This week, North Miami police were caught using actual booking photos as targets at their shooting ranges. Sadly and unsurprisingly, the pictures were exclusively of Black men .
Understandably, the African American community is upset, and it should be. White people should be as upset. This is exactly the kind of behavior that leads to deadly police encounters. This kind of racist practice, to use terminology usually employed in a different part of our discourse, is a gateway behavior that leads to police beatings and, eventually, police shootings. Target practice using those pictures trains the officers’ brains to respond reflexively.
To sum things up, this:
Leads to this:
Neither is acceptable.
St. Ann Police admit to injuring, arresting wrong person after chase
by Adam McDonald / KMOV.com staff, KMOV.com
Posted on January 16, 2015
ST. ANN, Mo. (KMOV.com) – St. Ann Police apologized to a college student after they admitted to causing severe injuries to his face after accusing him of a crime he didn’t commit on Thursday.
Police were in pursuit of Anton Simmons, who had 17 warrants our for his name, when 22-year-old Joseph Swink crashed his car trying to avoid the police pursuit on Interstate 70.
“They ended up grabbing him [Swink], tossing him to the ground, and were trying to handcuff him,” said St. Ann Police Chief Aaron Jimenez. “All the sirens and lights were going off. It was very loud and they couldn’t hear anything the citizen was saying.”
Curated from www.kmov.com
North Miami Beach Police Use Mug Shots Of African-Americans For Target Practice
Officers from a South Florida police department are drawing fire after getting caught using photos of real-life suspects for target practice.
Critics told NBC South Florida, which first reported the controversy, that the North Miami Beach cops are racially insensitive because the six mug shots used at the firing range feature only African-American suspects.
Curated from North Miami Beach Police Use Mug Shots Of African-Americans For Target Practice
