When Will America Take What We Know About Racist Policing Seriously?

After three white police officers beat a Black man named Robert Hall to death, a federally commissioned panel issued a 178-page report on America’s police “failings” which found that while both white and Black people suffered from police brutality “the dominant pattern is that of race prejudice.” According to the report, Black Americans “have been shot, supposedly in self-defense, under circumstances indicating, at best, unsatisfactory police work in the handling of criminals, and, at worst, a callous willingness to kill.”

This is all sadly familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention, but there is one small surprise here. This report was issued in 1947 and the panel was commissioned by President Harry Truman.

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