Blue Lives

Interesting how people fall over themselves to say they support our police forces after a shooting like this, it feels like we were desperately looking for something we can use to convince ourselves that those we trust with our safety are worthy of that trust despite mounting evidence to the contrary, at least if you aren't white.

But, like, shouldn't there be a point where we need to ask ourselves if the institution is even worth it? How long until those theoretically moral people in our law enforcement agencies don't have an excuse for ignoring the abuses routinely perpetrated in virtually every city?

It's like someone joining an organization like the KKK and denying the whole racism thing while focusing on the community organizing the group does. At some point those on the outside are just going to assume you support all their views as well.

I don't think the police departments in America are composed 100% of racist murderers, but I do think they close ranks to protect those racist murderers enough that the entire system is now suspect in my eyes as well as the eyes of virtually every minority in the country I imagine.

Philando Castile had been pulled over more than fifty times during his driving career, and of those times, one of them resulted in his death, now a less than two percent chance sounds pretty low, but how many of us would willingly interact with the police if there was a one in fifty chance of them shooting us out of hand? Those are things that black Americans have to live with and think about every day.

Combine that with the virtual certainty that if an officer does abuse or murder them, he is likely to get off with no consequence, and the media will tear their lives apart looking for reasons to convince us that they totally deserved it, and you get a system that not only doesn't serve, but actively works against the interests of a large percentage of the population.

It's a system that is broken, possibly beyond repair, I believe that policing as it is practiced in America does more harm than it prevents, those we trust to stand between us and harm have shown repeatedly and consistently that their organizations are not actually interested in protecting and serving regardless of what individuals within those organizations want, they have a self sustaining system that closes ranks instantly to protect their own no matter what the charges and it is a system that views minority populations as enemies, not citizens.

Those five cops died on Thursday night because the system they work for failed, it failed Castile and Sterling and it failed the officers themselves because it is not a system interested in justice, it largely isn't interested in anything more than protecting and sustaining itself.