I've been reviewing some of the stories of police abuse coming out of literally everywhere since the start of the George Floyd protests. I thought I had been shocked to the core by police misconduct years and years ago and that nothing would come close to events I'd witnessed in person or virtually in years gone by. Little did I know.
The George Floyd murder-by-cop in Minneapolis triggered mass demonstrations in the streets all over the country and all over the world. It was an egregious -- and very deliberate -- act of police power over the black body of a man pleading for his life while that life was being crushed out of him by one officer whose knee on his neck wouldn't be removed until George Floyd was good and dead. Three other officers either participated in the murder or idled nearby doing nothing to intervene. All captured on video taken by bystanders, some of whom attempted to intervene but were blocked by officers.
I've seen similar scenes before, many times, but nothing quite as appalling in its tortuousness and murderous intent. Second and third degree murder charges have been laid against the officer whose knee eventually killed George Floyd and the other officers have been charged as accessories aiding and abetting, but the calls for first degree intentional murder charges have only increased as the anger against police brutality has led to massive demonstrations that continue to this day.
The police response in many cities has been grotesquely out of control. That lack of discipline and control is the essence of what is being protested, the reason why so many people are marching against police brutality, and over and over and over again, day in and day out, police are showing themselves to be unworthy of public trust or support.
One of numerous incidents in Philadelphia involved police firing chemical weapons and rubber bullets at thousands of protesters, many trapped on an embankment with nowhere to retreat, injuring hundreds, and arresting "dozens." The fourteen minute overhead video captures much of the scene, but doesn't really show the affect on so many.
This was perhaps the worst of what I've seen so far, but it's by no means unique. The police in many cities have adopted a hostile and deliberately cruel attitude toward protesters leading to constant abuse of the public, much of it documented on video, far too much of it defended by police chiefs and elected officials because somebody did something somewhere at some point, and order must be maintained.
We see this justification from the White House practically daily as the blowback from the "clearance" of protesters from DC's Lafayette Square on Monday using tear gas, munitions, mounted officers and brutality intensifies. All so Trump could pose in front of St. John's Church, holding aloft a book he claimed was a bible and then assemble his sycophants for more pictures before shambling back to the White House bunkers.
Damn,
There have been a few contrasting scenes of police trying to show solidarity with the protesters by marching with them, kneeling with them, expressing outrage at the murder of George Floyd, etc. But those are rare compared to the violence and yes, murder by police committed too often in too many places as unrest continues.
Our rulers like to try to shame China for the treatment of demonstrators in Hong Kong, but truly, Chinese police and troops in Hong Kong have been utterly restrained compared to the US. The world looks on in bemused horror.
I don't know how this episode of police outrage will be resolved, if it will. But many see it as the death rattle of a failed regime -- not simply the Trump regime, but the general apparatus of neoliberal rule. Maybe. We'll see.
In the meantime, given everything that's going on -- pandemic disease, economic collapse, wilding by police, looting by the overclass -- the next few months will be somewhat more than "interesting."
Stay well and safe.
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