Attorney General Eric Holder said a year-and-a-half-long probe launched by the Department of Justice has uncovered evidence of “systematic deficiencies,” “inadequate training” and “ineffective policies” exhibited by local law enforcement.
The news comes less than three weeks after the highly-publicized police shooting of an unarmed 12-year-old African-American boy and on the heels of grand jury exonerations of police who killed other African-Americans in St. Louis County and New York City.
Speaking in Cleveland, Holder said these events have “raised urgent national questions.” He added that he and President Barack Obama understand the need to do more to improve community trust in law enforcement, and to carefully investigate potential civil rights abuses in specific cases.
He cited 600 examples of “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force by the Cleveland division of police” in the last three years, in addition to “inadequate engagement with the community” by law enforcement.
The investigation also found that supervisors regularly endorsed the use of unreasonable force and investigations into use-of-force cases were done with the goal of portraying officers favorably in the incidents.
Adding potential insult to injury, nine Cleveland officers are currently suing the Cleveland Police Department, claiming they've been punished too harshly for a shooting that killed two unarmed African-Americans in 2012.
In that incident, police opened fire on a car 137 times after being led on a high-speed chase. The two occupants were both killed being hit more than 20 times each. No weapons were found in the car and the officers were found to have lied in their report about the incident.
In the suit, the nine white officers are complaining about being assigned excessive “gym duty.”
