WASHINGTON, October 10 (RIA Novosti), Leandra Bernstein – The latest police shooting of a young African American male in St. Louis, Missouri raises major concerns over how local law enforcement is being trained to handle the communities it is responsible for serving and protecting, the director of a major American civil rights group Hilary Shelton told RIA Novosti Friday.
“It appears that the policy is, if you feel threatened, shoot to kill,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) head said in an interview with RIA Novosti. Shelton continued that there must be "a major policy change and procedural changes" in law enforcement, not just in Missouri, but throughout the country.
"There is an inadequate balance in the power between local communities - particularly African-American communities - and law enforcement. That has to change.”
The Wednesday killing of an 18 year old African-American by an off duty police officer is the third high profile police killing of an African-American male in the St. Louis area. Little evidence has been released publicly so far, but reports say the youth was armed with a gun and shot at the officer three times before his gun jammed. The officer returned 17 shots and killed the young man identified by friends and family as Vonderrit Myers, Jr.
Shelton told RIA Novosti that he is deeply concerned by police officers’ reports that their responses in these cases are “by the book” and consistent with their training. “If this is the book, we’ve got to change the book,” he said. “We’ve got to move to retrain police officers in how to carry out their responsibility... to those who they’re supposed to be protecting and serving.”
The trend in police officers misusing force has led to a steep decline in trust between law enforcement and many African-American communities, according to Shelton. “Those who are paid for with our tax dollars seem to be believing they are part of an occupying force when it comes to addressing issues in the African-American community.” Shelton further compared the police crackdown on protests in Ferguson, MO this summer “trying to secure one of the communities in Iraq during the insurgency, [rather] than the heartland of America.”
As news of the police killing spread through social media on Wednesday and Thursday, protests have again sparked up. Shelton stated that those should be allowed to go on without suppression or interruption. “I say the peaceful protests are quite frankly justified in that they are bringing attention to the issues and showing that there is an awful pattern and a disturbing practice by our police officers when it comes to dealing particularly with the African-American community. So the protests should be able to continue quite legally and without interruption.”
