In broad daylight while being filmed, Derek Chauvin asphyxiated George Floyd to death for eight minutes and 46 seconds with the same casualness as someone sitting on a bench waiting for the bus.
Now, imagine a place inaccessible to the public with few windows, walled off from society. A place where cellphones and cameras are illegal and where security cameras are scarce. A place filled with inexperienced cops and marginalized citizens.
That place is called prison.
What cops feel comfortable doing on camera pales in comparison to what they can get away with when no one’s watching.
The “can” in that statement is important. Despite everything that’s happened, I don’t believe police are inherently evil. However, it’s become blatantly clear that cops, chiefs, sheriffs and whole departments have the ability to get away with quite a bit of disgusting sadism. But only if they want to.
I think The Onion of all publications said it best: “Police Didn’t Spend Millions On Awesome Tank Just To Let Protests Stay Peaceful.”
Again, most police, like most people, are decent human beings who went into their job with the idea of helping people. However, when you’re surrounded by upset uniformed coworkers, with your superiors yelling about their disdain for citizens, while your DA and chief or sheriff is pressuring you to make arrests, while your union leader is pushing for you to have less accountability, while your president is telling you to be more violent toward protestors, suddenly it seems like the system is stacked against you. Suddenly, it seems like the whole system is trying to churn out little more than armed thugs.
And I don’t know what the solutions are.
I do know there are two braindead national policies that should’ve been implemented decades ago: banning rubber bullets and making it illegal for uniformed officers to conceal their badges. I do know that the worldwide protests are accomplishing massively positive and historic change. I also know that we should probably limit the number of tanks and Lamborghini Gallardos police have.
This is my dream car because of Need for Speed: Most Wanted
But saying police shouldn’t be able to run us over with tanks, but armored SUVs are fine is the most rudimentary answer possible. Advocating to demilitarize the police is one step removed from saying assault rifles are scary, but semi-automatic shotguns are less scary because I saw those in movies.
Those in power would love it if everyone shut up after they cut 10 percent of law enforcement budgets. Wrongfully executing 10 percent fewer people a year isn’t the solution because the problem is that it happens in the first place.
Like I said, I don’t what the solutions are, but that’s ok; it’s not my job. Well, I’m a journalist and a criminal justice major, so it kind of is. We’re all just angry citizens protesting something we dislike. That’s it. We don’t have time to look through the hundreds of years of policing, how we adapted British policing, how systematic racism is still entrenched within most law enforcement agencies and how mayoral, state and national politics interact with police and union leaders.
Our job as Americans isn’t to film every time we see a cop, nor is it to propose legislation, nor is it to sit in on town halls, nor is it to run for office. We have other shit to do. That’s why we pay politicians. We complain, they take in information and propose an efficient change, and I report on what happened so we can reevaluate if we’re angry or not.
Everyone’s forgotten their first government/ American politics class. Those in charge make things better, not the other way around. Our only job is to make money, vote and complain. That’s it.
Using Trump’s analogy of America being a business, we’re the clients and politicians and police are our servants.
But I will admit after using that analogy and thinking about it, I do like the meme of ‘this is America; if you don’t like it, leave.’
I like it so much, I think I actually agree. I think every black person should take a vacation from America. It took exactly six months for meaningful change to happen when the black community in Montgomery boycotted buses. Let’s see how long it takes when a population over 200 times the size of Montgomery completely stops contributing to the economy.
