Women of Color Continued Struggle For Justice Against Racial Profiling and Police Brutality!

Racial profiling is a longstanding and deeply troubling national problem despite claims that the United States has entered a “post-racial era.” It occurs every day, in cities and towns across the country, when law enforcement and private security target people of color for humiliating and often frightening detentions, interrogations, and searches without evidence of criminal activity and based on perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion.

Perceptions of Black women as unworthy and unfit mothers inform police violence against pregnant women like Malaika Brooks, who was shocked multiple times with 50,000 volts of electricity by police TASERS pointed directly at her belly when she was seven months pregnant during a traffic stop.

Indeed, Black women are perceived by police to be both inherently inviolable and inherently violent, no matter what their circumstances. As a result, police response to domestic violence all too often proves deadly to Black women like Janisha Fonville, killed in early 2015 by a Charlotte police officer responding to a call for assistance during a fight with her girlfriend, 41 or Aura Rosser, killed by Ann Arbor police responding to an incident of domestic violence.

 

Reliance on police as first responders to people in mental health crises similarly results in police brutality, as was the case for Tanisha Anderson 43 and for Kayla Moore – a Black transgender woman killed by Berkeley Police responding to a request for assistance. 44 Kayla was calm when they arrived, but instead of offering her the help she needed, the officers decided to arrest her on a warrant for a person who bore the male name she was assigned at birth but who was 20 years older. She died as police piled on top of her to place her under arrest until she stopped breathing, and then refused to give her CPR. Kayla’s family believes this was because she was trans.

Transgender and gender non-conforming Black women routinely experience profiling, homophobic and transphobic harassment and abuse, as well as physical, sexual and sometimes deadly violence or neglect by police. That was the case for Duanna Johnson, who, like so many Black women, including of course Black trans women, was profiled for prostitution as she was walking down the street in Memphis and arrested. She was then brutally beaten in the police station because she wouldn’t answer to “faggot” when an officer called her over to be fingerprinted. Like Rodney King’s, her beating was caught on video – but it didn’t spark a national uprising.

Racial profiling is patently illegal, violating the U.S. Constitution’s core promises of equal protection under the law to all and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Just as importantly, racial profiling is ineffective. It alienates communities from law enforcement, hinders community policing efforts, and causes law enforcement to lose credibility and trust among the people they are sworn to protect and serve.

We rely on the police to protect us from harm and promote fairness and justice in our communities. But racial profiling has led countless people to live in fear, casting entire communities as suspect simply because of what they look like, where they come from, or what religion they adhere to. Unfortunately, sometimes calling cops for help can lead to your own death or incarceration.

These women are few of the cases that sparked an outcry on social media for justice to be done. However, the legal system is broken and we’ve got a long way to go. Talking about it on social media does help to spread the way which may not be reported on local news. https://www.facebook.com/KilledByPolice/posts/934348779926593 Unfortunately, sometimes calling cops for help can lead to your own death or incarceration.