Police in Madison, Alabama—a growing town just west of Huntsville—say they were responding to a call about a “suspicious person” walking around looking in home garages. That’s when they found Sureshbhai Patel, a 57-year-old grandfather with permanent residence status in the U.S. who was visiting from India. What happened next left him nearly paralyzed.
Patel, who doesn’t speak much English, was being questioned by officers who wanted to search him when, apparently, he tried to walk away. He was then thrown to the ground and eventually taken to the hospital where he’s being treated for fused vertebrae.
The incident isn’t necessarily isolated. South Asian Americans Leading Together, or SAALT, says that what happened to Patel illustrates the inequities communities of color face when dealing with the police.
“This incident is part of a pattern of racial profiling, surveillance, and violence that South Asians often face at the hands of law enforcement and part of the broader reality of police brutality in this country directed against Black and Brown communities,” says SAALT’s Suman Raghunathan via e-mail. The group says it’s echoing the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement to change the way that policing is done.
Here is graphic VIDEO of the BRUTAL take down posted on CNN (Trigger Warning)
UPDATE: Alabama Cop Fired After Video Slamming Indian Grandfather to the Ground -COLORLINES
UPDATE: FULL VIDEO shows Grandfather was not looking into garages.
– Also click through for the news coverage VIDEO –
Source: colorlines.com
People, STOP calling the police on Black and Brown people.
Calling the police on Black and Brown people is often a death sentence.
The police are always armed and they will shoot anyone who reaches for their waistband, or is carrying anything black, or that looks like a gun or looks like a knife, or if they feel that they are in danger.