From Pacific Standard Magazine
by Khushbu Shah
The day Craig Stephen Hicks was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for killing three of his Muslim-American neighbors in North Carolina over what he initially claimed to police to be over a “an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking,” the Chapel Hill Police Department finally disputed his characterization. It took them over four and a half years to change their initial stance.
“What we all know now and what I wish we had said four years ago is that the murders of Deah, Yusor, and Razan were about more than simply a parking dispute,” Police Chief Chris Blue said in a statement on June 12th. He continued: “To the Abu-Salha and Barakat families, we extend our sincere regret that any part of our message all those years ago added to the pain you experienced through the loss of Our Three Winners. And, to the Muslim members of our community, know that you are heard, seen, and valued.”
The statement comes amid a flurry of research and reporting on the often dismissive, or outright prejudiced, attitudes of law enforcement toward Muslims either seeking officers’ aid or at the subject of investigations.
The Plain View Project, created by a group of lawyers, recently released a database of eight police departments around the United States that has identified thousands of Facebook posts and comments by current and former police officers about Muslims. Among the comments, they documented that “[n]umerous posts deemed Islam ‘a cult, not a religion'” and referred to Muslims as “savages” and “goat-humpers.” In response to the revelation of the extent and spread of the posts, a number of police departments, like those in Philadelphia and St. Louis, Missouri, have “launched investigations” into their departments. Additionally, the St. Louis Police Officers’ Association told CNN it has been in touch with the Council on American Islamic Relations to set up a meeting.
A few days later, media outlet Reveal released its own investigation of more than 400 officers across the U.S. who had actively joined hate groups by “participating in the spread of extremism on Facebook,” including sending Islamophobic messages. In one example out of Texas, the research from Reveal cited a police officer’s post of a picture that said: “Islam. A cult of oppression, rape, pedophilia and murder cannot be reasoned with!”
