A United Nations panel has criticized the excessive use of force by police in the United States two days after hearing testimony from the parents of Michael Brown, the African-American teenager shot dead by police in Ferguson, Missouri. U.N. expert Jens Modvig questioned the mechanisms in place for holding police officers accountable.
Jens Modvig: “There are disturbing patterns of excessive force on part of police officers, especially towards African Americans and other persons of color, which seem to demonstrate that the current mechanisms of accountability are insufficient. We have information that many federal investigations against police officers for unlawful and excessive use of force were closed without criminal charges because they did not present sufficient evidence of willful misconduct to give rise to a federal criminal prosecution for the police officers involved.”