Last week, there was once another shooting of an African American man,
Stephen Clark, 22-year-old young black man that was unarmed. He was held at
gunpoint by two police officers in Stephen Clark’s grandfather’s backyard and
was shot 20 times. The two police officers believed he was armed when in fact
he was only carrying a cellphone in his hand. The court has decided they are
not charging these two officers. There are so many incidents like this all over
the country and now the White House is saying it should stay as a “local matter”
According to an article on Huffington
Post, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it’s a “local matter
and something we feel should be left up to the local authorities.” This country
is tired of these young black innocent men losing their life. Tuesday morning,
the Louisiana attorney general announced the two white police officers would
not be charged for Alton Sterling death. The mother of Eric Garner, a black man
that died while being restrained by a NYC police officer after repeating “I can’t
breathe”, is still waiting for an indictment. This is getting out of hand. Number
one thing our country should be focused on is serving justice for these
families.
In the press conference, a reporter asked Sanders if the
president feels the need to do something address the concerns of
African-American mothers fearing for their children’s lives. Sanders replied
with “I think the president ― whether they’re black, white, Hispanic, male or
female, rich or poor ― we look for ways to protect the individuals in this
country, particularly children.” The White House needs to just admit that this
is not a white issue, it’s not a Hispanic issue, it’s a Black issue and it
needs to stop.
The White house needs to take action for these incidents.
These might be local issues but the fact that it has happened so many times
these last couple years. This is a country wide issue that the White House has
the duty of serving justice for these families.
Dear Illyanna,
ReplyDeleteFirst and foremost thank you so much for writing about such an important topic that unfortunately our country is failing to acknowledge properly. In the last few years so many reports about police abusing their power, especially when dealing with the African American community, and getting little to no punishment have come up. It’s big news for a few weeks but then dies back down when, like you mentioned, the federal court system deems it as a local issue that needs to be dealt with by their local justice system. What I wish you could have talked about a bit more is how when it becomes a local matter the police in question are usually at the mercy of their colleagues that they see on a daily basis. This is important because this could be linked to why these police that have commited murder and horrible acts of brutality are let off with either suspensions or firings but almost never convicted of the felony level crimes they have technically committed.
I don’t think that it is right or just that the police are being tried by their colleagues. This is favoritism at its finest. This does need to be a federal matter because these people have gone over the line of duty and committed heinous acts that they are not getting criminally charged for. Being able to walk away when you've committed murder of an innocent is beyond unacceptable. I also agree with you that this is an occurrence that happens predominantly to Black men but we cannot discount other races. Hispanics also have a large victim pool of police shootings and brutality. As much as I agree this is a race issue we need to present it wholly as a police abusing their power issue if we have any chance of getting any action taken from the federal justice system.
Again thank you so much for talking about this. It’s so important.