Frequently a 'scenario' is agreed on, guns planted on unarmed victims and the police claim to have killed in self defence. Even when officers were captured on video beating Rodney King with their night-sticks and kicking him, they went unpunished. NYPD officers were also responsible for brutally beating and raping with a wooden stick Haitian Abner Louima, causing him serious internal injuries. Law Enforcement Officials provides that the use of force must be proportionate to the threat faced and that firearms may be used only in self-defence or to defend others against an imminent threat of death or serious injury. Intentional lethal use of firearms is restricted to situations where it is 'strictly unavoidable in order to protect life'. which makes one wonder just what kind of threat to life Amadou Diallo was, on his own doorstep armed only with his keys and beeper.
Race plays a central role in police brutality and shootings.
Apart from some 2000, predominantly black, civilians who have died at the hands of the police since 1990, more than 40 off-duty black police officers have been shot by their 'colleagues', while not a single white officer has been 'mistaken for a criminal' and died in this way. In New Jersey, so many black drivers were stopped and searched that it seemed there was a new offence of 'driving while black'. For the past 20 years Congress has been encouraging the US military to supply intelligence equipment and training to civilian police. The Pentagon has equipped these units with M-16s, armored personnel carriers and grenade launchers. These units train with active duty Army Rangers and Navy SEALs.