Police brutality against the black community

In 2016, Jeronimo Yañez caused the death of Philando Castille, shooted in Minnesota in
plain sight with his car window opened seconds before he showed his weapon license to the
police. This outrageous killing infuriated many and provoked a massive street protest similar
to ones motivated by the recent movement Black Lives Matter. That year was the starting
point to record data on police brutality against black citizens.
This data reveals that 24% of the people shooted by police were black, and according to the
Washington Post, a black person is 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a police officer.
Unfortunately, this oppressive and murderous reality is nothing new, as one might realise by
taking a tour in the Smithsonian. There you can see a placard sign written in red and white
that reads “End police brutality now”. It was donated by a college professor who took part in
a protest march in 1963 in Washington. Not even after the civil rights decade this cruelty was
eradicated and the words of Martin Luther King (“When will you be satisfied?”) addressed to
those evil policemen still echoes.
Starting as a way to control the demographic outburst, first in Boston in 1938 against
Western European immigrants, those practices were soon used against African Americans
in northern cities.
By those years, the Illinois Association for Criminal Justice began to study crime, particularly
felonies committed by the Alcapone’s gang, although it also provided data on police brutality.
The results pointed out that even if the black community represented only 5% of the
population, in terms of victims of police brutality, the percentage rose to 30%, as well as the
fact that much of the incidents were initiated by the police force, as Malcom Holmes, a
Sociology Professor from Wyoming stated.
Hoover created the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, whose
report were made up of 16 volumes.
In the sixties, even if the civil right leaders asked for peaceful protests, the police reacted
with disruptive measures. In 1967, the beating of a taxi driver lead to the creation of the
National Commission on Civil Disorders by Lydon Johnson in 1968, whose
recommendations were, among others, helping poor households and providing housing as a
way to struggle with segregation and poverty among the Black community. Saldy, those
proposals weren’t taken seriously.