[News] Every 28 Hours: Operation Ghetto Storm

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Monday, April 8, 2013
*Contact:  Kali Akuno /  404.567.5938 / kaliakuno at mxgm.org 
<mailto:kaliakuno at mxgm.org>*

/*For Immediate Release: New Annual Report reveals that 313 Black People 
were killed in 2012, averaging one every 28 hours. */

Every 28 hours in 2012 someone employed or protected by the US 
government killed a Black man, woman, or child! This startling fact is 
revealed in /*Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the 
Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards, 
and Vigilantes*/.

“When we started this investigation in early 2012, we knew a serious 
human rights crisis was confronting the Black community”, says *Kali 
Akuno*, an organizer with the *Malcolm X Grassroots Movement* (MXGM). 
“However, we did not have a clear sense of its true depth until we 
compiled and examined the annual figures. We have uncovered outrageous 
rates of extrajudicial killings–rates, that when they are found in 
countries like Mexico or Brazil, are universally condemned.  The same 
outrage inside the U.S. also demands immediate action.”

Given recent revelations in the case of Floyd et al v New York City that 
challenge “stop-and-frisk”, our study demonstrates that NYPD violations 
of human rights are endemic throughout the U.S. For example, racial 
profiling that singles Black people for looking, driving or behaving 
“suspiciously” leads to at least 43% of Black peoples’ fatal encounters 
with police. Only 13% of those who were killed were involved in 
allegedly violent criminal activity that physically threatened others’ 
lives. These and many more of the Report’s findings reveal the deadly 
impact of systemic racism in the U.S.

Akuno further points out, “Operation Ghetto Storm follows the trail of 
extrajudicial killings to the rise of militarized police forces and 
their occupation of Black communities. And explores how systemic racism 
has led to increased militarization and militarization, in turn has 
exacerbated the human rights crises devastating Black communities.”

He added, “This Report breaks new ground by going beyond reliance on 
police department press releases and investigating as fully as possible 
the context and consequences of each killing. This investigative 
journalism serves as an example of respect for Black life so often 
neglected in public conversations.”

*Arlene Eisen*, member of the *Malcolm X Solidarity Committee* and the 
author of the Report, explained, “Any one of these people killed could 
have been my son or your husband or daughter. Regardless of education, 
class, behavior or dress, nowhere is a Black person safe from 
potentially-fatal racial profiling, invasive policing, constant 
surveillance and overriding suspicion.”

Based on a year of research, Eisen concluded, “police departments and 
government agencies throughout the United States go to great lengths to 
hide the data on extrajudicial killings, particularly the race of the 
murder victims. I am quite sure that there were more than 313 Black 
people killed by the police in 2012. Social movements in the United 
States must demand this information and must demand an end to these 
killings.”

*Operation Ghetto Storm* is issued by the *Every 36 Hours Campaign* and 
the* Malcolm X Grassroots Movement* and can be downloaded at 
*www.mxgm.org* <http://www.mxgm.org>.


-- 
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