US policy makers and civil rights organizations must push for major reforms in law enforcement departments to eradicate police violence against minorities, a political and national-security analyst in Washington says.
About 24 percent of unarmed individuals who were killed by police last year were African American, although they make only about 14 percent of the US population, said Eric Ham, a former national security advisor and researcher at the Senate.
“That’s a very stark number when you look at the high rate of killings by law enforcement perpetrated on people of color, even though they’re a minority of the population, but yet they rank so high with the killings in t his country,” Ham told Press TV on Thursday.
“We’re seeing a number of situations where civil rights organizations are now beginning to mobilize and to begin to develop a strategy to take on much of what it seems as abuse by law enforcement officials in the country,”…