Brandon R. Davis ― Ferguson the Latest Front in the State’s War on Black Community

Brandon R. Davis, a young black libertarian tries to offer some context to the backlash happening in Ferguson, Missouri.

Time and time again, instances of police brutality against ethnic minorities have gone unquestioned and unpunished. In 2013, some 169,252 entirely innocent people were “stopped and frisked” in New York City, 85 percent of which were minorities. This is down from the 605,328 innocent people who were “stopped and frisked” in 2011. In Illinois, Representative Monique Davis asked the governor to deploy the state National Guard to assist with law enforcement in Chicago. Davis believes that the National Guard would be better able to subdue inner-city neighborhoods — an unprecedented show of state power.

Beginning with the failed “war on drugs,” the creation of the police state has been fueled by the federal funding of local law enforcement. The police state is directly connected with the disproportionate number of minorities coming into contact with police. The Sentencing Project reports that there are currently over 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States, with an additional 4.8 million under the control of the criminal justice system through parole and probation.

There are roughly six African Americans to every one white person incarcerated in the United States. Far too often, this increased contact equals increased use of lethal force, such as in the case of Michael Brown. Unfortunately, there is no good source of data on police use of deadly force. However, a 2012 comparison study of extrajudicial killings in major cities found staggering results.

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