America's killer cops take race to the bottom

WASHINGTON: The reputation of American cops as strong-arm, trigger-happy, out-of-control toughs was amplified on Thursday after video footage emerged of black man suffocating when police in upstate New York put a hood over his head and pressed down his face.
Although the eventually fatal incident pre-dated the George Floyd murder by cops in Minnesota, the family of the victim Daniel Prude obtained the disturbing body camera footage and official reports of his death only this week and went public with it, adding to the racial tensions and confrontation with the white establishment-backed police in an already fraught election season.
Separately, protests erupted in Washington DC on Wednesday after a black youth was shot dead by police who claimed he was armed. This follows a similar shooting in Los Angeles two days ago, part of an unending stream of police shooting of black men in a country overloaded with deadly firearms.
In most cases, the trigger-happy police have been all too quick to kill, citing danger to their own lives -- even when there is none. The attitude is illustrated by a California police officer who was charged on Wednesday with felony manslaughter by the Alameda County District Attorney – Kamala Harris’ first law enforcement job -- for fatally shooting a Black man inside a Walmart in encounter that less than 40 seconds for a minor infraction, without any attempt at de-escalation.
In the horrific Upstate New York case, the victim’s brother called the police after he reportedly suffered a mental health episode that resulted in his leaving home at 3.15 a.m in his underwear. Police found him, cuffed him, and when he began to spit at them, put hood on him and held him down with force for almost two minutes even as muffled, anguished sounds were heard.
Transported to the hospital, Prude was taken off life support seven days after the encounter and died on March 30. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint, excited delirium and acute phencyclidine intoxication.”
“I placed a phone call for my brother to get help. Not for my brother to get lynched. How did you see him and not directly say, 'The man is defenseless, buck naked on the ground. He´s cuffed up already.' How many more brothers gotta die for society to understand that this needs to stop?" his brother Joe Prude wept at a press conference on Wednesday.
In Washington, Attorney General Bob Barr maintained that the "narrative that police are on some epidemic of shooting unarmed black men is simply a false," insisting on CNN that "it’s very rare for an unarmed African American to be shot by a white police officer."
Facts and stats indicate otherwise. A study by the National Institutes of Health shows a majority (52 per cent) of those shot by the police are white, compared to 32 percent black, but African Americans make up only 13 percent of the population. Since 2015, Black Americans have been killed by police at a rate of 32 per million and White Americans have been killed at a rate of 13 per million, according to another study.
The police-on-black killings have exacerbated racial and political tensions to such an extent that several major American cities – New York, Washington DC, Chicago among them -- which are mostly Democrat-run and have large black populations, are at odds with the federal government and the Trump administration. The President is threatening to cut off funding for the cities if they don’t contain violence, which he blames exclusively on the "radical left" and BlackLivesMatter protestors, although in some instances it is racist white "nationalists" who have provoked clashes by posing as vigilantes guarding public property, often with the tacit support of a mostly-white police force.
The Trump threat drew an incredible rebuke from New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who warned that if the President went through with it, "he can't have enough bodyguards to walk through New York City."
"Forget bodyguards, he better have an army if he thinks he's going to walk down the streets in New York," Cuomo warned.
The clash preceded a visit by Democratic nominee Joe Biden to Kenosha, Wisconsin to visit the family of a black man who was shot seven times in the back by police and who is struggling for his life. Trump was snubbed by the family during his visit to the city earlier this week, but h used the expedition to portray impending urban chaos and anarchy if Democrats win the election in an effort scare up suburban voters.
With two months to go for Election Day, the battle lines are being drawn around race, civil liberties, and violence rather than the pandemic crisis. In any event, there are growing fears that Trump and his crew will not leave the White House even if they lose, after declaring early victory on the basis of leads.
The US President has already disparaged and cast doubts on the electoral process and indicated that he will not accept an adverse result even though all studies show his suspicion of mail-in voting has no basis.
"He probably won’t even come to Biden’s inauguration. He’ll be stacking sandbags around in the White House," former President Bill Clinton warned in a radio interview.