BUZZ
‘What is happening in this country is the unchecked power of white supremacists cloaked in law enforcement’
A student development officer at Indiana University who four years ago began a petition calling for police officers who shoot “unarmed” civilians to get mandatory prison time is now targeting ICE officials.
Travis Washington’s so-called “Hands Up Act” petition states “We need legislation now that prohibits police officers from shooting unarmed citizens. If there isn’t a weapon found after someone has been shot (therefore, unarmed) by a police officer, then I propose that the officer should receive a mandatory 15-year prison sentence.”
It goes on to allege law enforcement personnel have gotten away with wrongdoing “over and over” despite video evidence. Such is “a new form of lynching,” Washington says.
As noted by the Indy Liberation Center, the Hands Up Act “would limit the power of the police by creating additional obstacles and punishments for their routine use of violence, harassment, and torture.”
The Change.org petition has amassed almost 2,750,000 signatures, but Washington says there had been over three million, including those from the mothers of Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown. He alleges signatures have “disappeared” from the petition, “masking the massive support” his idea truly has.
Washington, who said his degree in Africana Studies “put him on the path of stopping police violence,” has now set his sights on ICE — an agency that “is completely out of control and […] acting with unchecked power.”
He says it has engaged in “fatal shootings” that have “caused so much pain and trauma not only for the family members who lost their loved ones but for the entire country.”
“America still has not recovered from the January shootings of the unarmed peaceful observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis,” Washington writes in the PunchUp Substack. “Now, after two more deadly ICE shootings within a week, it has driven this country into outrage …
What is happening in this country is the unchecked power of white supremacists cloaked in law enforcement. The moral apathy of ICE agents has been protected by the Trump administration, causing people of color in this country to fall into despair and feel like nothing can change.
The lack of punishment for white supremacy is one reason America is still suffering from police brutality. Just because someone has a badge as a law enforcement officer does not give them the right to kill with impunity.
The truth is that there are people in law enforcement who do not believe Indigenous people, Latino people, or Black people are fully human, and the lack of punishment for crimes committed against them supports the behavior of white supremacy.
Washington claimed he once suffered from “internalized racism,” but eleven years ago an Africana Studies professor told a class he attended that the riots in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of Michael Brown were “justified.”
It was “so liberating,” Washington said.
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