“Body cams or not, the problem you have to deal with is that the system is so systemically racially biased in its nature. America saw Eric Garner get choked to death on televised video just like we saw Rodney King get viciously beaten on video in our living rooms and still all the police misconduct was later justified,” Fogg said.
Fogg, the author of the forthcoming book about heavy-handed policing in the US, Bigots with Badges, held a speech after Wednesday's grand jury decision to not charge a white policeman who killed African-American Eric Garner with a chokehold earlier this year.
Garner, 43, was a street peddler selling untaxed cigarettes. An overweight asthmatic, Garner died from suffocation after being put in a chokehold by police officer Daniel Pantaleo in July. A cell-phone video of the arrest went viral on the internet.
On Monday, US President Barack Obama asked Congress to allocate $263 million for police body cameras and training. The program would offer a total of $75 million over three years to match state funding for the cameras by 50 percent, helping to pay for more than 50,000 of the devices.
Obama's initiative follows unrest in Ferguson, Missouri after a grand jury decided not to bring charges against Darren Wilson, a white officer who fatally shot African-American teenager Michael Brown. The decision ignited tensions over the relationship between police and community and calls for greater police accountability.
