“If you call police for help, you think the officers are going to protect and serve you. You don’t expect them to hunt and kill you.”
There’s the mistake. IF you are Black, the police are not your friend. If you are white, the police are probably not your friend. That probably carries a lot of weight, but the fact remains that ACAB.
This leaves me with “What the hell was she supposed to do?” Honestly, I have no idea. This kind of story (and there are way too many) just leaves me broken. In a circumstance like this, what are we supposed to do? Call the cops, risk getting murdered. Don’t call the cops, risk getting beaten or murdered. What are we supposed to do?
My only idea is to distance yourself from the situation/attacker. That means finding a place to lock yourself in or get out before the cops show up. It’s not always possible, but seems like a way to keep cops from targeting the caller.
I suspect about 27% of folks would justify this statistic as “proving” that Blacks are more “criminal” than whites, and this is just more evidence of it. Unarmed Black folks are killed far more often by police? “Because they are inherently criminal.” They are so fucking fact averse, it makes me gag every time I see them spewing “facts over feelings.” They have no facts, all they have are feelings, and most of those are some variant of hate. The best we can do is to drive them back under the rocks they crawled out from.
In 2023, Black people were killed at a rate 2.6 times higher than white people, Mapping Police Violence found. Last year, 290 people killed by police were Black, making up 23.5% of victims, while Black Americans make up roughly 14% of the total population. Native Americans were killed at a rate 2.2 times greater than white people, and Latinos were killed at a rate 1.3 times greater.
It is with great sorrow that my fears are confirmed. As I said elsewhere, though, this will just be used as evidence that minorities are “inherently criminal,” since the idea that the police might possibly be prone to making racist choices in enforcement is not speakable.
How the mysterious deaths of 32 black sex workers in Miami in the 1980s led to a whole new (and spurious) mental health diagnosis that in turn led directly to another murder that occurred during the height of lockdown.
And here’s the story the cops were trying to suppress. The rape happened at the police chief’s home and involved his son and friends. What a co-winky-dink. This story needs spread wide.
We’ve seen too many reports of excessive force - including shooting and killing unarmed people - excused because the cops claimed to be afraid. What excuses they gave when assaulting children and people smaller and weaker than the officer(s) involved appear in multiple posts upthread. Maybe departments need to stop recruiting cowards and abusive people who enjoy using their authority to bully others:
Maybe departments need to stop recruiting cowards and abusive people who enjoy using their authority to bully others:
