Police brutality in the United States has once again come to the fore as a reportedly homeless man throwing stones was shot dead by a police officer in Pasco, Washington on Thursday. Witnesses said that the unarmed 35-year-old man named Antonio Zambrano-Montes was gun downed by the police after he refused to put down the stones in his hands. It was the fourth fatal police shooting in Pasco in the past six months, again an instance of excessive use of force by police officers in the U.S.
American cities with predominantly black populations appear to be bearing the brunt of excessive force by police as key incidents of police shootings prevail in these areas of the U.S. Police brutality toward black citizens is a frightening reality for many, although the latest case saw police shoot a Mexican. The police killings and the subsequent brutal intervention on protestors has shed light on the disparity between "respect for equal rights and law enforcement's treatment of racial minorities."
The shooting and killing of black Americans by police has a long history in the U.S. Americans have long witnessed the deaths of black people and injustice at the hands of police. Recalling the August 2014 police killing of an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, and the subsequent police crackdown on protesters, it can be noted that the shooting and killing of blacks has a long history.
The use of force by law enforcement officers and the policing of protests were investigated by a human rights delegation formed by Amnesty International. The human rights organization released a report on Oct. 24 2014, On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson, documenting the human rights concerns in the Ferguson protests in the wake of Brown's death.
According to the 2014 finding by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Cleveland Police Department, "engage[d] in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment," regarding the case of a 12-year-old black American boy, Tamir Rice, who was shot dead by a local police officer. The pattern includes "the unnecessary and excessive use of deadly force, including shootings and head strikes with impact weapons," the statement read in a press release on Dec. 4, 2014.
There is a long list of people who have been brutally assaulted by police officers. According to a report released by the Centre for Research on Globalization, the number of Americans killed by police has reached 5,000 in the last decade as of 2014, outnumbering American soldiers killed in the Iraqi war, which is 4,489.
