Study: APD Charges African-Americans Disproportionately For Resisting Arrest

This week the Asheville Citizen-Times published a study showing Asheville police were disproportionately charging African-Americans with resisting arrest. The study, which looked at the last five year, found that 35-percent of resisting arrest charges filed by Asheville police were against African-Americans. The city's black population is only 12-percent. The study also found a sizable number of those arrests for resisting an officer included no other charges. Joel Burgess of the Citizen-Times spoke to many people for his story, including some people who were charged with resisting arrest. That includes Johnnie Rush, whose beating and choking by a then-Asheville police officer in August 2017 made national headlines. Burgess spoke with BPR's Matt Bush about what the study found, and how it might affect the future of a police department that's been in flux for multiple years.