I can believe that this was an accident while also believing that this is a perfect example (along with the video of the stop of the Lt in Windsor, VA) of the kind of racism we’ve been talking about — these cops come in so amped up when it’s a Black man, and because cops are armed and because this is a country awash in firearms it’s not unreasonable to assume someone is packing, that bad things are going to happen. This is where a dumb, politically idiotic slogan like “defund the police” covers up what is a good idea — rethink policing. Reallocate resources. Demilitarize the police.
It’s so awful and tragic in the context of everything else that I don’t quite have the words. I’m just so, so sad.
Between this and weekly mass shootings, can we not see that firearms are the primary driver behind all of this ongoing tragedy?
Indeed.
The Chauvin/Floyd case is not complicated. It's murder.
These other cases lately are a lot more complicated than people make them out to be and each one needs to be judged on its own merit, which I get is hard to do, especially now.
In the Chicago case the boy had a gun in his hand and turned around raising his hands when the shot was fired. Showing only the freeze frame of a split second is incredibly disingenuous and feeds into the narrative being pushed by the right. It again comes down to the gun - how does a 13 year old have access to a fire arm? There are too many fucking guns and until we have the balls to actually do something about it.
In the Brooklyn Center case, your point is spot on. I do believe it was a good tragic accident and that the officer meant to use her taser. I can also understand how an officer would think someone in custody breaking free and diving into the car might be going for a gun - again, there are too many fucking guns in this country. But I also have zero doubt that if the driver was a white kid in the suburbs that this would have gone down much differently, and the kid likely wouldn't have even been pulled over.
The murder rate in DC is the highest since 2004. Car jackings are up 50%. There was a high profile case of an Uber Eats driver being car jacked by two teens that involved the driver dying. The teen girls were repeat offenders who were let go because they were juveniles.
There was an accident a few blocks from me the other day involving a car running a stop sign who t-boned a dad coming home late at night after picking up easter gifts for his kids. The dad died, the car was stolen.
It's a complicated issue that can't be summed up with "defund the police" or the absolutely idiotic "ACAB."
We need police reform. Desperately. We need our police to be demilitarized. But we also need guns off the street. We need to improve access to education and need to keep the child credits in the recovery act so that we can lift more children out of poverty. We need to increase the living wage and tax on corporations and the wealthy without going so far as to drive them to other countries - and we need to continue to work towards socialized medicine so that the poor and the middle class don't go bankrupt from getting sick.
None of this is simple and none of it will happen overnight, and trying to demand it at all costs into fruition will not work. But it needs to happen.
There should be a guilty verdict. The Blue Wall or whatever should crumble for these motherfuckers.
