Not much has chaged! Police Brutality in Boston 1850's to the present

As part of doing research for a term paper - I stumbled upon this poster from 1851, warning people of color against Boston police.

I keep feeling that learning history, especially history of oppressed groups and social movements, is both inspiring and disheartening. So often, the many injustices that have been challenged for 100's of years, are still the same struggles we face today. This is a great example, where in the following links you can see how there is no progress when it comes to stopping police acts of violence, and the lack of accountability surrounding them.

A recent case is that of Michael Bell. "Michael Edward Bell was a 21 year old man who was unarmed when fatally shot by Kenosha, Wisconsin police officers in the head. His mother and sister witnessed most of the altercation and also the shooting right in front of their faces, right outside of their house.

Less than a year after this horrific incident, participating officers Erich R. Strausbaugh, Erich R. Weidner and Albert B. Gonzalez were cited for "Performing within the realm of duty and showing great courage, ability and devotion to public service". Read more here.

There is also a web site called massbrutality.org, where you can read further about other incidents. As everything in the United States in a business, there is also a website where lawyers that specialize in police brutality cases can list their services. Apparently it is common to need a lawyer to defend yourself from police. Isn't that completely insane!?

Not surprisingly, I also found a Boston Globe article about an investigation on Police Brutality in Lawrence, MA - a predominantly Latino (mostly Dominican) neighborhood.

Human Rights Watch also has this interesting report posted online about their investigations on a higher incidence of reports from people of color of abuse by police forces (than reports by whites). It is aptly called "Shielded from Justice."

How fake is a democracy where it's citizens must spend so much effort on monitoring and investigating an institution created and sustained by those same citizens - supposedly with the goals to "serve and protect" them, but that has so vehemently taken over it's power to kill them and abuse them?

RU