THREAD Police brutality isn't about race, at least not entirely. It's about power.

First, a disclaimer. I am a straight white educated male, & that carries with it a serious amount of inherent privilege. I am not going to even try to say that my experience is the same as ...

someone with a less privileged existence. However, I do have a certain perspective on police matters, since I grew up in their midst & can now analyze my indoctrination in the cult of law & order in hindsight.

My mom was a cop, & a relatively well-respected one at that. She ...

was the first woman in the state to ever be named Law Enforcement Officer of the Year, & she was the International President of a CSI trade association. Most of her friends were either cops or prosecutors. I was always taught that cops were your friends & you should always ...

listen to them, because they would never hurt you because they only hurt bad people. To be fair, I tell Saoirse something close, but not quite as absolute. That's mostly because a) many if not most cops are wonderful people; & b) she's lucky enough that if she went to a cop ...

for help they'd probably help her, for all the aforementioned privilege reasons.

But here's the thing. I don't doubt that every cop I've ever met truly believes that they would only ever hurt bad people. But many of them have a vastly different definition of what constitutes ...

"bad" than I do. To those cops, a bad person includes anyone who does not "respect the badge."

Here's an example. In Columbia, SC, even the most distinguished detectives still had to work crowd control at USC football games. It was the great equalizer. Every time my mom & ...

her partner (a former champion bodybuilder) would get this job, she'd come home with the same story. It would inevitably involve her going up to a rowdy fan & standing on her tiptoes to get in his face, him giving her lip, & her partner throwing him against the wall "to teach ...

him some manners."

She'd tell this story to a room full of cops & lawyers, & they'd all laugh uproariously. To them it was entirely natural to bodyslam someone into a concrete wall for not showing proper respect. The asshole had it coming.

These weren't uneducated hillbilly ...

cops out in the middle of nowhere. They were the elite of the state police. Virtually all of them had at least a college degree.

This is not to minimize the huge race problems law enforcement has. Those are undeniable & pervasive. But it is a mistake to only focus on the ...

racial aspect. Many of my mom's friends spoke disapprovingly of the civil rights movement, but not because it was a bunch of black folks. It was a bunch of black folks who were disrespecting the police. They spoke equally disapprovingly of the anti-war protests.

This creates a bit of a positive feedback loop. Here's how it normally works with these types.

1) A bunch of racist cops go do racist things.
2) A bunch of African-American people protest about the racist cops.
3) A bunch of other cops rally around the "besieged cops" ...

because they're cops dammit.
4) Time passes.
5) Future cops recall the incident as that time a bunch of cops got attacked for being cops by a bunch of ungrateful citizens. They collectively forget that it was a bunch of cop racism that started the whole thing, because THEY'RE ...

not racists.
6) African-Americans, meanwhile, have NOT forgotten the racism, so they are likely to be less than perfectly respectful to cops.
7) This triggers the snowflake cops & they go kill or beat up the person not showing them proper respect, who is more likely than not ...

to be African-American.

It's basically racism laundering, & it's been around for decades. It's how you can see a disparate impact on communities of color from cops who might not normally strike you as racist. Then, if they ARE attacked as racist, their fellow cops circle the ...

wagons again, & the whole thing starts all over again.

So what's the solution? I have no idea on the racism angle. But on the respect angle, we need STRONG punishments for police brutality, & we need to do away with the idea that cops "make mistakes in the heat of the moment."

If I snap & beat the crap out of someone I'm arguing with "in the heat of the moment," there's not a prosecutor in the country who would say "yeah but he just made a mistake." So there's the test. If you would charge a civilian for taking the action, charge a cop. Civilians ...

aren't generally entitled to a presumption that they acted properly in every encounter they had. Cops are. And they know it.

I'm not saying that fixing the power/entitlement issue will fix the racism problem, but I am saying that just trying to fix the racism problem without ...

addressing the power issue is doomed to failure. As long as cops believe that they are entitled to absolute obedience in all things & the department will have their back, the bad ones will continue to do the things we've been seeing this past week.

Ok I'm done, flame away.