One week after the release of a surveillance video showing a Cleveland police officer fatally shooting a 12-year-old African-American boy who was holding a pellet gun, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. flew here on Thursday to announce that a lengthy Justice Department civil rights investigation had found “unreasonable and unnecessary use of force” by the city’s Police Department.
The Cleveland abuses highlighted by Mr. Holder included many that have caused friction with the police in minority communities around the country. Those include excessive use of deadly force like shootings and using weapons to hit suspects on the head; the “unnecessary, excessive or retaliatory use of less lethal force” involving Tasers, chemical spray and fists; excessive force against mentally ill people; and tactics that have escalated encounters into confrontations where use of force became inevitable.
[For more of this story, written by Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Matt Apuzzo, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12...and-police.html?_r=0]
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