The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has
released a disturbing video of a police shooting. It shows eight
officers of the Saginaw, Michigan Police Department lined up
against Milton Hall, a mentally-ill homeless man. There’s a brief
stand-off in a vacant parking lot, in which Hall pulls out a
pocketknife, then the law enforcement agents fire 45 bullets at
Hall, hitting him 14 times, even as he drops to the pavement, but
it doesn’t end there.
“One policeman, after [Hall] was on the ground, turned him over,
handcuffed him, and put his foot on his back,” says Jewel Hall,
the mother of the 45-year-old homeless man. “And his blood is
running down the street like water.”
According to the ACLU, Hall only pulled out the knife because “a
police dog began snarling and lunging at” him.
One has to wonder why the eight officers did not see fit to
disarm Hall in a non-lethal way.
The shooting took place in July of 2012, but the organization
explains why it
remains relevant to this day:
In March 2014, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of
Justice (DoJ) declined to file federal charges against the Saginaw
police officers who shot and killed Milton Hall because they
claimed “this tragic event does not present sufficient evidence of
willful misconduct to lead to a federal criminal prosecution.” To
prosecute the officers, it is necessary to prove not only that
Hall’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the use of
excessive force, but also that the officers “willfully” set out to
deprive him of those rights. …The ACLU of Michigan testified that disagrees with the DOJ’s
decision not to prosecute, citing Supreme Court precedent
indicating that an officer “recklessly disregarding” a person’s
rights can meet the “willfulness” standard regardless of the
officer’s frame of mind, calling for an expanded investigation into
the practices of the Saginaw police and citing worries about an
apparent pattern of racial profiling.
On Monday the ACLU “testified… before the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) about the failure of the U.S.
Justice Department to prosecute officers involved in the
unjustified police shooting death.”
Although the DoJ declined to file charges in March, Jewel did
receive $725,00 in a civil lawsuit settlement with the department,
reports MLive.com
The Huffington Post explains that “the [IACHR] has no
real authority over the U.S. Yet Michael Steinberg, legal director
of the ACLU of Michigan, said he hopes the hearing will serve ‘as a
wake-up call for the desperate need to address police misconduct
against the black citizens of this country,'” and that “The power
behind these international tribunals is to draw attention to the
problem and to put pressure on the United States to abide by human
rights principles.”
You can watch the dashcam video here:
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1E15RIk
via IFTTT