Who says they’re all racially motivated? They’re all a piece of this broken system, but personal racial animus is only a part of this broken system. Militarized training and culture is another part. Us vs them (cops seeing the public as an enemy) is another. Escalation/emphasis on authority instead of deescalation and emphasis on community relations is another. The blue wall is another (and maybe the biggest piece). There are many, many more.
Because they want the police to be there to protect their neighborhood but at the same time they don’t trust them when they are there. Look at the other parts of the survey:
This. From outside the US it’s shocking to see people stuck in this groove and unable to see what is happening. From the other side of the pond it appears you are in a low-grade civil war, with an apartheid system in place and a non-democratic take over in the wings. And we used to look up to you. It’s really, really sad.
Just throwing this out:
George Floyd’s girlfriend was one of Daunte Wright’s high school teachers.
The black Army lieutenant who was recently harassed by the cops is a family friend of the Eric Garner family.
One problem is, we don’t know when they are and aren’t. This officer made a tragic error during a routine stop. We don’t know if a person with white skin gets stopped in the first place. We don’t know if the pre-arrest interaction would play out differently on the police side if the person had white skin. We don’t know if she would make the same heat of the moment mistake when faced with a white man instead of a black man.
In my town people complained about the police, for parking somewhere. I hear this and think WTF is wrong with you people? Then they say, the police parked there because there was a group of black teens hanging out, getting ice cream. I would never think for a moment that a cop parked on the block near me because he was monitoring me, to see if I do something he can bust me on. My black neighbors do. How can I tell them they’re wrong, and that the police weren’t monitoring their kids for eating ice cream while black?
No we don’t. And we have good reason to ask those questions. But notice how little benefit of the doubt is given to cops while bending over backwards for a suspect with an arrest warrant:
While it’s true that a warrant does not a convicted criminal make, see how recklessly a charge is dismissed.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office raided Newsweek’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan on January 18, 2018, and seized 18 computer servers as part of an investigation related to the company’s finances.[64] IBT, which owned Newsweek, had been under scrutiny for its ties to David Jang,[64] a South Korean pastor and the leader of a Christian sect called “the Community”.[65]
In September 2018, after completing the strategic structural changes initially announced in March of the same year, IBT Media spun off Newsweek , making it an independent publication for the first time in almost 60 years
As much as I rage about bad cops, I actually think we are on the right track. We are not seeing an upswing in excessive force against minorities. This is business as usual. We have just been shining a light on it and people are pissed, as they should be. This is where change starts. It is slow and painful, but it is happening.
It will be faster if fewer people stop denying the problems exist. Or just be honest about their racism.
Right. And we are seeing more and more bad cops face real consequences. It’s a good start and more needs to be done as far as removing the special protections they’ve enjoyed up until now. Plus all the other things you listed.
The way to continue this progress is to keep the pressure on, not to back up and make excuses and assign blame to those with reason to feel mortal terror. The warrant is entirely irrelevant to the killing of Wright.
Videos have been released concerning the shooting of 13 yo Adam Toledo by the police in Chicago.
An article:
On a frame-by-frame viewing, a pistol-shaped object appears to be visible in Toledo’s right hand behind his back as he pauses near the opening in the fence and turns his head toward the officer. On the grainy and shaky video, his hands appear to be empty at the moment the officer shoots him.
Later in the video, an officer can be seen shining a flashlight onto a pistol behind the fence where Toledo had been standing.
In a view from a camera across a nearby parking lot, aimed at the alley from behind that fence, the teen can be seen running down the alley from a distance. As he can be seen stopping at the gap where he was eventually shot, his right arm can be seen moving behind the fence, making an underhanded throwing motion toward the area where the gun is later recovered, just before he turns back toward the officer and slumps to the ground.