The tragic killing of college-bound teenager Michael Brown has raised questions about the frequency with which police kill unarmed black men in America. The answer, unfortunately, is far too often.
Just three months ago, on a warm April afternoon, a white police officer shot and killed Dontre Hamilton, a 31-year-old black man, in downtown Milwaukee's Red Arrow Park. According to the Milwaukee police chief, the officer was "." But the eyewitness report of a Starbucks barista paints a very different picture.
, Hamilton had been sleeping on the concrete sidewalk next to Starbucks when two police officers approached him, asked him questions, and left after determining that he was doing nothing wrong. But an hour or so later, she heard yelling. Looking out the Starbucks window, she saw a different white police officer standing up against Hamilton, "who was holding the officer's own baton in a defense posture." The officer "lunged" at Hamilton in an attempt to get the baton, but failed. The barista watched in horror as the officer stood 10 feet away from Hamilton, pulled out a gun, and shot Hamilton 10 times in quick succession without issuing any verbal warnings. The barista reports that she never saw Hamilton hit the officer with the baton.
The tragic killing of Hamilton bears a striking – and deeply troubling – resemblance to the killing of Michael Brown, who was shot by an officer six times, including twice in the head, after being stopped for walking down the middle of a street. Including Hamilton and Brown, at least six black men were shot and killed by police since April in circumstances that suggest the unjustified use of excessive force and possible racial profiling.
In July, Eric Garner was killed in New York by officers who – a banned tactic – and slammed his head into a sidewalk during an attempt to arrest him for allegedly selling illegal cigarettes.
In early August, police in Beavercreek, Ohio, in a Walmart, where Crawford had been holding a BB gun that he had picked up on a store shelf.
Just days after the killing of Brown, Ezell Ford was killed by police on a Los Angeles sidewalk during an investigative stop. While police contend that officers opened fire after a "struggle," that he was lying on the ground complying with the officers' order when he was shot three times in the back.
And the very next day, pressman was killed in Victorville, California, after being repeatedly shocked with a stun gun by police attempting to arrest him as a suspect in a nearby robbery. Apparently, police suspected him because he was riding a bicycle, and the robbery suspect was reported to have fled on a bike.
The stories of these six people make one thing painfully clear: The killing of black men in incidents that begin as investigatory police stops are anything but unusual in America. In this sense, Ferguson is Everytown, U.S.A.
There is a reason for this. More than 240 years of slavery and 90 years of legal segregation in this country have created a legacy of racialized policing. Killings and beatings lie at one end of a spectrum in which black people – and young black men in particular – are routinely stigmatized, humiliated, and harassed as targets for police stops, frisks, and searches, even when they are doing nothing wrong.
The numbers show the reality.
Studies of traffic stops and pedestrian stops confirm that police stop blacks at higher rates than whites. Even more troubling is that the New York study determined that a was the main factor for determining NYPD stop rates, above and beyond the "role of crime, social conditions, or the allocation of police resources." In other words, New York cops targeted blacks because of their race – not because they happened to live in a dangerous place or in an area flooded by police.
Data from Ferguson mirrors these racial disparities. Last year, blacks not only accounted for 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches, and 93 percent of arrests by Ferguson police, the state attorney general's office calculated that blacks in these encounters in light of their population figures. Even more damning is the fact that although police were twice as likely to search blacks than whites after initiating a stop, whites were far more likely to be found with contraband.
It is not a leap to conclude that the same biases that cause those racial disparities also make it more likely that black men will die during the course of police arrests. According to the , although black men made up only 27.8 percent of all persons arrested from 2003-2009, they made up 31.8 percent of all persons who died in the course of arrest, and the majority of these deaths were homicides.
Why does racialized policing persist despite the end of slavery and Jim Crow? While explicit racial bias may be less prominent today (albeit anything but eliminated), implicit racial biases plague all of us, including those charged with keeping our streets safe. A large body of compelling research has demonstrated how these unconscious, automatically activated, and pervasive mental processes translate into action with devastating consequences for black people.
In particular, researchers have well-documented shooter bias. One simulated the nearly instantaneous decisions made by police officers to shoot armed individuals and to refrain from shooting the unarmed. The study revealed that participants were more likely to shoot black people than white people in error.
Both explicit and implicit biases lead far too often to the killing of black men in police-civilian encounters. And they undergird the daily indignity and humiliation experienced by blacks who are stopped, questioned, and searched by police when they have done nothing wrong.
Police are sworn to serve and protect everyone equally, not disproportionately stop and harass only certain communities. Rather than express surprise and shock during a summer where six black men have been killed by police in highly questionable circumstances, it is up to us to do something.
The single most important first step is to provide accountability—including through the Attorney General's issuance of a comprehensive ban on racial profiling. Accountability will advance justice for past harms and pave the way forward for a future in which we are closer to the promise of equal justice for all.
Sign our petition asking the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice to stop funneling billions into the militarization of state and local police forces.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.