(Peter Foley/EPA)When the Justice Department announced this week it would not charge the officers involved in the death of Alton Sterling, officials used a familiar script. He pointed to federal civil rights law as making it impossible to substantiate a case. Federal law makes charging police officers with civil rights violations extremely difficult. “This is the Justice Department doing what it does.”Even in the Obama administration, prosecutors turned down far more civil rights cases than they prosecuted. It’s all about the systems we give them to work in.”The Justice Department declined to make current officials available for this story.

Source: Washington Post May 06, 2017 02:03 UTC