Erie, PA Cop Joking About Murdered Man

If you wonder why the African-American and other minority communities have the negative attitudes about the po-po's we do, peep this video of an Erie, PA cop making jokey-jokes about a just-murdered man and mocking the man's grieving mother.

"We're looking at it like, 'One less drug dealer to deal with,'" the Erie, PA, police officer says. "Cool." The murder victim, described as a loving father, had no history of drug violations, according to news reports.

The NAACP isn't laughing.

There are too many police offices who have attitudes like this toward the communities they are patrolling. Those attitudes can have deadly consequences for the people living in those neighborhoods and lead to outrages like the New Year's Day shooting of unarmed Oscar Grant by transit police in Oakland; the police shooting of Robert Tolan on his front lawn in Bellaire, Texas; and the questionable death of high school football player Billie Joe Johnson, killed in what was described as a "routine traffic stop" in Lucedale, Mississippi.

Bigots with badges exacerbate the problems of racial profiling, the high rate of unsolved murders in African American communities, police brutality and other forms of unequal justice for African Americans and Latinos.

There are two bills that have been filed to provide long-needed regulation of harsh and careless police actions throughout the United States called the End Racial Profiling Act and the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act. The NAACP is asking that you e-mail your congressperson and ask them to co-sponsor these acts.

The NAACP is also asking people to e-mail Erie, PA mayor Joe Sinnott and ask him to order an immediate independent investigation into the practices and policies of the Erie police department and to establish an independent civilian review board to investigate citizen complaints.