Revolution solution to US police brutality: Activist
Press TV has interviewed Hedrosia Bentum, American civil rights activist from Philadelphia, to discuss the killing of an 18-year-old African-American teenager in St. Louis, Missouri, by the US police.
What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: The killing of African-Americans including this case (Mansur Ball-Bey) is on the rise as we speak because of what has been called police brutality. What is behind this phenomenon?
Bentum: The phenomenon is there is a racial war against the African community in America. The statistics is something like every 18 minutes an African is killed by police and this is what we have been dealing with for very, very long time.
Press TV: Do you think this can be solved?
Bentum: Yes, it is a way of solving it … Africans are standing together in realizing that we must resist this current system. It is no justice for us in this system, so the solution is revolution.
Press TV: Is there any political will to make changes in the culture of policing?
Bentum: Yes. I am with a group - even while I am here in Philadelphia at a conference on black power matters. The conference is around black community... It is a democratic request and we are simply saying that the African community have no power over our community.
When things happen like this in our community, we sit back and wait for the very people that murdered us in the street to give us justice. And that makes no sense at all. That makes no sense at all. Chief Dotson in Ferguson, when Ferguson happened, he criticized the chief and various other people saying that he will be more transparent when VonDerrit Myers was murdered. And it was no transparency there and it is no transparency here. They concocted the story days later and then released it. A lot of things are still being swept under the carpet and rug regarding this case. The streets are telling one story, eyewitnesses are saying one thing and the police are saying another.
It is very clear to me that we cannot trust this system, we cannot trust the media. The media push the police agenda. You know I do not see them interviewing the community to let them tell the story. People out there have seen this kid brutally murdered. So that is what it was, a murder … Now they have time to think about, concoct their story and come up with something why they shot him point-blank in the back.
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