- Sep 12, 2009
- 6,840
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by Bruce A. Dixon
We're all supposed to be impressed with the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder parachuted into
Ferguson MO the other day to wrap his arms around the local top black cop and get briefed on the
pending federal investigation into the police killing of Michael Brown. But we shouldn't be.
For the last 20 years, since 1994, Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act obligates the
Department of Justice to collect statistics on the extent of brutality and excessive force used by police
officers, and to make those findings available to the public. 20 years down the road no such stats
exist, because the Justice Departments of the Clinton, the Bush and the Obama administrations have
all simply ignored the law and refuse even to try to gather the information. Let me say this again:
the Clinton Justice Department defied the law and refused to gather national stats on police
misconduct. The Bush Justice Department thumbed its nose at the law and also refused to gather
national stats on police misconduct, and now the first black attorney general, who sometimes even
utters the phrase “mass incarceration”, which he recently discovered, selected by the first black
president who says if he had a son, his son could be Trayvon Martin – Eric Holder and Barack Obama
have likewise shown no interest whatsoever in fulfilling their legal duty when it comes to assembling a
national database of police misconduct.
Read more: http://blackagendareport.com/node/14386
We're all supposed to be impressed with the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder parachuted into
Ferguson MO the other day to wrap his arms around the local top black cop and get briefed on the
pending federal investigation into the police killing of Michael Brown. But we shouldn't be.
For the last 20 years, since 1994, Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act obligates the
Department of Justice to collect statistics on the extent of brutality and excessive force used by police
officers, and to make those findings available to the public. 20 years down the road no such stats
exist, because the Justice Departments of the Clinton, the Bush and the Obama administrations have
all simply ignored the law and refuse even to try to gather the information. Let me say this again:
the Clinton Justice Department defied the law and refused to gather national stats on police
misconduct. The Bush Justice Department thumbed its nose at the law and also refused to gather
national stats on police misconduct, and now the first black attorney general, who sometimes even
utters the phrase “mass incarceration”, which he recently discovered, selected by the first black
president who says if he had a son, his son could be Trayvon Martin – Eric Holder and Barack Obama
have likewise shown no interest whatsoever in fulfilling their legal duty when it comes to assembling a
national database of police misconduct.
Read more: http://blackagendareport.com/node/14386