U.N. torture watchdog urges U.S. to crack down on police brutality
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - The U.N. Committee against Torture urged the United States on Friday to fully investigate and prosecute police brutality and shootings of unarmed black youth and ensure that taser weapons are used only in life-threatening situations.
The panel's first review of the U.S. record on preventing torture since 2006 came in the wake of racially-tinged unrest in cities across the United States this week sparked by a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury's decision not to charge a white police officer for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/28/us-usa-un-torture-idUSKCN0JC1BC20141128
Man from Pickens
(1,713 posts)Message text
Faux pas
(14,691 posts)Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)olddots
(10,237 posts)For years they have hated the thought of the U.N.
sammy750
(165 posts)as the modern gun lynching that took place 50 years ago. The GOP has written the laws to make it legal.
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)nt
christx30
(6,241 posts)They can't actually do anything, other than write a stern letter. We have to get our leaders engaged. So far, they don't give a shit.
Judi Lynn
(160,631 posts)UN panel raps US record on torture
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press | November 28, 2014 | Updated: November 28, 2014 9:41am
GENEVA (AP) Police brutality, military interrogations and prisons were among the top concerns of a U.N. panel's report Friday that found the United States to be falling short of full compliance with an international anti-torture treaty.
The report by the U.N. Committee Against Torture, its first such review of the U.S. record since 2006, expressed concerns about allegations of police brutality and excessive use of force by law enforcement officials, particularly the Chicago Police Department's treatment of blacks and Latinos. It also called for restricting the use of taser weapons by police to life-threatening situations. But it had no specific recommendation or reaction to a grand jury's decision not to indict the white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri who fatally shot a black and unarmed teenager.
The report also criticizes the U.S. record on military interrogations, maximum security prisons, illegal migrants and solitary confinement while calling for tougher federal laws to define and outlaw torture, including with detainees at Guantanamo Bay and in Yemen. It also called for abolishing interrogation techniques that rely on sleep or sensory deprivation "aimed at prolonging the sense of capture."
"There are numerous areas in which certain things should be changed for the United States to comply fully with the convention," Alessio Bruni of Italy, one of the panel's chief investigators, said at a news conference Friday in Geneva. He was referring to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which took effect in 1987 and the United States ratified in 1994.
More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/UN-panel-raps-US-record-on-torture-5922458.php