Press Releases

Today, the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Congressman Cedric L. Richmond (D-LA-02), and the Chair of the CBC Police Accountability Task Force, Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ-12), released the following statements on the police shooting of Antwon Rose, an unarmed African-American teenager who was shot and killed while running away from a Pittsburgh, Pa., police officer.

“When will this madness end?” asked CBC Chair Richmond, who wrote an open letter about police accountability last month.  “Police officers cannot be judge, jury, and executioner in our communities.  Police officers have to stop taking black lives simply because they are scared of black people. This should go without saying but black people have the same rights that other Americans have, including the right to due process and equal protection under the law, and those rights are always intact even during interactions with the police. Police officers cannot protect and serve some Americans and not others.”

“If anyone still doubts that there’s a problem with the way that police operate when Black men, Black women, even Black children are involved, they aren’t just not paying attention, they’re ignoring the facts,” said Watson Coleman. “Police are employed to protect communities and enforce laws. Flawed though it may be, our justice system is responsible for judgement and punishment. Each time an officer takes a life, not because of the presence of a threat to himself but because he’s predetermined a suspect’s guilt and right to continue to live, he has unilaterally contradicted every human and constitutional right we have. It’s flat-out, clear-as-day wrong and we have to make it stop.”

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 3 PM, the CBC will hold a public forum on policing accountability. More details will be released in the coming weeks.