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Police brutality called 'national disgrace'

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Some high-profile victims of police misconduct joined several prominent criminal defense lawyers and civil rights advocates Wednesday to denounce what they charge is an epidemic of police brutality against African-Americans nationwide.

At a symposium sponsored by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the American University Washington College of Law, participants called for an end to an informal "code of silence" by police who do not report the misdeeds of their colleagues.

"This is a national disgrace," declared ACLU leader Laura Murphy. "Cincinnati is just emblematic of what's going on in the United States," she said.

Kenneth Lawson, attorney for the family of Timothy Thomas whose shooting death by a Cincinnati police officer triggered several days of violence, cited a long history of problems between the police and the black community, and charged police corruption is systemic.

Prominent victims who attended the conference in Washington included Abner Louima who was brutalized by New York in a major police scandal. Also on hand for the event sponsored by the National Criminal Defense Lawyers Association was Yvette Bradley who battled the Customs Service over alleged racial profiling, and Dr. Elmo Rudolph, a New Jersey dentist who said he was stopped by New Jersey troopers on the turnpike more than 100 times.

"It's like a tax. It's something you put up with, and then you go on with your life," he said.

The all-day event attracted such well-known defense lawyers as Barry Scheck, Marvin Miller, and Michael Tigar, who represented convicted Oklahoma bombing accomplice Terry Nichols.

Attorneys and victims called for a wide range of reforms, including dramatic changes in police training, data collection on police stops and searches rather than simply on arrests, and more videotaping of police stops.

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