Civil rights attorney David Henderson, who was a guest on @AlexWitt’s show a short time ago said something so important. American police are well trained at one thing in particular: violence. Most can shoot with extreme precision from a distance (Rayshard Brooks, Walter Scott...)
Even switching from a Tazer to a firearm quickly (well, the professionals who can tell two apart...) What they don’t seem to be too good at, generally, is de-escalation and non-violent means of gaining the thing they fixate almost exclusively on: compliance.
And there’s the issue of the “us vs them” culture of policing, which seems to show up in lopsidedly lax treatment of even violent offenders who cops believe are generally aligned with them or share their “enemies” (ie Black Lives Matter protesters.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/08/26/video-of-police-ignoring-suspected-kenosha-shooter-sparks-calls-of-injustice/">https://www.forbes.com/sites/jem...
And there’s the issue of white offenders seemingly treated by police as fundamentally non-threatening, even when they are in the process of being violent, or have just committed extremely violent acts... https://newsone.com/playlist/white-arrested-with-by-police/">https://newsone.com/playlist/...
So the question is, how do you reform a system like that, with so many complex issues and so much potential lethality? Police are a necessity for investigating crime, and for aspects of civil order. But how do you reform a multi-state regime that feels so broken in so many ways?
We need to figure it out. Because if police — who are an arm of the government, paid by our tax dollars to “protect and serve” — lose the consent of the governed (and they are, in communities of color. Let’s just be clear about that...) we are on our way to potential chaos.
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