Tuesday, October 24, 2017 l 6:30 p.m. l USF Main Campus, Fromm Hall, Maraschi Room
Time and again police walk away from abusing and even killing civilians, particularly people of color, without any consequences or accountability. Rarely are police criminally charged or convicted. But they also frequently escape any sort of civil liability or even administrative discipline. How is this so? Despite more public attention, why does this state of affairs persist?
Renowned Law Professor and civil rights and human rights attorney Avidan Y. Cover will deliver the third annual JSSJ Human Rights Lecture, “Oscar Grant, Tamir Rice, and the Victims We Don’t Know: Legal Murder of People of Color and Immunity for Police,” on the failure of the law to remedy police violence. Cover will address how the U.S. legal apparatus, including prosecutors and the courts, privileges police rights over citizen rights, applying standards that continually benefit police, leading to their immunity from criminal and civil liability. He will also examine how police practices are further insulated from accountability through political dealings that lead to collective bargaining agreements that protect the police at every stage. Finally, he will offer several reforms that should lead to holding the police to account. Following the lecture, USF Law School Professor Rhonda Magee, an expert on race, racism, and U.S. law, will offer a response. Thereafter, we will have a Q&A with attendees.
This Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice event is co-sponsored by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.
