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UPDATED: December 15, 2014 NO. 51 DECEMBER 18, 2014
'Black Lives Matter!'
Why are we still talking about racial injustice in America?
By Corrie Dosh
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CALLING FOR JUSTICE: Protesters lay down in Grand Central Station in New York City during a protest on December 3 after a grand jury decided not to charge a white police officer in the choking death of Eric Garner, a black man (XINHUA/AFP)

'Hands up, don't shoot!"—a rallying cry spreading across America following two high-profile cases in which white police officers will not face trial for killing unarmed black men. First, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and now, Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York. The cases have exposed simmering tensions over racial equality, corruption in the justice system and the militarization of police departments throughout the nation.

What happened? Why are we still talking about equality and justice in this day and age when we have a black president sitting in the White House, and the "post-racial" era of American culture has supposedly dawned? These two deaths at the hands of police officers have become the symbol of a criminal justice system that has been unfair and hostile toward minorities and particularly toward young black men.

According to a recent Gallup poll, 59 percent of Americans believe racial profiling is widespread and more than four out of 10 black respondents said that they had been stopped by police officers simply because of their race. One in three black men nationwide can expect to go to prison at least once in their lifetime, compared with one in 17 for white males.

In the case of 18-year-old Brown, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson testified that he shot Brown after an altercation. Some witnesses identify Brown as the aggressor, others say that Wilson shot Brown in cold blood after the teenager attempted to surrender. Though a federal investigation is pending, Wilson was cleared by a grand jury of any wrongdoing in the case.

In the case of Garner, a video of the incident shows police officers putting the 43-year-old in a chokehold while attempting to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes. Garner is heard saying "I can't breathe" before collapsing and an autopsy found that compressions to the chest and "prone positioning during physical restraint by police" were the cause of death. The chokehold maneuver that killed Garner has been banned by the New York Police Department since 1993. Again, no charges were brought against the officers involved.

It would be a mistake to view the riots following these two high-profile cases as isolated disturbances. Demonstrators say that these cases are part of a larger pattern of racial bias in police shootings. At least five unarmed black men died at the hands of police the month Brown was killed.

"Unfortunately, the patterns that we've been seeing recently are consistent: The police don't show as much care when they are handling incidents that involve young black men and women, and so they do shoot and kill," Delores Jones-Brown, a law professor and Director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Statistics at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, told the Mother Jones magazine. "And then for whatever reason, juries and prosecutor's offices are much less likely to indict or convict."

Probable cause

Both the Brown and Garner cases involve grand jury decisions not to bring charges against the police officers involved. Grand juries are used to determine whether there is probable cause to bring charges against accused criminals. The juries, made up of 12 to 23 citizens, hear evidence and review documents to determine if a case should go to trial. It is extremely rare for a grand jury to decide not to support an indictment—after all, a grand jury decision does not determine guilt; it only determines whether a case merits a full trial. In cases that involve police shootings, however, "police have been nearly immune from criminal charges," according to a recent Houston Chronicle investigation.

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