Unbiased police force?

 

Two police officers went on trial in Rennes, France in connection with the deaths of a pair of teenagers in 2005 near a Paris suburb. The event has once again sparked widespread rioting that sheds light to the issue of police discrimination and racial divisions that many claim have not been healed.

The police officers, Sebastien Gaillemin and Stephanie Klein, face charges of failing to prevent the deaths of the two teenagers fleeing the police nearly a decade ago. Bouna Traore, 17, and Zyed Benna, 15, died of electrocution in a transformer station where they sought to run away from the police who chased them as they were returning home from a soccer game. An opinion survey, called Graines de France and Human Rights Watch, indicated that more than 80 percent of the North African population of France and believed the police force was engaged in ethnic profiling.

The incident sparked the public’s suspicion regarding police brutality as well as the treatment of the country’s many ethnic immigrants who live in gritty suburbs like Clichy, where the two youths resided.

The families’ lawyer, Jean-Pierre Mignard, told the media the case had dragged on because authorities did not want to bring it to trial.  “The youths died in atrocious conditions,” he said. “It could have been avoided.”

The case reflects larger racial injustices in France, which belied the country’s motto of “liberty, equality and fraternity.”  The parents of both youths immigrated there from North and sub-Saharan Africa.

The path to justice has been long and difficult. The teenagers’ families mourned for days after the deaths of their sons, and after a series of dismissals and appeals, the trial was finally being held in Brittany.

This narrative carries assumptions and values demonstrating France’s trouble with racism. Set the victims aside and puzzling facts remain: two youths lie dead, killed by electrocution. Everything that appears in front citizens of France (eyewitness reports, video footage, autopsy reports) should support the police officers’ guilt or innocence of the boys who died. In reality, the justice system does not measure up to the ideal. Individuals believe that the system starting with police interaction to verdict is corrupted with racial bias.

Similar to this incident in France, the police killing of Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri is yet another reminder that racism was and always will be America’s open gateway with minority groups suffering and inhumanity on constant display.

In another perspective, police officers hold a position of authority, and they are obligated to send a message that when they are serving local communities, they treat all residents of the community equally, regardless of racial identities. But bias is nuanced into the system and ultimately results in unequal justice.

We must understand the harsh reality that the way we engage with police may affect whether we are free, whether we are handcuffed in orange jumpsuits, or whether we are taken away in an ambulance. It is true for people of every race, though unfortunately it may apply to some of us more than others.