On 5th July 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37 year-old black man, was fatally shot several times after being tackled to the ground by two white police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On 6th July 2016, Philando Castile, a 32 year-old black man, was fatally shot several times after being pulled over by a Mexican American police officer in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. On 7th July 2016, at the end of a peaceful protest held in Dallas, Texas, relating to these shootings, a black man opened fire in an ambush, killing five police officers, wounding seven others and two civilians. Two cases of excessive force causing homicides and one of a tragical counter-move that are all symptoms of the racial disparities appearing across the criminal justice system, causing serious lack of trust between law enforcement and too many of the communities they are about to serve. Year after year, efforts are being made to solve the problem of ethnic profiling, but these events leave us with more questions than answers: how to understand it, how to face it and most of all, how to set up a legal system, in which the reality of racial bias in law enforcement could finally disappear.
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