law enforcement

Marijuana Arrests and Sentencing – Tatiyana Booker

by

The article speaks about the unjust treatment of people of color getting jail time compared to whites relating to weed. People of color are in jail facing many years for having sold Cannabis/weed. While whites are making stores or food filled with the same thing and getting no type of punishment for it, if anything, they are getting more business for the same reason many people of color are in jail for. This is an unfair treatment that people of color are facing 10+ years in prison for doing the same thing, but are getting strict punishment for. If one group is going to get jail time, it should be everyone getting in trouble, or people should realize this isn’t an offense if it’s going to target one group of people. A quote from the article says, “ And although surveys show that whites use drugs as much or more than blacks in the US, black people were arrested for drug-related offenses at five times the rate of whites in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” This is unfair that blacks are more likely to go to jail for a drug offense than any other race, and this is something that should be looked at because it’s putting all the blame on one group instead of looking at everyone.

The article speaks about the need for police reform to make sure that the disparity would change. Racial profiling would need to stop, just because a person is of color doesn’t mean they are doing wrong. Police need to stop coming at every person of color they see. The need for unnecessary searches needs to end unless every person will be searched and not just because a person looks suspicious.

“https://qz.com/1482349/weed-and-reparations/”>Weed and Reparations

https://qz.com/1194143/even-after-legalization-black-americans-are-arrested-much-more-often-for-marijuana-offenses/

https://norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets/item/racial-disparity-in-marijuana-arrests

#MMIW – Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

by

By Nicole Leo

Since Christopher Columbus landed and “discovered” America, its native people have been treated as the Other.  Without diving into the many past and current injustices that have been and are imposed on Native Americans, there is one specific systemic injustice that can be again linked to a lack of importance and urgency within the judicial system.  Faith Hedgepeth was a co-worker, fellow student at the University of North Carolina, and a friend of mine.   She was raped and murdered in 2012, a huge devastation to our small college town.  Although the police have appeared to work diligently and still reassure us the case is still being worked on, the killer is still at large.  Her death led me to learn about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement.  There are alarming statistics that highlight the epidemic of MMIW.  Indigenous women are ten times more likely to be murdered than any other demographic; Indigenous women are more than twice as likely to be the victim of a violent crime than any other demographic.  What is most alarming about these statistics, is that they only report a small percentage of crimes against indigenous women.  The Urban Indian Health Institute conducted various studies to gather information to compare numbers to those (like the ones above) given by our government and found that the rate of violence experienced by these women were much higher than reported.  For example, the institute found there to be over 5,700 cases of MMIW but only 116 of these women were placed on the United States’ Department of Justice missing persons list.   There are specific shortcomings that try to give reasons why the government failed to protect our these women including jurisdiction issues between government and Native lands, lack of services including emergency care and amber alerts, lack of community awareness, and lack of communication between government officials and native people.  A call for action is needed for our judicial system to protect and uphold the law of justice and fairness for all and to stop the othering of indigenous women.  Below is a video for reference of the suffering and injustice these families are facing.  To learn more and raise awareness, you can visit mmiwusa.org.

 

Resources:

https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_and_murdered_Indigenous_women

https://www.powwows.com/the-tradgedy-of-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-mmiw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Hedgepeth_homicide

Diary of Systemic Injustices Showcase

by

By Xuxin He

The biggest form of systemic injustice in modern day America is ranges from Police brutality in the streets to the sentencing in the criminal Justice System particularly against minorities especially those off African American decent. There are countless witnessing of unjust and egregious acts of both police brutality across multiple states in America. Apart from these situations, there are countless other cases where courts give higher sentences or bail to minorities and African American offenders. Fueling this are the attitudes associated with racial profiling. In most cases minorities are considered social ills, they are seen as predominantly disadvantaged in the school or moral system and are thereby categorized as prone to crime or illegal activities that would otherwise predispose them to experiencing such injustices.

The sad reality behind these injustices is that as much as some offenders duly deserve the punishments they receive, a majority including the poor are incarcerated for no viable crime, receiving punishments much higher than is justly deserved. Examples of such incidents are seen all over the media and on countless reports put out. On the rise especially are countless shootings of unarmed African American individuals ranging from children to adult. With the likes of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri to the choking of Eric Garner in New York City (Sekhon, 2017). According to a police violence report (2017), there were 1,147 killings in 2017 with 92% of them the result of police shootings, Tasers, physical force and police vehicles. Those charged for these cases were only 13, a whopping 1% of all killings.

The irony behind it is that witnesses were able to identify 569 of these officers, with at least 48 having shot or killed someone and 12 with multiple prior shootings. In these cases, the police had responded to suspected non-violent offenses (Violence, 2017). The evident air of such incidents as well as advocacy by activists has led to little to no change in many police departments across the country. Pictures such as the one displayed at the bottom are the result of countless activists, ordinary citizens and community leaders protesting the indiscriminate rise of police brutality across various states in America

Figure 1: protests after fatal shooting by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Protesters march after a fatal shooting by police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2016. Credit: William Widmer/New York Times/eyevine (Peeples, 2019, September 4).

Figure 2: Protestors march & demonstrate against the shooting of Michael Brown

Protestors march and hold their fists aloft as they march during ongoing demonstrations in reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri August 16, 2014 (Reuters, 2016, February 26).

 

 

References

Peeples, L. (2019, September 4). What the data say about police shootings. Retrieved March 6, 2020, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02601-9

Reuters. (2016, February 26). Justice Department to Conduct Independent Autopsy of Michael Brown. Retrieved March 6, 2020, from https://www.newsweek.com/justice-department-conduct-independent-autopsy-michael-brown-265118

Sekhon, N. (2017). Blue on Black: An empirical assessment of police shootings. Am. Crim. L. Rev., 54, 189.

Violence, M. P. (2017). Police violence report.

 

 

Police Corruption

by

By Evan Matthews

So this weekend I was in New York City for a track meet held in uptown (Harlem) and happened to be taken advantage of by the NYPD, or at least they tried. What had happened was while we were on our way to the track meet we got stopped by the NYPD while going through the subway ticket area getting our subway cards. As we started to enter through three NYPD officers stopped us and informed us that there was an additional fee for large out of state groups traveling through New York’s subway system (Which is completely false) and my coaches requested their names and badge numbers to report them. This wasn’t my first encounter with with corrupt police officers sadly but it impacted my teammates and myself cause it made me think do people really think were that gullible? I distinguished this as systematic injustice because the police tried using their authority and our lack of subway knowledge and the fact that we were from out of town for their personal gain. For this wrong to be righted honestly those officers need to lose their jobs and find another profession. They’re supposed to protect and serve not steal, there was some light that came from this situation though and that was I learned even though people have gained positions of power and authority does not mean they will carry out their duties in a righteous manner. My case of systematic injustice is not as extreme as MLK’s by any means but I think the two relate as people in positions of power were using those positions to exploit people and in my case for personal gain, in Dr. Kings case in was not for personal gain it was for the sheer fact that that’s how society was and many white people wanted to degrade and stop black folks from being equal to them in socioeconomic class.

https://images.app.goo.gl/7gXz151WDNSebKCs8

https://nypost.com/tag/nypd-corruption-scandal/