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#BrownLivesMatter : Why hasn’t the deaths of Latinos at the hands of police haven’t drawn as much attention?

A poll last year found that 68 percent of Latinos feared that law enforcement officials — including both police and the Border Patrol

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#BrownLivesMatter : Why hasn't the deaths of Latinos at the hands of police haven't drawn as much attention?
Photo by Artem Podrez

The conversation of race relations often goes into correlation with talking about equal rights for black and brown people.  But with the black lives matter movement going strong highlighting the deaths of Black people killed or brutalized by police officers, there is left to question what about the brown?

The black lives matter movement is a stark contrast to the attention Latinos, who are also being affected by police brutality, are getting. In contrast to the fatal shootings of African Americans such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Walter Scott in South Carolina, deaths of Latinos at the hands of law enforcement haven’t drawn nearly as much attention. Soledad O’Brien’s “Black in America” sheds some light on Black and brown people being targets of police, focusing in the New York City area, but there hasn’t been much attention after that.

Over the last five years in L.A. County, coroner’s data show that Latinos, who make up about half of the county’s population, also represent about half the people killed by police. Of the 23 people fatally shot by law enforcement in the county this year, 14 were Latino.

Have you heard of Antonio Zambrano-Montes? He was unarmed just like names like Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and killed by police officers. Little to no attention has been brought to this story. Zambrano-Montes was a Mexican migrant worker who was shot and killed by police officers on Feb. 10 in Pasco, Washington. Video footage appears to show Zambrano-Montes throwing rocks at police and then running away with his hands raised before the officers shot him, though the Pasco Police Department has defended its officers’ actions. The New York Times called the killing the Latino community’s “Ferguson moment.”

Ricardo Diaz-Zeferino was unarmed when he was shot and killed in California in 2013. A video has recently gone viral of Diaz-Zeferino and his friends raise their hands before police open fire on them, killing him with eight bullets.

What about Oscar Ramirez Jr.? Four days before Halloween in 2014 a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Oscar Ramirez Jr., along railroad tracks near Paramount High School. Deputies said the 28-year-old didn’t comply with orders and moved his arm in “a threatening manner.” Ramirez was unarmed.

The Ramirez family marched in front of the Paramount sheriff’s station and held vigils, but they struggled to find wider support for their cause like the Black Lives Matter movement. As the family grieved, the national Black Lives Matter movement picked up energy, in particular rallying the fatal shooting of Ezell Ford, a mentally disabled black man, by LAPD officers.

But the disparity between the two is rooted, at least in part, in historical context. No group in America has had an experience with police and institutionalized brutality than the black community. Police shootings of African Americans, men in particular, outweigh those of any other group. History shows that most of society’s comparisons are in black or white, really no in between. The fact of the matter is when you want to talk about equality for black and brown people, then you must include all black and brown people who are apart of the disparity too.

So this leaves to question why has major media news outlets fail to cover these stories on other minorities, particularly Latino’s who are also affected? Where as we seen in LA County, the number of police encounters with the Latino community is extremely highly and more than a few have been deadly. Granted the numbers could be attributed to the population, but nonetheless there is still a problem when it comes to policing in black and brown communities.

Last year, a study published by Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race found that “stories about Latinos comprise less than 1 percent of all main news media coverage, and the majority of these stories feature Latinos as lawbreakers.”

“Violence or discrimination against Latinos does not tend to resonate among most Americans because Latinos are generally not perceived as Americans but recent immigrants or foreigners with no deep roots and histories in the U.S.,” Frances Negrón-Muntaner, the center’s director and the lead author of the study, told The Huffington Post. “So, abuses of power or injustices toward Latinos remain out of sight and out of mind.”

Gustavo Arellano, the editor of the paper O.C. Weekly, told the Huffington Post,

“When it comes to Latinos — American media still only thinks of them as immigrants,” he said. “They can’t think of them as victims of police brutality or anything else but immigrants.”

Arellano, who has covered the Latino community and police violence in Southern California for two decades, blames the “laziness of the media” for failing to shine a brighter spotlight on cases like that of Zambrano-Montes.

“For me, killing an unarmed person is killing an unarmed person and the media should scrutinize that, and see Latinos as being unduly victimized by the police,” he said.

Whether mainstream media covers it or not, the Latino community has had a history of a complex relationship with law enforcement. Growing up in an urban community, I have seen first hand the mistreatment of black and Latino people. And that alongside myself some of my Latino counterparts didn’t have pleasant things to say about the police either.

In a Huffington post article, writer poll last year found that 68 percent of Latinos feared that law enforcement officials, including both police and the Border Patrol,would use excessive force against them. In New York City, 27 percent of police street interrogations using the controversial “stop-and-frisk” tactic in the first three quarters of 2014 targeted Latinos, according to data from the New York Civil Liberties Union. This figure is far higher than the 12 percent rate for whites, but also well below the 54 percent for blacks. (Roughly 71 percent of New York City is white, a 2014 census estimate indicates.)

