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Press TV has conducted an interview with analyst Opio Sokoni from Florida about week-long public protests in response to the shooting death of African American Michael Brown by St Louis Police.

Press TV: We have our other guest Lawrence Korb who talks about Eric Holder who is also African American and that topic seems to be injected into his statements there. Isn’t that in a sense where the root of the problem is?

We’re looking at news that says African Americans for example in terms of the jury here or in terms of Eric Holder or in terms of race being described that way.

There should be no difference when it comes to race or color when you look at the bigger picture, shouldn’t it?

Sokoni: You’re right. Race is considered one of the original sins. We have a country that has said one thing when it comes to human rights and civil rights, but has done something totally different.

When you have a president of the United States that’s black and you have the attorney general that’s black; and now they’ve brought in leading person on the ground Officer Johnson that’s black somehow that is supposed to take away the whole issue of this young black male being shot – a couple of times in the head, mind you.

You have not only blacks that are out there protesting, but you have whites that are protesting as well. You have whites who are really upset that you have this type of militarization in this country against citizens. A lot of those weapons come from the war in Afghanistan so when it’s all said and done it’s not just a black issue here.

Again, you have a country that says one thing, but is doing another thing when it comes to race and justice in this country.

Press TV: Every 36 hours a black American is killed nationally. Our guest Lawrence Korb talks about an investigation that is intended to take place against Officer Wilson and that something will come of it. Your response?

Sokoni: Let me say this. I heard that yesterday or the day before yesterday there was a white man pointing a gun at police officers, he did not get killed. We see this type of thing all the time.

What motivates an unarmed man to get killed by the police, who is black, and an armed white man not get killed by police is the constant diet of racism that we are fed in this country, the negative media images against black males. And then you have news outlets; you have movies; you have radio stations that pump a whole bunch of garbage and filth particularly where it’s directed at black people.

And so you have an officer who doesn’t live in the community who probably doesn’t know a whole bunch of black people, doesn’t have the regular connections that’s needed in a community-oriented way.

He sees a black male and it’s like a step-child situation – anybody who has ever been in a step situation knows that a step child and the person’s regular child can do exactly the same thing, but you are going to feel totally different and more angered by what the step child does.

And so black people in this country are treated like step children, this is why you can get a man shot six times who is unarmed and a person who is armed who is white, doesn’t get killed at all.

Press TV: Back to this African American (Michael Brown) who was killed by a police officer, the police captain has come out and told reporters that based on what he had heard, quote, “it was justifiable”.

And yet here you have a police captain in a racially-charged atmosphere to have obviously been part of this killing of this unarmed black teenager coming out before even a formal investigation is undertaken saying it was justifiable. Isn’t that where the problem is right there in some sense?

Sokoni: You put your finger right on it. It’s a pattern and some of us look at it as a sort of conspiracy.

When a black person commits a crime that person gets justice right away, it is real swift. That person goes to jail, gets processed in. And so when a police officer kills somebody and we look at this as so blatantly wrong, now we are talking about let’s wait and let’s do all these other things that they don’t do when it comes to blacks committing crimes.

But also what they do is they began to demonize the victim. The body is not even in the ground, the parents are grieving. Anytime – and you can look at this pattern across the country – anytime a black man is killed they begin putting things out, they’ll go back ten years if they have to, like for example: this person smoked marijuana; this person kicked a dog back three years ago; this person had a knife.

And with Michael brown they were saying that person was a part of some robbery – even though he didn’t have a weapon – he was a part of this robbery in a store, even though it had absolutely nothing to do with him being shot and killed unarmed on that fateful day.

And we see the media because they work heavily with the police department they are going to take what the police department says and they are going to spread that out and it becomes a negative PR (public relations) against the African American victim who is lying on the ground bloodied and dead.

So, that further exacerbates the problem and anger and hurt in the community and it creates a bigger wall where police and community are concerned.

There are police officers out there that really don’t like this and they can’t say much about it and this is why organizations like mine are so important – civil rights organizations. We have to stand up.

When we talk against bad police officers and bad policing it makes a better situation for good police officers.

Police officers have what’s called the Law Enforcement Officer’s Bill of Rights. These same rights are often not extended to African Americans. When they shoot somebody they get a lawyer right away helps them out, they get all these different benefits from the criminal justice system that African Americans don’t receive.

And this is why you see African Americans in jail in large numbers because when police officers go into majority-black neighborhoods they feel totally different about black people than they do when they go into white – particularly well-to-do white – neighborhoods.

Press TV: Your reaction to Mr. Korb’s comments on Eric Holder reviewing cases and sentences given to African Americans; and he wonders how this particular killer got the job of a police officer in the first place given the police system infrastructure.

Sokoni: One of the reactions is, you had right after this murder happened where officer Wilson killed Michael Brown, they brought out German Shepherd dogs.

Anybody that saw those images flash across a screen where you have police officers with German shepherd barking at people who are rightly upset about this boy, a teenager, lying on the street with his face bloodied after being shot in the head a couple of times in this community...

You can look back into the 1960s and you see them do the exact same thing bring out German Shepherds. You look at old slave movies and you see how bloodhounds were used to hunt down African Americans. So we see how history has no discontinuation. What happened yesterday directly affects us today and so we saw some very awful images right after this boy was killed. His body lay on the ground for hours.

Also you saw one of the police officers from Ferguson’s police department call some of the people that were angry animals. He probably didn’t think he was being heard, but you can look it up on You Tube, he said “bring it on you animals”.

And so this is the type of people that they have on the police department. Some of the reasons why you have a Ferguson majority whites in power and a majority black population is an apartheid system.

You have the criminal justice system throughout the country – and I remember a book called Black Robes White Justice and this is what you have you have really an apartheid system here.

And so if we are to be honest with ourselves we have to realize that blacks are treated differently; but blacks don’t want anything more than to live their lives peacefully, to get along and to ultimately take care of their families; and we want the poverty to be driven out of our communities.

So, when it comes to other communities when gentrification came they found all kinds of money to put into every singly community, but where that black community is there – majority black community – somehow they can never find any money to bring that community up.

We know the biggest correlation to crime and violence is poverty. More policing only creates problems.