WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States will face growing international pressure as the prison death of Native American Rexdale Henry continues the trend of recent US minority fatalities while in police custody, activist Sonny Scroggins told Sputnik.
“I am very worried because they [other countries] want to see us fighting each other, cutting each other’s throats,” Scroggins said on Wednesday. “Now with social media, we are just like next door neighbors. You have to look at it globally.”
On July 14, 2015, Henry, a member of the Choctaw Native American nation, was found dead in his prison cell in Mississippi after being arrested for not paying a traffic fine.
Scroggins, a Creek Native American and Congolese American held a vigil on Wednesday evening in front of the Shawnee County Jail to commemorate Henry.
Scroggins said he met Henry in a “Stop the Violence” tour around Kansas.
He warned that violence against minorities in the United States would continue until the American people decided to “love ourselves and love our neighbors.”
Henry was the most recent in a series of controversial US minority deaths in police detention that have prompted protests and calls for reforms.