In Wake of Tragedies in Ferguson, Civil and Human Rights Coalition Calls for Sensible Law Enforcement Reforms
WASHINGTON — Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement in the wake of the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, and the excessive force used by Ferguson, Missouri police against peaceful demonstrators:
“Police in Ferguson, Missouri have created the one of the greatest confluence of disastrous law enforcement policies our nation has seen in decades. And judging by history, it will happen again unless we reform our nation’s law enforcement policies now.
As the tragedies multiplied–the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager, the deployment of military vehicles and rubber bullets to disperse protesters, the arrests and teargasing of journalists and citizens for exercising the constitutional rights of assembly and speech – the callous disregard for human dignity by the Ferguson policy has raised alarms both nationally and internationally about the lingering and toxic racial disparities in our society and our ability to respond to them.
This is not the first, second, or 10th time that tragedies like these have occurred. It’s imperative that we take steps at the national and local levels to cultivate an environment of greater trust between law enforcement and communities of color.
We applaud the Department of Justice for opening an investigation into this matter and we encourage the department to proactively exercise its jurisdiction to investigate, prosecute, and cut funding to local police forces engaging in excessive use of force.
But we must also act to prevent these tragedies. The Department of Justice has broad authority to prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement, which it should use as soon as possible, and Congress should pass the End Racial Profiling Act. Local law enforcement can also take proven steps to prevent these tragedies – such as building relationships of trust with residents and hiring officers who live in the communities they police.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. History may be repeating itself yet again in Ferguson, but we should do all we can to prevent these tragedies from continuing to occur.”
Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition charged by its diverse membership of more than 200 national organizations to promote and protect the rights of all persons in the United States. The Leadership Conference works toward an America as good as its ideals. For more information on The Leadership Conference and its 200-plus member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.
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