Study finds racist police brutality on the rise
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
By: Heather Benno
In brief
The number of complaints against New York police officers in 2009 has increased by 11 percent over the same period in 2008, a New York Civil Liberties Union report finds. The number of officers under internal review for misconduct and excessive force complaints rose by 50 percent since 2007.
In the first three months of 2009, 52 percent of all civilians stopped by police were African American, compared to nine percent for white civilians.
Of 17 "substantiated" complaints from April 2009, the New York Police Department dismissed seventy percent without taking any disciplinary action.
Rampant police aggression continues to escalate around the country as the economic crisis deepens. In July 2009, the city of Oakland, California settled a lawsuit filed by the family of Mack "Jody" Woodfox III, an unarmed father of three, shot to death by the police during a traffic stop. The same officer also murdered 20 year-old Andrew Moppin-Buckskin on New Year’s Eve 2007 without being disciplined.
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