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US police officers kill with impunity: Researcher

Monday, 14 March 2016 4:32 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 14 March 2016 4:32 PM ]

“In essence, the federal government is saying to law enforcement, you the officer in the street will not be held accountable for your action if you commit murder or other civil rights violations,” says Walt Peretto.

US police officers often use deadly force with relative impunity due to double standards that exist in the country’s criminal justice system, a writer and researcher in Florida says.

“We are ending up with a double standard; one for the common citizen and one for police officers,” Walt Peretto told Press TV on Monday.

“This double standard has been part of American culture for quite a while now and it is getting more one-sided and it’s getting to the point where cops are bordering on impunity for violent criminal activities,” he added.

US government prosecutors have declined to bring charges against police officers facing allegations of civil rights violations in 96 percent of such cases during the past 10 years, according to a new report.

Federal prosecutors turned down 12,703 potential civil rights violations out of 13,233 total complaints between 1995 and 2015, according to an investigation by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper.

The newspaper examined nearly 3 million US Justice Department records related to how the department’s 94 US attorney’s offices across the country handled civil rights cases against police.

The new findings could bolster arguments by African American civil rights activists who claim white police officers who kill black people are rarely held criminally responsible for their violence.

The report comes just days after the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York City announced he would not press charges against a white officer who killed an unarmed black teenager inside his own apartment in 2012.

Police in the United States killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans, according to data compiled by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project.

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