The Washington Post reports on a 10-month analysis by the Department of Justice, indicating that the police had singled out gay and lesbian residents for unjustified stops, arrests, and harassment, as well as African Americans.
The Justice Department found reasonable cause to believe that patterns and practices of unconstitutional conduct and/or violations of federal law occurred in several areas, including:
•Use of excessive force;
•Unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests;
•Biased policing, including:
•Racial and ethnic profiling and lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) discrimination;
•A systemic failure to provide effective policing services to persons with limited English proficiency; and
•A systemic failure to investigate sexual assaults and domestic violence.
The full report can be found here
Some low-lights:
* From January 2009 to May 2010, for example, officers intentionally fired their weapons at 27 people, the report said. All 27 were African American.
*500 African-American males older than age 17 were arrested in 2009 while only eight white males were arrested during the year
* police “routinely use unnecessary and unreasonable force,’’ including against mentally ill people and suspects already in handcuffs, and that offending officers are rarely punished
*police dogs were “uncontrollable to the point where they repeatedly attacked their own handlers
Yet again we see harrassment of both communities. The problems seem endemic to the culture of the police department and are deeply rooted. Justice officials are going to work with the department, via a consent decree, to keep tabs of force, profiling and other violations.
We again should be bound together to fight such discrimination because united we have a much better chance of sucess, and we are not free until all of us are free.
So when some try to dissuade us such as saying the gay and lesbian movement is 'hijacking' the civil rights movement we need to follow others in our communities such as Julian Bond, President Benjamin Jealous, and Chairwoman Roslyn Brock of the NAACP who realize gay rights are also a focus of social justice.
We in the LGBT community have to directly attack and confront those people in our own community who try to falsely blame the African American community for loses in Maryland and California. We're either in this together and we will win, or we will lose out if we fight with one another and do the work of those who want to defeat us for themselves.