This is such a critical point. This is good policing. The police captured an armed mass murderer without further bloodshed. This is not the problem. The problem is that the police don’t do this more often when it’s a black man, and they end up escalating the tension to the point where someone ends up shot.
If more police performed their jobs this capably when the suspect isn’t white, I suspect we’d all feel a lot safer.
They often just go in guns blazing.
There’s a reason why this doesn’t happen. I’m gonna guess that some people are going to dance around it, because the truth is just too uncomfortable for them.
The most painful lesson of the last six years is how bad the white supremacy problem is in America. I bought into the naïve belief that we were getting better as a country. Clearly, that was false, or maybe we’re a little better than we were in the 1800s but not nearly enough to function as a civilization.
To be fair, it’s only some of us who are learning that lesson in the past few years (meaning most white people). I’m glad at least that some white people are taking it to heart at least, and seeking to make positive change. Unfortunately, far too many are more concerned with some false “reverse racism” or more likely with having to give up their own sense of privilege to make real change. It’s really on us as the people who have been the beneficiaries of such privilege to make that change, but far too many whites just flat out refuse to believe it’s a real problem. It’s depressing.
The only thing that’s changed is how open people have become with their white supremacist beliefs. They used to hide their racism, maybe make a lightly racist comment or joke to test the waters, see if they get any pushback. Now, the fuckers don’t hide shit.
Before we can make peace with all the racist cops out in the world, we must FIRST make peace with the racist cops INSIDE OURSELVES 
‘Fun’ fact: the police forces as we now know them originally started out as slave patrols.
Real talk, and it goes along to an especially rhythmless tune…
When cops stop doing and getting away with shit like this (truly one of the least egregious examples I can find)
Or start holding each other accountable, maybe I will stop “stereotyping” them.
Until then, ACAB.
The American right wing is happy to avail themselves of the right to criticise public sector employees … except when it’s the police who are being criticised for failings like the kind of institutional racism being discussed in the FPP and this topic.
It should be discussed, and it should be cause for anger. MLK said a lot about anger not being the only way to effect change, but contrary to the views of white people who feel comfortable painting him as a cuddly avatar of privilege-based woo like “nonviolent communication” he didn’t deny it had its uses in the struggle for equity and equality.
The anger has to exist before it’s channeled. Pretending there’s no reason to be angry – or characterising the extensively documented phenomenon that’s the source of that anger as a mere “stereotype”-- is gaslighting and doesn’t help in that regard.
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