In response to protests against police brutality, police across the country cracked down brutally— tear-gassing peaceful protestors, pepper-spraying people as they fled, and assaulting and arresting reporters.
Police departments appear to be trying to prove the protesters right.
More than 10,000 people were arrested in less than a week. We’ll never know how many of those arrests were unfounded and intended to inconvenience and harass people.
Police in the United States act with impunity and little accountability. Unequivocal evidence is all across social media—multiple videos of police officers in different cities assaulting and shooting tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper balls at peaceful protestors.
When George Floyd was murdered by police on the streets of Minneapolis, three other officers stood by and let it happen. If a civilian had tried to save Floyd, the civilian would have been arrested for interfering with a police officer.
Police routinely use excessive force, but judges and prosecutors consistently look the other way.
The entire American ethos puts police on a pedestal, and from their position of perceived superiority, police do really bad things. Rape, extortion, and racist brutality. The police literally get away with murder.
Increasingly, police departments across the country have militarized, stockpiling military equipment. And in turn responding with force where diplomacy would be better.
People are dying at the hands of the police, and those deaths are disproportionately people of color.
When police officers use excessive force and kill or injure people, officers know to say they acted the way they did because they were in fear for their lives.
Fear for their lives is the get out of jail card card for law enforcement.
An unarmed black man can be gunned down in the street, the frightened officer claims he was afraid and murdered in self-defense, a not guilty verdict is returned, and the coward of a police officer is returned to the streets to kill again. It’s been going on for more than 150 of years.
The primary role of law enforcement is to protect rich people from poor people and people of color. That’s why so many people support police using violence to protect property – because they mistakenly side with property owners rather than with other poor and working-class people.
Cowardly, sadistic, egotistical police officers destroy everything they come in contact with, including the morality of good police officers who cover up for them.
Good police don’t allow illegality and the brutalization of the public they are charged to protect.
Police officers who fail to report other police who break the law are just as bad.
One bad police officer is one too many. We don’t excuse illegal behavior in doctors, lawyers, truck drivers or restaurant workers, why do we ignore law breaking in those who are expected to keep society safe? This isn’t the country the founding fathers envisioned.
Now is the time for serious reform. The year 2020 has shown us that entire systems in the United States are broken. Health care, law enforcement, education, the role of government in every way in our lives should be reconsidered.
A moral tide is rising in the United States.
Hard working people are tired of being exploited and abused by systems that reward immorality.
The American Dream is a promise to everyone, not just the white men who built and benefit from the system.
A tide is rising.
A county near me has 40 times more police officers than social workers. What would the country look like if the ratio was reversed? What sort of world would we have if our focus was on social programs and improving the lives of everyone, and not hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of rubber bullets, riot shields, armored vehicles, and tear gas?
A tide is rising and a change is in the air.
It’s time for everyone to have access to the promise of America.
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