US police kill black person every 28 hours

POLICE officers, security guards, or self-appointed vigilantes extra-judicially killed at least 313 African Americans in 2012 according to a recent study.

This means a black person was killed by a security officer every 28 hours. The report notes that it’s possible that the real number could be much higher.

The report, entitled “Operation Ghetto Storm”, was performed by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, an anti-racist grassroots activist organisation. The organisation has chapters in Atlanta, Detroit, Fort Worth-Dallas, Jackson, New Orleans, New York City, Oakland, and Washington, DC. It has a history of organising campaigns against police brutality and state repression in black and brown communities.

Their study’s sources included police and media reports along with other publicly available information. Last year, the organisation published a similar study showing that a black person is killed by security forces every 36 hours.

However, this study did not tell the whole story, as it only looked at shootings from January -June 2012. Their latest study is an update of this.

These killings come on top of other forms of oppression black people face.

Mass incarceration is one of them. African Americans constitute 13,1 percent of the nation’s population of the prison population. Even though African-Americans use or sell drugs about the same rate as whites, they are 2,8 to 5,5 times more likely to be arrested for drugs than whites. Black offenders also receive longer sentences compared to whites. Most offenders are in prison for non violent drug offences.

“Operation Ghetto Storm” explains why such killings occur so often. Current practices of institutional racism have roots in the enslavement of black Africans, whose labour was exploited to build the American capitalist economy, and the genocide of Native Americans.

The report points out that in order to maintain the systems of racism, colonialism, and capitalist exploitation, the United States maintains a network of “repressive enforcement structures”.

These structures include the police, FBI, Homeland Security, CIA, Secret Service, prisons, and private security companies, along with mass surveillance and mass incarceration.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement is not the only group challenging police violence against African Americans.

The Stop Mass Incarceration Network has been challenging the policy of stop-and-frisk in New York City, in which police officers randomly stop and search individuals for weapons or contraband. – Alternet.