Chronology of Human Rights Violations of the United States in 2015

MARCH

March 1

The Washington Post website reported that Charly Leundeu Keunang, an unarmed 43-year-old homeless black man, was shot by police on a street in Los Angeles, California, in an altercation with police officers patrolling Skid Row.

March 4

The USA Today website reported that the U.S. Department of Justice found through review that police in Ferguson, Mississippi, commonly had racial discrimination. They used force against African Americans inappropriately. The record of Ferguson police showed that in 88 percent of cases in which Ferguson documented the use of force, those actions were used against African Americans. A review of 161 such cases by Justice investigators found that none of the incidents resulted in disciplinary action.

March 6

The website of the U.S. News & World Report quoted a researcher of the National Gang Center as saying that in the past five years the United States had seen an 8 percent increase in the number of gangs, an 11 percent increase in members and a 23 percent increase in gang-related homicides.

March 13

The Associated Press reported that it was getting harder and more expensive to use public records to hold government officials accountable. Authorities were undermining the laws that are supposed to guarantee citizens' right to information, turning the right to know into just plain "no."

March 16

"The Best 'Democracy' Money Can Buy," an article published on the website of Zerohedge, said that between 2007 and 2012 in the United States, 200 most politically active corporations spent a combined 5.8 billion U.S. dollars on federal lobbying and campaign contributions. They got 4.4 trillion U.S. dollars in federal business and support in return.

On the same day, a USA Today report said the U.S. government did a bad job in implementing legislation on freedom of information. Though the laws were well written, the public record revealed that it was fairly difficult to obtain information from key departments.

March 19

The Washington Post website reported that Brandon Jones, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, was shot by police on a street in Cleveland, Ohio, as he came out of a grocery store that he had broken into.

March 20

A USA Today report, which was published on its website, said the nation had its lowest midterm-election voter turnout in 2014 since the 1940s. The average turnout across the United States was 37 percent, with a low of 28.8 percent recorded in Indiana. Only seven states saw more than half of their voters cast ballots in the election.

On the same day, The Washington Post said on its website that since 9/11, more than 500 drone strikes had killed nearly 4,000 individuals. Drone operators, called the "stick monkeys," had trouble distinguishing women and children from the high-value targets they were seeking.

March 26

A report on the Time magazine's website quoted an investigation by the BBC as saying that tens of thousands of children were sexually exploited each year in the United States. Hundreds of U.S. children were sold for sex, according to the BBC. Poverty and neglect were thought to be some of the main reasons why children were vulnerable to sex trafficking.