MADISON, United States -- "A person was jumping in and out of traffic," the dispatcher radioed. The description came in: black male, tan jacket and jeans.
Officers requested additional information as they drove. "Tony hit one of his friends, no weapons seen," said the dispatcher. Shortly after, police can be heard checking in as they arrived at the scene. One policeman said he entered the upstairs apartment.
Seconds later, the same voice called out, "Shots fired! Shots fired!" The voice yelled for an ambulance. A woman is screaming in the background.
This is the story of Tony Robinson, a black, unarmed 19-year- old teenager shot by a white policeman last Friday in Madison, the U.S. State of Wisconsin.
His story triggered five days of protests, including the infamous black bloc, who split off from a group of more than 1,000 protesters and blocked a highway for ten minutes.
But Tony Robinson's death is just one in a recent line of black deaths at the hands of police. In July last year, 43-year-old Eric Garner died in Staten Island, New York, after a police officer put him in a chokehold on suspicion of selling cigarettes without tax stamps. In August, Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot and killed by a white police officer. In November, police in Cleveland, Ohio shot dead 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was playing with a toy gun in a park near his home... These unfortunate events caused riots, looting, and arson, triggering an intense national debate over law enforcement's use of force against minorities, particularly against black men, and led to months of protests nationwide.
Protesters decried racial injustice and police brutality in massive responses to the decisions by two separate grand juries in Ferguson and Staten Island, which declined to indict the white police officers responsible for the deaths of Brown and Garner.
Amid all the uproar, Ferguson has become the center of racial tensions nationwide. Huge media coverage following Michael Brown's death narrowed down on police violence, forcing the U.S. Department of Justice to convene a task force which delivered a report on the state of the Ferguson Police Department.
The report, which found extensive misconduct, racist emails, unjustified arrests and excessive force, paints an ugly picture of systematic racism within the Ferguson Police Department. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder warned that the Department of Justice reserves the rights to force immediate change in Ferguson policing and court practice.
In one incident, said the report released last week, a man resting in his parked car was arrested at gunpoint and issued eight summons.
The report also revealed that government officials put pressure on the police department to generate revenue. Investigators discovered that Ferguson police officers had created a game to see who could issue the most summons in a single traffic stop.
Data mining by investigators showed Ferguson's law enforcement practices overwhelmingly impacted African Americans. From 2012 to 2014 African Americans accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations, and 93 percent of arrests made, despite the fact that they are only 67 percent of Ferguson's population.
The report also showed that some offenses are almost exclusively used against African Americans: from 2011 to 2013, 95 percent of walking in the roadway charges, and 94 percent of all failure to comply charges were brought against blacks.
These revelations sent shock waves to the public, who demand immediate changes. Last week, a Ferguson court clerk was fired, and two Ferguson police officers resigned. On March 9, the Missouri Supreme Court took over Ferguson courts. On Tuesday, Ferguson City Manager John Shaw resigned. On Wednesday, Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson also resigned after the U.S. Department of Justice report pointed out a culture of racism within the police department and municipal offices in the Missouri town.
U.S. President Barack Obama, also heeded the calls. On March 7, in a symbolic gesture, the first African American president flew to Selma, Alabama, where forerunners of the U.S. civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. embarked on their freedom march in 1965 and confronted armed policemen in an incident known as Bloody Sunday.
The march from Selma to Montgomery has led to the creation of the Voting Rights Act, making discriminatory voting practices illegal, and putting an end to the attacks on African-Americans who marched for their rights.
Nonetheless, Ferguson riots and their aftershocks across the country are harsh reminders that 50 years on, the march to racial equality and justice in the U.S. still has a long way to go.
Although protests quickly dissipated in Ferguson after the National Guard were positioned in front of critical infrastructure, and streets blocked off, thanks to the assistance of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, the anger and dissatisfaction is still seething underneath. "A more common mistake is to suggest that racism is banished, that the work that drew men and women to Selma is complete, and that whatever racial tensions remain are a consequence of those seeking to play the 'race card' for their own purposes," said President Obama in his speech at Selma.
"We don't need the Ferguson report to know that's not true," he said. "We just need to open our eyes, and ears, and hearts, to know that this nation's racial history still casts its long shadow upon us."
Despite a federal investigation, protesters say the future looks bleak. Reforms have primarily focused on the local level where problems are thrust into the spotlight by unfavorable media coverage. There have been few, if any, proposals to reform the judicial system on the national level, which has been feeding the anger.
Privately, activists told Xinhua that they believe recent events have awoken a sleeping beast.
And the data agrees. A poll released by Pew Research in August showed 80 percent of African-Americans believe that the Ferguson case raises an important discussion about race, while 47 percent of whites believe race is getting too much attention, and another 16 percent of whites are undecided.
Political divisions have increased as well. A year-long Pew Research poll released in June 2014 found that the number of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has increased to 21 percent in the past 20 years, up from 10 percent.
The divisions have resulted in battles on social media and on U. S. cable news, but more recently have taken a darker turn. More than a dozen buildings were set on fire in Ferguson when the officer involved in the Michael Brown shooting was cleared of all charges.
As many people are trying to brace for changes that come with the latest reshuffle at the city leadership level, on Thursday morning, two police officers were shot during a protest in front of the Ferguson police station.
Activists believe that without structural reform, police shootings of unarmed black men will continue. And tit-for-tat retaliation could ensue.
But something is different: regular people who say they have never been involved in protests before are starting to show up. In reaction to the shooting of Tony Robinson, Madison high school students and their friends have stood up to chant their chosen slogan, "Black lives matter."
Many students told Xinhua that they will continue to fight until structural reform is put in place. More protests are expected in Madison, where Robinson's funeral is planned for the coming Saturday.
