For the past month, headlines have been saturated with information regarding recent injustice to black individuals in this country. From Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, who was kept in a tight chokehold that eventually killed him, to Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old who was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, some in the public recognizes the actions against them as illegal. And, though the events that led to their deaths were heartless, it seems as though they were unsurprising.

Several cases of racism  in our nation’s history perpetrated by some police forces have been committed, ignored, and are a matter of historical record.  In New Orleans in 1980, for example, a crew of white detectives responded to the killing of a white police officer by terrorizing the black community of Algiers.

These detectives killed four innocent people and tortured numerous others by beating suspects with telephone books and suffocating them. They were, consequently, indicted for only one of the victims of torture, but were not charged for the four killings.

Similarly in 1999, four officers from the New York Police Department fired 41 shots at a Guinean immigrant who was reaching for his wallet. These officers, as well, were acquitted of the crime.

High profile cases like these demonstrate a historical racism by police departments, violence that has not been subjected to equal justice under the law. As executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Vincent Warren, eloquently stated, “People have lost faith in the system, which repeatedly tells them black lives don’t matter.”

It has become abundantly clear from active riots and vocal criticism that the public believes that many police forces have a lack of respect for constitutional rights and this has enraged many across the country. Cases such as those of Mike Brown and Eric Garner are a few of the many instances in which the result was a large amount of distrust towards law enforcement among black communities.

And it is clear that racist police brutality continues to plague the nation, but it must come to an end.

The police force of Ferguson, Mo. is a recent example of this brutality. The USA Today reports that its “heavy handed, unprofessional tactics since the shooting raise grave doubts about both its competence and its credibility.”  The Ferguson police appear clueless about the race relations of the shooting of Brown, but the historical racism at Ferguson is clearly evident.

Thirty years ago, the majority of Ferguson was white; now two-thirds black, African-Americans still hold  no political power. The police force’s roster of 53 includes just three African Americans, and black residents of the city say they are frequently harassed.

Although our country may have thought that we were done with the battle of racism, it turns out that it is still evident in our society; Racist behavior from the police force does not only exist in Ferguson, Missouri – it is prevalent around our nation. Split-second assumptions about people based on their skin color should not have the ability to take lives.