Police should be vigilant about not racially profiling people who are wearing masks because of the coronavirus epidemic, Democratic lawmakers said.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including former presidential candidate California Sen. Kamala Harris, sent a letter Friday to Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray asking them to provide anti-bias training to officers, the Associated Press reported.
“With the ongoing public health emergency, it is more important than ever for law enforcement to build trust with communities of color,” the senators wrote.
Some black men have reported incidents of racial profiling while they were wearing masks, a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control as a way to slow the spread of the deadly infection.
“If communities of color — especially African American communities — feel at risk of disproportionate or selective enforcement, they may avoid seeking help or adopting precautionary measures recommended by the CDC,” the letter reads. “This, in turn, could have dire public health consequences.”
African Americans have been hit hard by the coronavirus, public health records show. An AP analysis of available state and local data indicates that nearly a third of those who have died from COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, are black.
African Americans are roughly 14% of the population in the areas included in the analysis.