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Brown Family Attorney: Epidemic of Killing 'Unarmed People of Color'
Wednesday, March 11, 2015 06:42 PM
By: Greg Richter
As the Ferguson, Missouri, police chief announced his resignation, the attorney for the family of Michael Brown says the case represents the larger issue of unarmed minority suspects being killed by police.
"We see that it's almost an epidemic going on now in America where people of color, unarmed people of color, are being killed all over the United States, and nobody's being held accountable," Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump said Wednesday on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
"It's almost as if these police officers' actions are being sanitized, not only by the local authorities, but also by the federal government. So it is important to see something like this try to lead to an example, a preventive measure to deter such conduct in the future," Crump said.
Police Chief Thomas Jackson announced his resignation on Wednesday following a scathing report from the U.S. Justice Department detailing racist emails and a system of targeting blacks for minor offenses to fill the city's coffers.
Two police officers, a court clerk, the municipal judge and the city manager have been either fired or resigned since the report was released last week. A separate report found no evidence to charge former police officer Darren Wilson with violating Brown's civil rights in the fatal shooting.
"Michael Brown's mother and father are relieved that actions are being taken to address the very disturbing findings in the DOJ report," Crump told CNN. "They have always maintained that the tragic death of their son in broad daylight was approximately caused by the pattern and practice that the Department of Justice found, discrimination and its force against African-American citizens in Ferguson. So they believe what the DOJ found in that report had a lot to do with their son being killed."
Weeks of protests and riots followed a St. Louis County grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson. Some witnesses said Brown was shot while he had his hands raised in surrender, but Wilson and other witnesses said Brown was charging at the officer.
