Publisher's Synopsis
Nearly 100 years after one of the worst racial massacres in US history, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma remains highly segregated, with black residents living in poverty at much higher rates than white people, subjected to worse health, shorter life spans, higher crime and aggressive policing. A series of high-profile killings by police of black people in Tulsa led Human Rights Watch to investigate police interactions with the black community. Ahead of the anniversary one of these killings, that of Terrence Crutcher three years ago on September 16, 2016, we are releasing our report finding racial disparities in physical force, arrests, stops, and citations. Black and poor people in Tulsa often experience the police not as a protective force, but as a cause of fear of violence and of harassing, abusive enforcement actions. Arrests and citations lead to court debt that poor people cannot pay, resulting in arrest warrants, further imprisonment
