WATCH: Police too often ‘treat African Americans with contempt,’ says law professor Paul Butler

Paul Butler, a law professor at Georgetown University and former federal prosecutor, testified Wednesday at a House Oversight Hearing on Police Practices and Accountability, that “far too often, police, as policy, treat African Americans with contempt,” citing instances in which officers have killed, wounded, detained and frisked black Americans in circumstances where they would not act the same toward white Americans. While Butler recognized that there have been “many acts of bravery, forbearance and grace by police officers” during protests against police brutality in recent weeks, there have also been instances of officers committing violence against citizens they have sworn to serve and protect.

“When police officers treat citizens like an opposing force, African American and Hispanic people disproportionately bear the costs,” Butler said, citing statistics from cities like Minneapolis and New York that show these groups are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. He noted that a young black man he mentors told him recently that he has a higher chance of dying from police violence than the coronavirus.

“What African Americans need, to realize equal justice under the law, is for selective enforcement and police brutality to end,” Butler said. “We need the police to stop killing us, beating us up, and arresting us in situations in which they would not do those things to white people.”
Butler expressed support for the Justice in Policing Act put forward by House and Senate Democrats following Floyd’s death, which would establish national standards on the use of deadly force, and require federal law enforcement officers to establish training to cover racial bias, among other measures.

He said that the rallying cry, “No justice, no peace,” is not a threat, but simply how the world works, and expressed hope that this legislation would herald “the urgency of transformation and the promise, for all Americans, of equal justice under the law.”
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