yeah, but it's really a media hyped thing, made to seem worse than it is if it exists at all.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/...ons-cops-shooting-black-men-article-1.2030545
.
The issue in Ferguson isn't only white cops shooting black men. What's bizarre is I've seen you criticize the heavy handed tactics of cops but Ferguson is the poster boy of systematic abusive and excessive force.
Here's a great article from "Redstate" of all things that goes over the findings. In fact...this article disregards everything except data straight from the Ferguson Police database since of course a DOJ under a Democratic President can't be trusted...
Many Conservatives are Blowing it on the Ferguson DOJ Report | RedState
The brief version?
I. Police Department as Revenue Generator
Ferguson Police serving a city with a large portion of people under the poverty line used police citations in order to fill the city coffers. The fees from fines almost tripled and the city openly talked about using the police as a large revenue generator. Police would stop people for minor offenses and to meet the pressure to increase revenue started hitting people with multiple citations for minor offenses. They were stopping people with the intent of writing them citations. For the largely poor black population they couldn't afford these tickets and there were over 9,000 warrants issued for failure to pay. The Ferguson Police Jail turned into a virtual debtors prison.
II. Excessive Use of Force
Even using the officers own description of events officers habitually used excessive force. The report shows that cops didn't use force only in the case of protecting themselves, that a lot of time it was used in a retaliatory way towards anyone that showed "contempt of cop". Of course the instances of excessive force was used in much higher percentages against black communities. Excessive force included canines and tasers.
III. Lack of oversight
If you use force your supposed to file a "Use of Force" report that requires supervisor approval. Well...most of the Use of Force Reports were never viewed or signed by Supervisors and there is a lot of evidence suggesting that Use of Force reports weren't filled out in a lot of instances where it should of been. Police in Ferguson acted of their own volition without any consequences for their actions. That's dangerous...as mentioned earlier, the black community in Ferguson was the recipient of most of the Use of Force situations.
IV. "Contempt of Cop"
"Failure to Obey", "Failure to Comply", "manner of Walking" and "Resisting Arrest" where pretty much used by police if they didn't like the actions of people they were arresting or people around them. In fact, they were used multiple times on bystanders taping or calling a police officers supervisor as they used excessive force.
The article also mentions the "wanteds" system which even described in the police handbook is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment. They basically created warrants without any judicial oversight.
V. Racial Bias
There is more than enough evidence of racial bias...the article lists out some of the more damning statistics.