Creating Meaningful Change in the Relationship between Law Enforcement and Youth of Color

Excerpt:
Communities of color have a long-standing history of inequitable treatment by the police in the U.S. In recent years, activists with the Black Lives Matter movement have helped to raise the profile of the destructive treatment of the black community by law enforcement, which includes a long line of police shootings of youth of color - Michael Brown (1), Jordan Edwards (2), Jessica Hernandez (3), Ty're King (4), Laquan McDonald (5), Tamir Rice (6), Jesse Romero (7), Stephen Watts (8) - and many more (9). While these incidents are nothing new, the ubiquitous use of cell phone cameras is now thrusting them into the public's eye. It is past time to change how police interact with black and brown youth.

Data bears out the ugly fact that youth of color are killed by police far out of proportion to white youth. In 2015, 44% of the youth killed by police were African-American or Hispanic (8 out of 18) though they comprised 38% of the youth population in 2014.10 Unfortunately, this disparity is growing. In 2016, 63% of the youth killed by police were African-American or Hispanic (6 out of ten).11 In the first five months of 2017, 11 out of the 14 youth under 18 killed by police were African-American or Hispanic youth, accounting for 79% of the deaths. While we don’t have data on Native American youth specifically, Native Americans as a whole are, per capita, more likely to be killed by police than any other demographic in the United States.12