Police brutality against Black Men On The Rise

Scenes From My Younth

We have to get the message out there, and get it out there constantly, that police brutality is alive and well in America,” and we will fight against the injustice of police misconduct in the courts and on the streets.”

“Why did they have to shoot this dead man behind the wheele memorial day weekend 2011 on South Beach? Was he after getting shot dead by police a threat?



Do you think the dead man behind the wheele of this car is still dangerous to police? Dangerous to the point of getting shot an additional 114 more times? Even the person that took this horriffic video was threaten by armed police, cellphone confiscated and destroyed. You're seeing this video because he removed the SD card just as the officer took his property.

The eyes of Black America are focused sternly on our cities' police forces as report after report of police brutality continues to surface.

14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson

Bay County, Florida Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Siebert's characterization of Martin Lee Anderson's death as the end result of a "cascade of events," implies inadvertency. It paints a vague, non-judgmental picture of events that no one could have foreseen or halted once the process started, and now we must accept this unfortunate accident with a tear and a sigh, and move on.

Accident or no accident?

If you see 6 or 7 vultures gathered in one place, at one time, doing one thing, you can be fairly certain that their activity and its outcome aren't accidental. I offer this imperfect analogy with my sincere apology to vultures, who, after all, perform a useful and necessary function in the scheme of things. The same can't be said for teen boot camps.

This video above provides a rare candid view of standard boot camp activity: the goading, taunting, being marshaled about, and more. Those push-ups and track work aren't fitness training by any stretch of the definition. What happens at boot camp has a very different purpose. And if you're a newly-arrived, lanky black kid who plays high school basketball and wears a fancy hairdo, you'd better watch your step. The vultures began making plans for you the moment you came through the gate. Get prepared to run until you drop, or they just might drop you. They know exactly how to handle kids who are "being uncooperative," "unruly," "willfully disobedient," "resisting authority," "malingering" and "faking it." Toward the end of the video, we see it happen. We see a desperate, exhausted 14-year-old's last conscious moments in this life.

Abner Louima


Abner Louima is a Haitian who was assaulted, brutalized and forcibly sodomized with the handle of a bathroom plunger by New York City police officers after being arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997.

NYPD officer Justin Volpe initially pleaded not guilty to several counts of violating Louima's civil rights, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to police. Midway through the trial, Volpe changed his plea to guilty, confessing to having sodomized Louima. Despite the fact that Louima had several broken teeth, Volpe denied that he ever struck Louima in the mouth with the stick and claimed that he only put it very close to Louima's mouth. Volpe also admitted that he had threatened Louima's life. On December 13, 1999, Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole, a $525 fine and restitution in the amount of $277,495. 

Tyisha Miller 19


Several Blacks have made national headlines after they were gunned down by police: Tyisha Miller of Riverside, CA, a young black woman, who had dozed off in the front seat of her car.When she didn't awake in response to the police knocking on the window,the police officers smashed her window and opened fire, killing her.The police officers said, "They thought she had a weapon in the car". 

Amadou Diallo, 23


Amadou Diallo of New York was a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant in New York City who was shot and killed on February 4, 1999 by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss. The four officers fired a total of 41 rounds. The shooting took place at 1157 Wheeler Avenue in the Soundview section of The Bronx. The four were part of the now-defunct Street Crimes Unit. All four officers were acquitted at trial in Albany, New York.

Diallo was unarmed at the time of the shooting, and a firestorm of controversy erupted subsequent to the event as the circumstances of the shooting prompted outrage both within and outside New York City. Issues such as police brutality, racial profiling, and contagious shooting were central to the ensuing controversy.

Rodney King



Aftewr the beating

  Rodney G. King is best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on March 3, 1991. A bystander, George Holliday, videotaped much of the incident from a distance.

The footage showed LAPD officers repeatedly striking King with their batons while other officers stood by watching, without taking any action to stop the beating. A portion of this footage was aired by news agencies around the world, causing public outrage that raised tensions between the black community and the LAPD and increased anger over police brutality and social inequalities in Los Angeles.



Four LAPD officers were later tried in a state court for the beating; three were acquitted and the jury failed to reach a verdict for the fourth. The announcement of the acquittals sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots. A later federal trial for civil rights violations ended with two of the officers found guilty and sent to prison and the other two officers acquitted.

 Robert Russ and La Tanya Haggerty, both of Chicago. All were unarmed. A homeless woman was killed by a Los Angeles police officer who feared she would kill him with her screwdriver.

And after several incidents, New Jersey has finally admitted that it uses racial profiling, an issue that also has caught the attention of the nation.

These dismal tales and countless others have left Black America in an uproar over police brutality.

"We just want justice to prevail in these cases," said Rainbow/PUSH founder and president the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. "In all cases the victims were young, Black, full of potential, in cars and or unarmed. In all cases police approached the victims with their weapons drawn. It seems in all of these cases of police shootings across the country, there is a rush to judgment by law enforcement officials who fire first and ask questions later. Bobby and La Tanya should be alive today but as fate would have it, are not, again, dead at the hands of OUR PROTECTORS?