Police Brutality.

Police Brutality. Police brutality in the United States is almost an everyday part of life. In most major cities across the country, officers abuse their authority in the most flagrant ways. New York and Los Angeles are the most notorious cities for police brutality. In February of 1999, New York police burst into an apartment building in pursuit of Amandou Diallo. The police officers shot forty-one bullets at the unarmed African and hit him nineteen times. Reverend Al Sharpton started a protest movement against the killing. In a jury trial of their peers the police officers who shot and killed an unarmed man were acquited of all charges. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani responded to the verdict by stating "Probaly until the day I die, I will always give officers the benefit of the doubt." Two days after the verdict, Malcolm Ferguson, also unarmed was gunned down in the same Bronx neighborhood where Diallo was shot.Speaker Pelosi presented the first Lantos Human Ri...Police officers engage in unjustified shooti ngs, severe beatings, fatal choking, and unnecessarily rough physical treatment in cities throughout the United States, while their police superiors, city officials, and the Justice Department fail to act decisively to restrain or penalize such acts or even to record the full magnitude of the problem. Habitually brutal officers - usually a small percentage of officers on a force - may be the subject of repeated complaints but are usually protected by their fellow officers and by the shoddiness of internal police investigations. A victim seeking redress faces obstacles at every point in the process, ranging from overt intimidation to the reluctance of local and federal prosecutors to take on brutality cases. Severe abuses persist because overwhelming barriers to accountability make it all too likely that officers who commit human rights violations escape due punishment to continue their abusive conduct.Human Rights Watch recognizes that...