Beginning in 2000, amid a series of cop killings of civilians, the Justice Department Civil Rights Division began a three year investigation. In 2003, the Justice Department entered into a consent judgment with Detroit leading to 11 years of monitoring by several private firms overseen by a federal judge. These actions did not lead to an immediate decline in police violence.
The police killing of civilians continued and even intensified while the federal monitoring was taking place. Tens of millions of local tax dollars were turned over to private monitors who abused the funds without recommending the termination or prosecution of any of the officers who were carrying out these killings and other acts of brutality.
On May 16, 2010, a police raid at the wrong address resulted in the shooting death of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones on the city’s eastside. By this time the City of Detroit had been under two federal consent decrees for seven years involving the use of lethal force and the deplorable conditions existing in the lock-ups.
It was only due to public pressure that the white cop, Joseph Weekley, was indicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm. However, after two trials there has been no conviction of Weekly who remains free and on the City of Detroit payroll.
The discharge from the consent decrees was only able to take place under emergency management and forced bankruptcy during 2014. A much talked about Board of Police Commissioners has been stripped of the limited authority that it had since its creation under the City Charter of 1974 enacted at the same time as the first African American Mayor Coleman A. Young came into office. The Commission largely served as a venue for the filing of complaints about police misconduct where virtually no disciplinary actions were taken.
Only Mass Struggle and Revolutionary Organization Can End Police Terrorism
Other cities such as Cleveland are now under yet another of such consent decrees. Cleveland had been under federal monitoring before and even with the announcement of the new consent judgment by Attorney General Eric Holder, no police have been arrested or indicted in the recent killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun in a public park when he was gunned down by the police.
Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and numerous municipalities have experienced similar situations of federal involvement which have not halted the misconduct and brutality. Objectively through its policies, the White House, the Pentagon along with the courts from the federal level down to the local judicial systems, categorically defend police officers in situations related to violence against African Americans, Latinos and others.
It has only been the rebellions and mass demonstrations that have pushed the question of police violence against the people to the forefront of political discussions inside the U.S. If people had not gone out and militantly demonstrated against the blatant killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, these issues would not have even been acknowledged by the government and the corporate media.