International Day Against Police Brutality
International Day Against Police Brutality is held on March 15. This event in the second decade of the month March is annual.
It first began in 1997 as an initiative of the Montreal-based Collective Opposed to Police Brutality and the Black Flag group in Switzerland. A march is held yearly in Montreal.
Government officials, academic researchers and media outlets launched data-collection projects around that time to better understand the frequency of police violence and the risk factors that contribute to it. From these growing data sets come some disturbing findings.
For example, racial disparity in the use of lethal force by law enforcement has been a recurring point of contention for the United States. About 1,000 civilians are killed each year by law-enforcement officers in the United States. By one estimate, Black men are 2 times more likely than white men to be killed by police during their lifetime.
What about the situation in less developed countries? The situation is much worse there.