Carol Forsloff, Digital Journal
The election of the first black President didn’t and likely won’t change police tactics regarding how blacks are treated by police. At least they won’t change for awhile.
Barack Obama was elected to the Presidency on November 4, 2008. The following month near the border of Mississippi and Alabama an African star athlete was killed by police at a routine traffic stop. On January 1, 2009, the month of Obama’s inauguration, Robert Tolan, Jr., a black man, a baseball player in the minor leagues and son of a retired major league baseball player, was killed by police right in his front yard at his home. He had been shot while unarmed and lying on the ground facedown. During that very same time in Oakland California, a black man by the name of Oscar Grant, father of a daughter, was shot in the back by police while lying down on a subway platform. This took place in Oakland, California.
These were just three examples of police tactics that happen too often in the African American community and show that certain behaviors continue. All of these were young men who were killed were under the age of 25.
