It’s amazing what can happen in a week. It’s amazing what a week can reveal about what quietly happened over the course of decades. America has somehow attracted and cultivated a police force with an attitude other than one “to serve and protect”.
Minnesota and Minneapolis are run by Democrats. So are New York and New York. Neighborhoods with violent rioting over the abominable murder of George Floyd see violent responses from more abominable police. What we see from police against all demographics of protesters makes Hong Kong look gentle. It’s atrocious how provocative police are seen in footage coming from the protests.
As Will Smith said, “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed.” So is police disregard for the public.
America has a systemic racism problem compounded with a supremacist police problem. These days, people don’t consciously disdain others for skin color—not much. Instead, we accept certain events as part of the narrative. If a White pastor mugs someone, that’s headline news. If a Black man gets killed by a cop, oh well tragedies happen all the time. Thanks to what little freedom is left in social media, we got to see just how unabashed murderous cops have become. When they killed George Floyd, it seemed routine.
With politicians the saying goes, “Not all are bad; it’s just the 99% that give a bad rap for the rest of them.”
Yeah, the bad apples give the bushel a bad name. Many police out there really do want to make a positive change, to repair what we have come to accept and expect. But, there are a lot more bad apples than the public narrative gave credit to. It seems that good apples gave too good a rap to a half-rotten bushel. At least now we know.