Civil Rights and the Militarization of Police: Lessons from the Gestapo, America’s Path to Tyranny | News Analysis | News, Opinions & Analysis that Matters
Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News –The
world is watching what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri. After the
announcement by the grand jury that Officer Darren Wilson was
acquitted for the shooting death of Michael Brown, angry residents took
to the streets of Ferguson and other towns and cities across the U.S. to
protest police brutality. The U.S. government has the FBI, the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) along with the Ferguson police
department and the Missouri National guard ready to confront the angry
protesters with force. Michael Brown’s murder is not the only incident
that sparked riots. There have been other similar incidents involving
police brutality such as the Rodney King beating by the Los Angeles
Police Department in 1991 that also sparked riots. The Police used
excessive force against the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and
other anti-Establishment protests across the U.S. In 1997, NYPD
officers sodomized a Haitian immigrant by the name of Abner Louima with a
broken-off broom handle after he was arrested during an altercation
between the police and patrons outside a Brooklyn nightclub. He was
hospitalized and most of the police officers involved were not found
guilty because of insufficient evidence, except for one of the officers
who received a 30-year sentence. Following the verdict of the Michael
Brown case, another African-American man was recently shot and killed by
an NYPD officer in a housing project in East New York, Brooklyn. White
Americans have also been victims of police brutality. In 2012, Kelly
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man with schizophrenia was beaten to
death by two veterans of the Fullerton Police Department in California.
Both men were acquitted by the grand jury. Although statistics do show
that minorities are more likely to get harassed (by Stop and Frisk in
NYC for example), arrested and even murdered by the police. The United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a report on human rights abuses in the United States which included the epidemic of police brutality. It stated:
Excessive use of force by law enforcement officials
