US government prosecutors have declined to bring charges against police officers facing allegations of civil rights violations in 96 percent of such cases during the past 10 years, according to a new report.
Federal prosecutors turned down 12,703 potential civil rights violations out of 13,233 total complaints between 1995 and 2015, according to an investigation by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper.
The newspaper examined nearly 3 million US Justice Department records related to how the department’s 94 US attorney’s offices across the country handled civil rights cases against police.
The most common reasons that prosecutors cited for declining to bring civil rights cases against officers were weak or insufficient evidence, lack of criminal intent and orders from the Justice Department, the newspaper said.
The findings could bolster arguments by African American civil rights activists who claim white police officers who kill black people are…