[Press Release] NPAP Condemns President Trump’s Racist Comments

The National Police Accountability Project (NPAP) condemns the persistent racism coming from the President of the United States. Whether it’s confederate flags, monuments to confederate leaders, immigration issues, or comments about contemporary police violence, Donald Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he is a white racist whose ignorance and prejudice disqualify him from holding his office.

NPAP is a national organization of civil rights lawyers and legal workers who bring lawsuits against police officers who violate the constitutional rights of people in this country. We know, because we see it every day, that Black citizens are singled out, arrested, beaten, shot, and killed by the police in far greater proportion than their share of our population. This has been proven conclusively in every study that has been done of people stopped and harassed for walking while Black, or driving while Black. It has been proven by studies of drug arrests and convictions, where Blacks are prosecuted for behavior that whites engage in with impunity. And it is true of police murders, where Blacks have a fatality rate 2.8 times higher than white victims.

We say Black Lives Matter to call attention to these discrepancies. We are concerned by police abuse of all races, and are aware that many white people are mistreated by the police. But police misconduct directed at Blacks is a special problem that grew out of the existence of slavery, separation of the races through apartheid, the myth of Black inferiority, and the continuing existence of white privilege. To deny the importance of these extraordinary factors is to be blind to the reality of life in America.