Commentary:
By Angelo Falcón

It seemed like the other day when that video of Eric Garner being killed by a police chokehold appeared in the media, sparking, along with Ferguson, a long overdue reassessment of police-community relations in this country. The case still has many open questions, such as the results of the police’s internal investigation of the incident, the call by the family for a federal investigation, and so on.

However, while the case has resonated deeply within the Latino community. The frustrating thing is how the general discourse on the issue of police-community relations keeps reverting to an almost purely binary Black and White problem, minimizing its applicability to the Latino community.

Despite this, the problems of police bias and brutality, and of mass incarcerations and the resulting criminalization and racial profiling of a group also disproportionately affect Latinos throughout the United States.

When we asked Latino opinion leaders back in April what they thought about this issue, most of them (87 percent) felt that the criminal justice system in the United States is racially based, favoring non-Latino Whites. Only 3 percent felt it treats all groups equally and less than 1 percent that it favors non-Latino Blacks.

Based on the racial self-identification of the Latino opinion leaders, it surprised us that, among those Latino leaders identifying as Black, the highest percentage (19 percent) felt the criminal justice system treats everyone equally. This is in comparison to less than 1 percent of those identifying racially as White and none of those identifying as some other race.

In terms of police-community relations, a vast majority (72 percent) of the Latino opinion leaders thought their local police is, to different degrees, prejudiced against Latinos. Over a quarter of them (27 percent) believe that most of their local police are prejudiced in this way. This feeling of anti-Latino prejudice was felt regardless of the Latino opinion leaders’ racial self-identifications, but was felt most intensely by those identifying racially as White and less by those identifying as Black, which is somewhat counter-intuitive.