by OUR COMMON GROUND Voices Ruby Sales and Susan SmithThis article appeared in the August 2014 issue of Sojourners magazine.

Police killing of black people is not a black problem. It is an American problem.

Source: sojo.net

"AFRICAN AMERICANS around the country are finding it is dangerous to call 911. Jack Lamar Roberson’s family in Waycross, Ga., discovered this the hard way when they placed an urgent call to 911 in October 2013 because his fiancée thought that he had taken an overdose of diabetes medicine.Instead of sending EMTs, the dispatcher sent the police. Within 20 seconds of being in the house, police shot Roberson nine times, with bullets striking his back, arms, chest, and head as he held his arms up in the air. Although he was a veteran, he did not die from bullet wounds at the hands of strangers in a foreign land. Instead, white police gunned him down in his home.Killings like this—which could be called anti-black hate crimes by po…"

See on Scoop.it – OUR COMMON GROUND Informed Truth and Resistance