Because black people are disproportionately charged for felony firearm charges in Michigan, a white female prosecutor has decided to abandon this charge in the name of reducing systemic racial bias in the judicial system.
Yes, the plan to simply stop charging black people for criminal acts is happening.
Ingham County prosecutor receives support and backlash for policies meant to ease racial disparities, Fox47News.com, August 17, 2021
Ingham County Prosecutor Carol Siemon said, when she was elected in 2016, one of her main goals was to reduce systemic racial bias and racial disparities from law enforcement, but not everyone supports the policies she’s put in place to do that.
“I was raised here in Lansing, in a diverse community,” Siemon said. “I’ve always had an interest in civil rights, all aspects of civil rights. As a woman, I’ve been a feminist all my life. LGBTQ Rights, racial disproportionality, immigrants rights. So, when I was elected as prosecutor, my goal was to try and create a more criminal and equitable legal system.”
In the past month, Siemon has pushed out two policies meant to decrease the number of Black people behind bars.
Currently, Black people make up 14 percent of Michigan’s population and 53 percent of the prisoners in the state.
“We look at the data and that statistic shows that racial disparity is so unambiguous and so extreme that I couldn’t even justify,” she said.
Last week, she said she was changing the way her office deals with the felony firearm charge.
Michigan created the felony firearm charge in 1976 when there was a rise in the state’s gun violence.
“It was designed to say if you carry a gun you’re going to get two charges,” Siemon said. “That’s an additional two years in prison if convicted of a felony firearm, even if it’s a gun you’re legally able to have and if you don’t use the gun while committing the felony.”
Siemon said she’s only going to charge people for their actual behavior while committing a crime, not for a weapon that wasn’t used in the crime.
In 2020, the prosecutor’s office received 205 felony firearm charges, and a significant number of those suspects were Black.
“In Michigan, about 80 percent of people who are incarcerated on a felony firearm charge are Black, even though our statewide population for that race is only 14 percent,” Siemon said. “
Stanford University Law School Professor David Slansky has studied criminal activity and criminal law for more than two decades. He was also a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. He said the push to break down racial disparities in law enforcement is becoming more common among prosecutors across the country.
“Starting around 10 years ago, prosecutors began to win elections around the country, based on promises to make the system more balanced and reduce racial disparities and to decrease unnecessary harshness in the system,” he said. “I think a number of things have driven this trend. One is all the attention about race that stemmed from the Black Lives Matter Movement."
The push to make it illegal to arrest black people has gone from hyperbole to reality.
Black-Run America (BRA), indeed.
