In 1998, Amnesty International stated “Human rights aren’t just a foreign affair.” Human rights violations towards minority communities in the United States existed before 1998 and persist into the twenty first century, spurring distrust amongst people of color. Perpetrators of these violations are often those charged with protection: the police. A report by Amnesty International in the same year detailed police using lethal and unnecessary force towards predominately black and Hispanic people (Terence Fitzgerald). Sixteen years later, the death of a black teenager, Michael Brown, at the hands of a policeman, sparked national outrage. The phrase coined, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” addressed the presumption of guilt that exists towards people …show more content…
Various murders of black men and women across the country sparked outrage, such as the death of Eric Garner, killed in a chokehold by the New York Police Department. Factors such as the chokehold used by the officer, banned by the New York Police in 1993, Garner’s history of asthma, and his cries of “I can’t breathe” instigated a national conversation about race. Other black lives taken at the hands of police brutality include John Crawford III, a man walking through an Ohio Walmart store aisle, talking on the phone and holding a BB gun he had picked up from the store. When the police arrived, Crawford, a twenty-two-year-old father, was shot within a matter of seconds. Also in Ohio, Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy, was shot at a Cleveland park as he played with a toy. The officer killed Rice within two seconds of arriving at the scene. First aid was never given to the child, and he died the following day. None of the officers that killed Garner, Crawford, nor Rice were indicted, suspected by many to be because the officers were white men. When African American people across the country rallied to protest these deaths, they were met with a militarized police force containing military-style gear, grenades, automatic rifles, and armored vehicles (Peter Katel). “There's no question in my mind that the idea …show more content…
In 2010, a Hispanic man named Angel Castro Torres, was severely beaten by a police officer; the officer stopped him on his motorcycle solely because he looked Latino, and questioned him about his citizenship (Carol Ullmann). The racial profiling done to Torres cultivated in severe bodily harm, including several broken facial bones. Xenophobia, or fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners, is a large factor in police brutality against Hispanic peoples; the Hispanic persons detained along the United States Mexico border have been subjected to physical abuse, sexual abuse, and forced dehydration and starvation (Terrence J. Fitzgerald). This violence, however, exists nationwide; other cases of abuse towards Hispanic peoples include an incident in Los Angeles featuring a corrupt police division in a poor, Hispanic populated neighborhood (Wade J. Henderson). The police unit in this division manufactured not only fake evidence to convict peoples of this neighborhood, but also a list of ten thousand Hispanic people they believed they could deport. Using the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deport any witnesses to their violence, the officers would engage in police brutality towards the population of this neighborhood. This brutality suffered by the Latino peoples in the United