Read more of the interesting analysis here.


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Crime & Justice

Detroit man awarded $10 million after wrongful conviction

Alexandre Ansari was wrongfully serving a life sentence over claims that in 2012 he shot and killed Ileana Cuevas, a 15-year-old girl.

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$10 million wrongfully convicted Alexandre Ansari
Alexandre Ansari (Photo Source: Wolf Mueller Law)

A Detroit man who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for over six years was awarded $10 million in damages by a jury.

$10 million for man wrongfully convicted

Alexandre Ansari was wrongfully serving a life sentence over claims that in 2012 he shot and killed Ileana Cuevas, a 15-year-old girl, and wounded two others in Detroit, according to a lawsuit filed by Ansari in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division.

$10 million wrongfully convicted Alexandre Ansari

Alexandre Ansari (Photo Source: Wolf Mueller Law)

“Once I got the verdict back, my heart dropped. And I’m like, ‘Dang, I got to spend the rest of my life in here for something I didn’t do.’ And you know, I tried to kill myself,” Ansari told Linsey Davis on “ABC News Live Prime.”

“It felt like nobody didn’t put all the evidence together to see that I wasn’t the person in the first place. So things started getting overwhelming for me.”

Exonerated

Ansari, 39, was exonerated in 2019 by the Wayne County Circuit Court after it determined that Moises Jimenez, a former Detroit police detective withheld evidence for Ansari’s trial that would have implicated someone else as the shooter, according to the County of Wayne Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

Jimenez received an anonymous tip that linked the shooter to the Mexican Drug Cartel, according to the complaint that released Ansari.

The officer withheld the evidence from Ansari’s 2013 trial, according to the lawsuit.

Jimenez’s attorneys told ABC News that the former detective claims that he provided all evidence he uncovered during his investigation and plans to appeal the $10 million lawsuit verdict.

There have been no reported arrests connected to the shooting since Ansari’s exoneration. Ansari was wrongfully arrested for the crime when he was 27 years old.


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Black Excellence

Regina King stars as Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress

Shirley is will be released on Netflix March 22.

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Regina King Shirley
Regina King as Shirley Chisholm (Netflix)

In the first trailer for the upcoming Netflix movie Shirley, Regina King stars as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress.

Regina King as Shirley Chisholm

Chisholm’s story will be chronicled, showing her uphill battle and obstacles to win a seat in Congress as the daughter of a Barbados-born maid and a Guyanese laborer, her struggles to navigate Congress alongside her White male colleagues, and her groundbreaking 1972 presidential campaign.

Movie production

Produced by Regina King and her sister Reina King, Shirley also stars the late Lance Reddick, Lucas Hedges, Terrence Howard, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Christina Jackson and more.

King, who spent 15 years producing the film, said the project was an incredible feat.

“It was always a little disheartening for Reina and I to have so many people over the years of our lives not know who Shirley Chisholm was,” King told Harper’s Bazaar.

“What she did was so pioneering. She was a true maverick and, you know, we use this term all the time, but she was a true first.”

King said they decided to release the film during an election year as they thought it would make for a more “impactful” release.

“As a team, we felt that is probably the best way we could possibly honor Shirley: to release her in a space that she created for herself.”

Regina King as Shirley Chisholm trailer

Shirley is will be released on Netflix March 22.


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Social Justice

Mike Carey, the first Black Super Bowl referee, wants to continue to give back to the game he loves

Carey candidly spoke with CNN and reflected on the progress in diversity within the NFL officiating community and expressed continued passion for the sport.

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Mike Carey

Mike Carey, the first Black Super Bowl referee, made history in 2008 during Super Bowl XLII.

He officiated the iconic game where the New York Giants upset the New England Patriots, preventing their historic 19-0 season.

Mike Carey on DEI

In the game, Carey did not call a sack on Giants quarterback Eli Manning. Despite facing criticism, Carey has always stood by his decision.

He also took a stand by refusing to officiate games involving the Washington “Redskins” due to their offensive name, emphasizing the importance of treating everyone with respect.

Mike Carey

NFL referee Mike CareyDecember 16, 2006
Jdpaschal • CC BY-SA 3.0

Carey candidly spoke with CNN and reflected on the progress in diversity within the NFL officiating community and expressed continued passion for the sport.

While there has been headway on diversity within the league, Carey said there is still much work to be done.

“The diversity in officiating when I was there, was not there. And it wasn’t malicious,” Carey told CNN.

“[Now], you have way more Black officials. You’re now having not only women, but women of color, and whatever your sexual orientation is, it’s less and less of an issue.”

After football officiating

After his retirement in 2014, Carey became a CBS Sports analyst and co-founded Seirus Innovation, a company manufacturing snow sports products.

While he is enjoying the success of his newfound career, Carey says he is grateful for his experiences, stating, “Everything that I’ve done, I’ve just loved immensely.” said he continues to look back over his football career with pride.


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