article_snippet.sent: (CNN)This is a difficult but necessary thing to say: Incidents of police-involved killings and assaults on unarmed African-Americans are unlikely to end soon.
article_snippet.sent: That's partly because police brutality is neither new nor reflective of a "moment.
article_snippet.sent: The peaceful protests that were followed by outbreaks of violence in Baltimore this week have underscored the danger of ignoring a national crisis -- as frustration and impatience with the status quo boils over.
article_snippet.sent: The violent response of police officers to unarmed African-Americans is a decades-long phenomenon that has too often been dismissed as "race card" politics and black grievance.
article_snippet.sent: But this year's spate of killings and assaults, from Ferguson, Missouri, to North Charleston, South Carolina, to most recently Baltimore, are part of a deadly continuum of conduct that has created a well of resentment and anger in the  African-American community.
article_snippet.sent: The advent of cell phone cameras and social media has for the first time allowed average citizens to document police brutality routinely and to disseminate these images nationally.
article_snippet.sent: As a result, it is no longer possible for officials and commentators to downplay or deny the existence of police brutality against unarmed African-Americans as has happened in the past.
article_snippet.sent: To call this ugly and unrelenting wave of police violence against unarmed African-Americans a national crisis is not an exaggeration -- we are losing the confidence of a generation of young people who no longer believe in the legitimacy or credibility of our law enforcement and the justice system that underpins it.
article_snippet.sent: Yet until police officers come to expect swift and certain punishment for violating police officers oath to protect and serve, we are unlikely to see a real decrease in incidents of racially motivated police brutality.
article_snippet.sent: Ultimately, the crisis we face presents an opportunity to rethink policing in the country fundamentally, including who we decide to recruit to serve.
article_snippet.sent: A national crisis requires a national response, and that means that federal, state and local law enforcement leaders and organizations must honestly and aggressively move to end police brutality.
highlights_snippet.sent: Sherrilyn Ifill: Police violence against unarmed African-Americans is a national crisis .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: U.S. policing needs dramatic overhaul, Sherrilyn Ifill: Police violence against unarmed African-Americans says .