Cummings, who is black, all but begged Comey to do something to help break the pattern of unarmed black people being killed by police. Just this week, Alton Sterling was shot dead in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while selling CDs outside of a convenience store, and Philando Castile was shot and killed near St. Paul, Minnesota, after being pulled over for a busted tail light.
Representative Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland and ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, waits to begin a hearing with James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), not pictured, in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, July 7, 2016. Comey is appearing before the committee to explain his finding that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a criminal case against Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, even though she and her staff were extremely careless in their handling of highly classified information.
The Maryland Democrat said he woke up Thursday morning “to my wife literally crying” while watching a video of Sterling being shot. Then she watched the video of Castile bleeding out in his car. Cummings, who represents the majority of the mostly black neighborhoods of Baltimore, said he’s fortunate he’s never been harmed by police. Still, he said he’s been pulled over “50 million times” for no clear reason, and it’s all connected to people of color being targeted by law enforcement.
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