is designed to perfect the system of mass Black incarceration, and to derail the movement. “It is critical that the movement put forward its own proposals that would fundamentally alter the power relationships between the police and the Black community.”
“Integrated city halls and diversity in police hiring have not altered the core police mission in Philadelphia or anywhere else in the United States.”
The Black experience in Philadelphia shows, definitively, that conventional assumptions undergirding “reform” of policing have no basis in the racial realities of the United States. Over the past eight years, Philadelphia cops shot at “suspects” 390 times, a rate of once a week, killing 65 of them. Fifty-nine of the human targets were unarmed and 80 percent of them were Black, according to a newly-released report by the U.S. Justice Department.
Philadelphia cops are five times more likely than New York City police to use deadly force against citizens. Despite having agreed four years ago to federal court monitoring of its stop-and-frisk policies, Philly cops made 200,000 such stops last year – about twice as high as the rate recorded in New York before that city’s program was officially halted. Ninety percent of those frisked in Philadelphia are minorities. Yet, the majority Black and brown city boasts a Black district attorney, a Black police commissioner and a 35 percent Black police force, and has had a mayor-appointed Police Advisory Commission since 1993. (Its first such board was set up in 1958.) Complete article
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