{"id":3433,"date":"2014-10-27T15:48:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T21:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=3433"},"modified":"2014-10-27T15:48:39","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T21:48:39","slug":"amnesty-international-ferguson-police-committed-human-rights-abuses-during-michael-brown-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/amnesty-international-ferguson-police-committed-human-rights-abuses-during-michael-brown-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"Amnesty International: Ferguson police committed human rights abuses during Michael Brown protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Terrence McCoy<\/a>, Washington Post
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Just before midnight on Aug. 19, a longtime local cop named Ray Albers trained his\u00a0AR-15 semiautomatic rifle on a\u00a0protester in Ferguson, Mo., and told him he was about to die. \u201cI will\u00a0f\u2014\u2014- kill you!\u201d\u00a0video shows<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0cop yelling at the protester, who said he had his hands raised. \u201cGet back! Get back!\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked his name, Albers, who was suspended and resigned soon afterward, seethed, \u201cGo f\u2014 yourself!\u201d<\/p>\n

This altercation was one of many disturbing encounters\u00a0enumerated in an Amnesty International\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0released Thursday night that paints a damning portrayal of the Ferguson police force, which it accuses of\u00a0committing numerous human rights abuses. The report was deeply skeptical of\u00a0whether Ferguson cop Darren\u00a0Wilson\u00a0was justified in the killing of unarmed Michael Brown, criticized Missouri law it said violates international standards and condemned the local police response for shooting tear gas and rubber bullets, intimidating protesters and restricting residents\u2019 right to peaceful assembly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shooting of Michael Brown has highlighted on a national level the persistent and widespread pattern of racially discriminatory treatment by law enforcement officers across the United States, including unjustified stops and searches, ill treatment and excessive, and sometimes lethal, use of force,\u201d\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0Amnesty International, which investigates reports of human rights violations in some of the world\u2019s most dangerous locations. Indeed, the report continued, shortly after Brown was shot six times and killed, another young African American man, Kajieme Powell, was also shot dead. \u201cPolice claims that he was brandishing a knife were not borne out by available video footage of the shooting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report starts with the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown. Many details of that day are hotly disputed and clouded by conflicting witness statements, but one fact is beyond dispute: Brown was not armed. Consequently, he was \u201cunlikely to have presented a serious threat to the life of the police officer,\u201d the report said. \u201cAs such, this calls into question whether the use of lethal force was justified, and the circumstances of the killing must be urgently clarified.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
According to international standards, the report said, use of force should be proportionate to the threat encountered, meaning it is only justified to kill when the objective is to save life. Missouri law, however, disagrees. It holds that cops can use deadly force\u00a0if they\u00a0thinks it\u2019s necessary to \u201ceffect the arrest and also reasonably believe that the person to be arrested has committed or attempted to commit a felony; or is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon; or may otherwise endanger life or inflict serious physical injury unless arrested without delay,\u201d the report said. It called this \u201cclearly out of line with international standards.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In the ensuing protests, police acted in a way that violated the rights of residents, according to the report, imposing curfews and designating protest areas. If protesters didn\u2019t abide such rules, they were arrested, with Amnesty counting 78 arrests for \u201crefusal to disperse\u201d on Aug. 18.<\/p>\n

During protests, police moved \u201camong the protesters using armored vehicles which are more commonly seen in a conflict zone rather than the streets of a suburban town in the United States,\u201d the authors said. On the night of Aug. 18, they noted, several cops \u201ckept their guns trained on the [Amnesty International] delegation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This and other examples of police pointing guns at unarmed protesters appeared to violate the United Nations\u2019 \u201cBasic Principles for the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials,\u201d the report said. It described\u00a0a chilling scene the night of Aug. 18 when \u201cofficers had their guns drawn with no names, badges, other identifying information visible. Amnesty International requested information from the officers regarding what agency they were from and why the gas was used but were told, \u2018Not right now, please go back down W. Florissant.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the police cracked down on the media, arresting\u00a0at least 19 journalists between Aug. 13 and Oct. 2, one of whom was The Washington Post\u2019s own\u00a0Wesley Lowery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two journalists, the report found, were shot in the back with rubber bullets. Then\u00a0cops approached them, guns drawn,\u00a0and arrested them without\u00a0reading their Miranda rights. \u201cDespite Missouri Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson\u2019s assurance that night that no journalists were among the arrested \u2026 [the two reporters] were not released until the next morning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Terrence McCoy, Washington Post click here for original article Just before midnight on Aug. 19, a longtime local cop named Ray Albers trained his\u00a0AR-15 semiautomatic rifle on a\u00a0protester in Ferguson, Mo., and told him he was about to die. \u201cI will\u00a0f\u2014\u2014- kill you!\u201d\u00a0video shows\u00a0the\u00a0cop yelling at the protester, who said he had his hands raised. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3435,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3433\/revisions\/3435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}