NAACP Legal Defense Fund responds to United Airlines video

SHERRILYN IFILL: Amy, this is the convergence of two issues. At the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, we’ve been working on the issue of removals of passengers—not violent removals of passengers, but removals of passengers because other passengers think that they look suspicious or for some other reason. We’ve been looking at the issue of racial profiling and the issue of removals. Now we’re seeing this kind of very violent removal. And what worries me about this is that even if we want to talk about the training of those police officers, the response of United Airlines is so bizarre, in my view, that it suggests that there is a wider and deeper systemic problem. And I worry that Americans increasingly are being subjected to seeing things like people violently dragged by police officers next to them as they have out cellphone videos—this is almost like the police killings—we’re being almost inured to this violence that we’re seeing, every place we go. This is why we have to stand against this attempt to return us to ultra-violent policing in this country.