Law Enforcment

[DanaC]

'Black lives matter as much as white lives do' doesn't fit as easily, or as snappily for a campaign name. But I've always thought the rest of the sentence is implied.

Black people, and young black men in particular, are at a a very particular risk of fatal police violence. White people are at a much lower risk of fatal police violence. At the same time, the culture in which this is happening has tended, in many ways, to treat the deaths of innocent young black men at the hands of police as some sort of unfortunate, but understandable, side effect of modern policing.

The media in the US and I think probably in Britain too, has a serious problem with how it reports on violence against black people. It cuts across many aspects of crime - there is much less of a media storm when a little black girl goes missing compared to the 24 hours of constant updates when a little white girl is abducted. And young black men and women victims of violence are routinely subject to a full-on character assassination in the reporting of that violence. And a lot of that comes from the police services involved. How many times have the initial police reports on these cases made the victim out to be adrug dealer, or a gang member when they had nothing to do with any of that. It is their standard defensive operating procedure, and since we have a cultural tendency to view black males as inherently more violent and threatening that message falls on receptive ears.

At the same time, most of us who experience policing as white people, whilst we may have experiences all manner of police shennanigans, we are unlikely to have experienced quite that level of permanent underlying threat. It is difficult to comprehend - surely, if we just cooperate and don't give the police officer any resistance, we'lll be ok right. Except if you're a young black man offering zero resistance, you still may get the shit kicked out of you. And if you are offering a calm explanation, you may still be treated as if you are resisting. Even if you comply, with everything, you still might find yourself on the ground with four or five officers bundled onto you being punched and tasered.

Seriously, getting angry at the Black Lives Matter people for excluding you as a white person from their message is a bit fucked up imo. The whole thing is a conversation that needs to be had. The slogan and campaign name is just that, a slogan, an easily identifiable and memorably snappy way to get across the message that it is not ok that so many young black lives are ended in this way. That it is not ok for the police to racially profile to a lethal extent. It is not ok that the law offers little or not protection for victims of lethal police violence, most of whom are black, and it is not ok that large chunks of society are in denial of the racially directed violence being perpetrated by those who police it.

And the #notallpolice argument just doesn't fly either. Any more than #notallmen is any kind of response to the problems of domestic abuse in society. Of course not all police. It's a profession and there are good and bad, competant and incompetant, dedicated and jaded in every profession. The difference between the #notallpolice defence and the #notallmen defence, however, is that all police are accountable, to a degree, for the way their profession conducts itself. Yes, they are brave men and women who risk their lives everytime they pull over a car at a traffic stop. And some of them are compassionate defenders of the publlic peace. But some of them are bullies with a badge and a gun, and some are fearful, inadequately trained incompetents with a chip on their shoulder and a headful of prejudice, reacting with lethal force to perceived rather than actual threats.

But the brave men and women who risk their lives on the traffic stops also protect and provide automatic cover for the bullies with guns. The entire organisation operates with a siege mentality and the uniform confers brotherhood to the extent of cover-up.