Excessive Force, Bias, and Criminal Justice Reform: Proposals for Congressional Action

Abstract

Police violence in America is a modern-day crisis. Even our own allies such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahamas, France,United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Germany have all issued travel-alert warnings to their citizens visiting the U.S., due to the police violence being witnessed here. Yet, what the rest of the world seems to know and acknowledge, has apparently escaped our Congress and, indeed, our elected leaders who have failed to take action. While various communities may suffer from the abuses of excessive police practices, it is America’s people of color, particularly Blacks and Latinos, that are targeted disproportionately for police harassment and violence. Significantly, in 2015: (1) unarmed Black people were “killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites,” (2) “37% of unarmed people killed by police were Black” despite being “only 13% of the U.S. population,” and (3) “[p]olice killed at least 102 unarmed black people,” nearly two people each week. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Hispanics are over-represented when it comes to traffic searches and arrests, as statistics show: