Instances of police brutality against Blacks and other oppressed groups in the country have reached a point that the Congressional Black Caucus felt compelled May 10 to hold hearings on Capitol Hill concerning the issue.

Not only will the CBC convene victims and their families, legislators, activists, law enforcement officials and others in Washington, but the group intends to hold similar gatherings in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Atlanta. It’s an effort to show the widespread nature of the problem and to get as much input as possible from the citizenry.

The hearings are held in the wake of California protests of the exoneration of cops who shot Tyisha Miller, a teen-ager who was riddled with 14 bullets as she sat lifeless—some say she was unconscious—in her car at night on a vacant lot. The cops who surrounded Tyisha’s car said they shot her because she grabbed a gun that was on her seat in full view when they tried to wake her and gain entry to her car.

In New York four white cops are on trial for the murder of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed African immigrant shot 19 times in his own doorway. New York cops also are on trial for the brutal beating and sodomizing of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant. And these are just a few of the cases nationwide.

Meanwhile, unusual storms and tornadoes recently wreaked havoc on the American plains, taking lives and destroying property. The effect of the violence of nature on its victims was not unlike the effects of the violence of the police on their victims: the end result was grief and tears.

White school children are taking high powered weapons and even bombs to school to kill and maim. This is causing pain and confusion in the land.

Why is the American public suffering such anxiety and grief even as the country boasts of being the unconquerable god of the planet and her economy supposedly is booming? What can she do to ease the anguish?

Lawmakers and enforcers can start by giving justice to the victims of police abuse so that their pain can be eased. Watching police go free without so much as a reprimand for blatant brutality only hardens the hearts of those who commit the brutality, and it fuels the anger in the recipients of the undeserved brutality.