US administration ignoring police brutality: Activist
Press TV has conducted an interview with Ajamu Baraka, editor of the Black Agenda Report from Cali, Colombia, to get his take on a video showing a police officer violently dragging a female student from her desk at a school in South Carolina, the US.
The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: I’d like to get your initial reaction to this video that surfaced in social of the student being dragged violently by the police officer.
Baraka: I think the world has witnessed something that is truly outrageous, that in a country that purports to be a champion of human rights. We still are exposed to these kinds of examples in which the dignity, the value of black life doesn’t really exist.
We have a police officer, who in essence attacked a child, dragged too close to floor to execute some type of arrest. If this was a white child, we wouldn’t have any kind of conversation about this, because that a police officer will be immediately probably terminated. He would probably be facing serious charges.
Press TV: Had this footage not appeared on social media and gained the popularity so to speak that it did, do you think the FBI and the Justice Department would have moved to open a civil rights probe?
Baraka: Of course not, and we have very little confidence in this probe. We have to remember that the Department of Justice has been involved in a civil rights probe of a number of these more infamous police killings across this country for over the last couple of years.
Yet, they have failed to indict any of the police officers. And I make the connection between this and the police killings for this reason.
The Department of Justice is supposed to be in a position to investigate these kinds of crimes to ensure that these so-called civil rights of the individuals are being protected when state and local government don’t move to indict people for those kinds of criminal activities.
But we find that in all of these famous cases there has been no indictment. So, the swift move by the federal government to open up an investigation seems to be more a public relations stunt than anything else.
It seems to be a move to try to disappear any political resistance and to smother the legitimate outrage that people have, related to this ... case.
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