A former police chief in Florida has been sentenced to three years in prison for trying to frame innocent black people as the culprits of unsolved crimes.
Raimundo Atesiano was formerly the police chief in Biscayne Park, Florida, before he was sentenced for conspiracy to deprive individuals of their civil rights.
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Prosecutors said Atesiano ordered them to falsely arrest and charge three people for three different unsolved crimes, in order to boost the department's crime solving rate.
One of the falsely accused served a total of five years in prison for a series of burglaries he did not commit, while another of the wrongly accused was aged just 16 years old.
A fellow officer from Biscayne Park said Atesiano had a code to inform police that a person of colour 'needed to be stopped and confronted'.
Two other officers from the department were previously sent to prison for their involvement in the scheme.
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An unnamed officer quoted in an internal probe: "If they have burglaries that are open cases that are not solved yet, if you see anybody black walking through the streets and they have somewhat of a record, arrest them so we can pin them for all the burglaries."
Speaking before his sentencing, Raimundo Atesiano said: "When I took the job, I was not prepared. I made some very, very bad decisions."
In a statement, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said: "Putting an arrest statistic above the rights of an innocent man instead of working to protect all our citizens undermines the safety goals of every Miami-Dade police department. Miami-Dade's residents deserve honesty and integrity, qualities that Raimundo Atesiano deliberately failed to deliver."
This case comes at a time in which tensions between the American public and police officers are high, following a number of brutality, misconduct and shooting cases against black citizens.
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An off-duty police officer in Dallas was fired and charged in September this year for fatally shooting a black man after entering his apartment and opening fire.
According to data compiled by the Washington Post, 192 black people have been shot and killed by police this year alone.
Despite this high number, this is actually a much lower statistic than the previous year (223), and new research lead by Rutgers University in Newark suggests black cops are just as likely as white to kill black suspects - and that a culture of bias is a bigger problem than individual racist officers.
Words: Tom Court
Topics: US News