Some American cities even worse than Ferguson

This 5 March 2015 video from the USA says about itself:

The DOJ’s ‘Searing’ Report On Ferguson: Worse Than Expected

The report describes everything from harassment to excessive use of force to the unfair targeting of African Americans for ticketing revenue.

Black Man KILLED After NYPD Cop Puts Him In CHOKEHOLD For Breaking Up a FIGHT.

From the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, USA:

Black people more likely to get arrested in Madison than Ferguson, Mo.

21 hours ago • BRYNA GODAR

In Madison, black residents are arrested at a rate more than three times that in Ferguson, Missouri, according to an interactive tool created by USA Today.

The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson by a white police officer this August sparked protests and unrest across the city. It has since become a focal point for critiques of racial disparities in policing.

USA Today’s searchable map compiles FBI arrest records across the country and found nearly 1,600 police departments where the racial disparity in arrests is more pronounced than Ferguson‘s. The Madison Police Department is one of them.

In Madison, the 2012 arrest rate per thousand residents for black people was 593.1. That’s nearly six arrests for every 10 black residents. For non-black residents, it was 61.9, or less than one arrest for every 10.

In Ferguson, those rates were 186.1 for black residents, and 66 for non-black residents.

The USA TODAY article says the country-wide disparities are easier to measure than they are to explain:

“They could be a reflection of biased policing; they could just as easily be a byproduct of the vast economic and educational gaps that persist across much of the USA — factors closely tied to crime rates. In other words, experts said, the fact that such disparities exist does little to explain their causes.”

The results are clear, however, that black people are much more likely to get arrested in most cities than any other racial group.

The majority of Wisconsin police departments included in the data also had greater disparities in arrests than Ferguson.

Milwaukee Police Department had an arrest rate of 312.3 for black residents and 64.6 for non-black residents, a disparity far lower than Madison’s but still higher than in Ferguson.

Middleton Police Department, meanwhile, had even higher disparity than Madison, with 810.2 for black residents and 83.6 for non-black residents.

In all, only 173 of the 3,538 police departments USA Today analyzed had arrest rates for black people equal to or lower than non-black people.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has expressed concerns privately to Missouri officials this week about their recent actions in advance of a grand jury’s decision in the Michael Brown case. A top aide to Holder called the office of Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) earlier this week to express Holder’s displeasure and “frustration” that the governor had declared a state of emergency at a news conference and activated the National Guard in advance of the grand jury decision in the Ferguson shooting, expected to be announced in the next few days, according to a Justice Department official: here.

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