US needs police reforms to end brutality against minorities: Analyst

US policy makers and civil rights organizations must push for major  reforms in law enforcement departments to eradicate police violence against minorities, a political and national-security analyst in Washington says.

About 24 percent of unarmed individuals who were killed by police last year were African American, although they make only about 14 percent of the US population, said Eric Ham, a former national security advisor and researcher at the Senate.

“That’s a very stark number when you look at the high rate of killings by law enforcement perpetrated on people of color, even though they’re a minority of the population, but yet they rank so high with the killings in t his country,” Ham told Press TV on Thursday.

“We’re seeing a number of situations where civil rights organizations are now beginning to mobilize and to begin to develop a strategy to take on much of what it seems as abuse by law enforcement officials in the country,” he added.

Anti-police sentiment is high across the US due to a surge of unjustified killings and abuse of unarmed African Americans and other minorities over the past several years.

Last week, an African American woman in New York City was dragged from her apartment and left naked in a public hallway by a dozen “rookie” officers.

Denise Stewart, 50, is now on trial in Brooklyn Criminal Court on charges of assaulting an officer in July 2014 when they attempted to arrest her on charges of beating her child.

Police were called to Stewart’s apartment building for a separate incident when a noise was heard from her door, said Rameau. The officers knocked on her door and demanded entry.

Stewart, who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes and uses an oxygen tank, was just getting out of the shower when she answered the door in a towel.

The incident, which was captured on a neighbor’s mobile phone, caused Stewart to drop her towel, leaving her exposed with only white underwear. Stewart’s older son tried to intervene and was also arrested.

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