US police act as modern day slave patrols: Activist

Protest rallies have erupted outside a courthouse in the US state of Ohio after a judge declared a mistrial in the shooting death of an African-American man by a white campus police officer of University of Cincinnati. The protesters censured the outcome of the trial and accused the local justice system of being biased against minorities.

Margaret Kimberley, a member of the Black Agenda Report, believes that US police act as “modern day slave patrols” against black people who are always at risk of being harmed or even killed.

“Well this is like a broken record. This is constant. Every day three people in the United States are killed by the police, a total of 1,100 people every year and more than 300 of those people will be African-Americans. Often the police are not even charged,” the activist told Press TV.

She also argued that there needs to be a “wholesale change” in policing and in the way the police officers are prosecuted.

“We need community control of the police, black community control, the right to hire, the right to fire, the right to charge, the right to prosecute,” she said.

Elsewhere in her remarks, the activist criticized US President Barack Obama for making no efforts to address such cases, adding that it was apparently his administration’s policy to never allow the police officers to be prosecuted by the federal government.

She also opined that there might be an opportunity to have some of the cops prosecuted under Donald Trump presidency despite the fact that he is under fire as a “racist.”

The US police are accused of using excessive force against African-Americans. The deaths of unarmed black men and women in recent months and over the past years have sparked nationwide protests under the banner of 'Black Lives Matter.'

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