There is a deep rot in police culture in this country. A deep rot. You don’t drive a car into a crowd of people unless you see them as less than fully human. You don’t kneel on someone’s neck until death unless you see him as less than human.
And you don’t do these things unless you believe you can get away with it. We’ve seen so many examples of routine police brutality against so many communities of color. That doesn’t happen by accident. It is a pattern of behavior that has been tolerated, encouraged, perpetuated.
And we have seen repeatedly that law enforcement all over the country will overlook or cover up such police brutality against communities of color until/unless that brutality is caught on tape. It may be bad apples committing the acts but the silence is far more universal.
We cannot pretend that these examples are outliers. They are symptoms of more systematic subversion of the values, laws, and rights of our country. Police abuse and police impunity must end. #BlackLivesMatter
