In the U.S., problems concerning respecting and protecting civil rights are severe. The nation is haunted by spreading guns, frequent occurrence of violent crimes, the excessive use of force by police that infringed on citizens' personal rights, as well as wide criticism of illegal eavesdropping that violated citizens' right of privacy.

Civil rights are threatened by rampant violent crimes. According to the "Crime in the United States" released by the FBI, there were an estimated 1,163,146 violent crimes reported to law enforcement in 2013, of which 14,196 are murders, 79,770 are rapes, 345,031 robberies and 724,149 aggravated assaults (http://www.fbi.gov.) There were an estimated 367.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013. The Market Watch announced 10 most dangerous cities in America (www.marketwatch.com, November 20, 2014)). The lowest ranking of the ten was Birmingham in Alabama, where 1,345 crimes were reported for every 100,000 residents, while in Detroit, 2,072 violent crimes were reported for 100,000 residents, the highest in the nation in 2013. In 2014, Los Angeles's overall total of violent crimes was up 7.6 percent by early October, compared with the same time in 2013 (The Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2014). There was about 1,500 violent crimes registered a month in 2014. Meanwhile, gang violence in the U.S. was at an all time high. There were currently an estimated 1.7 million gang members spread throughout the country (www.insidermonkey.com, November 1, 2014).

The rampant use of guns was not contained. Though the FBI had launched federal background checks to block groups like fugitives and felons, from buying firearms, local law enforcement authorities did not report arrest warrants to the database used to screen gun buyers (The USA Today, April 23, 2014). Consequently, tens of thousands of fugitives including those facing serious charges can pass the background checks and bought firearms. Statistics showed that the use of firearms was behind about 69 percent of the murders in the U.S., while for robberies, the figure was 40 percent, and for aggravated assaults, 21.6 percent (edition.cnn.com, September 24, 2014). A total of 2,215 people were shot in Chicago in the first 10 months of 2014 (www.insidermonkey.com, November 1, 2014,). There were 30 shooting cases reported in three days in a week in the city (projects.aljazeera.com, November 19, 2014).

Law enforcement authorities were run with a loose rein, with some even turning a blind eye to fugitives. Police officers were ignoring sex crimes on a regular basis. A report released in November by the inspector general of New Orleans found that of 1,290 sex crime calls for service assigned to five New Orleans police detectives from 2011 to 2013, 840 were designated as miscellaneous, and nothing at all was done (The New York Times, November 13, 2014). Of the 450 calls that led to the creation of an initial investigative report, no further documentation was found for 271 of them. Police and prosecutors were allowing tens of thousands of wanted felons to escape justice merely by crossing a state border (The USA Today, March 12, 2014). A confidential FBI database chronicled 186,873 of these cases, including more than 3,300 accused of sex crimes. A total of 78,878 felony suspects won't be extradited from any place but neighboring states (The USA Today, March 12, 2014). Police indicated they would not spend the time or money to retrieve the fugitive from another state.

There was excessive use of violence by police. The Wall Street Journal reported on December 3, 2014, that many of the law enforcement agencies did not submit the statistics about killings by police when enforcing laws to the FBI. The report found at least 1,800 police killings took place in 105 police departments between 2007 and 2012. The Associated Press reported on December 7, 2014 that at least 400 deaths happened every year as a result of the law enforcement activities by the U.S. police officers, most of who were not prosecuted. And some police officers had repeated killings on record, though they were investigated for every case. There were 55 police officers who were sued at least 10 times with one being sued for 28 times. Los Angeles Times reported on September 14 that since 2004 a committee reviewed 809 complaints of excessive force or misconduct at the Southwest border, but no police officers had been punished.

In July 17, 2014, African-American resident Eric Garner was choked to death when several white New York police officers were arresting him. Garner, unarmed, put his hands up during the process, saying he couldn't breathe many times, and then he was grabbed from behind in a chokehold which was banned, until he lost consciousness (edition.cnn.com, December 3, 2014). Darren Wilson, a white police officer, fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American, on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, a town in Missouri. The shootings had generated continued riots in the town (The New York Times, November 25, 2014). After the grand jury of both Missouri and New York decided to bring no charges against the white police officer, massive protests broke out in more than 170 cities (www.mirror.co.uk, November 25, 2014). The protests were cracked down by authorities, with police aggressively arresting citizens on the streets. Some residents in Ferguson were unlawfully arrested by police and were just trying to get home when they were picked up and taken to jail (www.reuters.com, December 2, 2014). Since August 2014, roughly 300 people, including local residents and activists as well as organizers and journalists who traveled to Ferguson, had been arrested amid the protests (The Chicago Tribune, December 1, 2014). "Ferguson incident" was a bitter result of the excessive use of force by police in law enforcement. New York Daily News reported on October 8, 2014, that two police officers beat a 16-year-old teenager Karhreem Tribble with grips of fire arms. Several of the teenager's teeth were broken and his mouth was swollen. In another report the next day, the paper said a police officer swiped 1,300 dollars from a man during a stop-and-frisk. When the man and his sister complained and tried to get his badge number, the officer then pepper-sprayed him and his sister. What was more disturbing, the other officer was just standing around watching. On November 23, 2014, police in the U.S. city of Cleveland, Ohio, shot and killed a 12-year-old boy who was in a playground waving around what turned out to be a replica gun (www.foxnews.com, November 23, 2014 ).

Security authorities were illegally eavesdropping, infringing on citizens' privacy. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal privacy watchdog, concluded that the National Security Agency's (NSA) program to bulk phone call records was illegal (The New York Times, January 23, 2014). The Huffington Post reported on February 27, 2014 that U.S. District Judge William Martini dismissed a lawsuit brought by eight Muslims, affirming the New York Police Department's right to spy on Muslim communities in New Jersey, drawing fire from several human rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (www.huffingtonpost.com, February 27, 2014). The Prism gate continued to reveal that American law firm was monitored by the NSA while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. On July 16, 2014, Navi Pillay, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the mass surveillance programs and related polices by some states were not transparent, creating an interference with privacy at a press conference on the right to privacy in the digital age (www.ohchr.org, July 16, 2014). According to Pillay, coercing private providers into offering massive personal information and data about customers without their noticing or consent was against rules set in documents including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Prisons in the U.S. were crowded and violence and deaths there were increasing. According to a report titled "Prisoners in 2013" by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. state and federal correctional facilities held an estimated 1,574,700 prisoners on December 31, 2013, an increase of 4,300 prisoners from yearend 2012 (www.bjs.gov, September 16, 2014). In some places, prisons resorted to early releases because of the surge in prisoners. Across California, more than 13,500 inmates were being released early each month to relieve crowding in local jails - a 34 percent increase over the last three years. In Los Angeles County, with a quarter of California's jail population, male inmates often were released after serving as little as 10 percent of their sentences and female prisoners after 5 percent (The Los Angeles Times, August 17, 2014). Due to lax management, violence in prisons was occurring frequently. In 2012, 4,309 inmates died while in the custody of local jails or state prisons (www.bjs.gov, October 9, 2014). The number of deaths in local jails increased, from 889 in 2011 to 958 in 2012. In Rikers Island, a vast New York City jail complex, the use of force by correction officers jumped nearly 240 percent over the last decade since 2004 (The New York Times, March 19, 2014). In the Julia Tutwiler Prison in Alabama, there was a large amount of complaints about the sex abuse and harassment involving guards and supervisors. However, state investigators time and again classified the complaints as unfounded or unsubstantiated and often recommended that the matters be closed without further action (The Washington Post, October 6, 2014).