The parents of Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old who was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, will this week tell the United Nations that the city’s police chief must resign and that his department should be taken over by the federal government.
Lesley McSpadden and Michaelt Brown Sr were on Monday travelling to Geneva, Switzerland, to tell the UN’s committee on torture that police in Ferguson are “systematically targeting and harassing” black people in a “predatory and degrading manner”. They say that their son was treated as “less than human”.
The couple alleges in a report to the committee that both the killing of their son and the militarised police response to protests over his death in the St Louis suburb violated the UN’s convention against torture, to which the US is a signatory.
“The United States must take steps to address the torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Michael Brown and other unarmed black and brown persons killed by law enforcement” as well as of peaceful protesters, they say in their 13-page report.
Coverage from The Guardian