Upon the occasion of the death of George Floyd and other victims of excessive enforcement that came before, once again we find ourselves at the same point, year after year after year. I want to speak to that briefly. I find it hard not to sympathize with the rioters in Minnesota. As senseless as rioting is, it’s the last plea you make when none other has been answered. This is bigger than the specifics of a crime, or an accused and all the rights and wrongs the public wants to pin on either quickly. Most cops are good. Some cops are really bad. Calling for reform on bad cops has yielded us nothing apparently. There’s plenty of racist to go around on all sides. Politicians further muddle it by over-broadening condemnations, so do national activist. Who do you go after to get change? The real incestuous chain that is untouchable, unutterable:
Bad cops are tolerated or even encouraged by bad police departments. We tried to reform them and came up to the thin blue line and that’s where it always stops. You want that line to move away from you? You can have that they say, and the kindly citizen will always relent. And in a few months or a year, you have yet another egregious police led homicide as well as multiple fatalities inflicted back on cops. A well accepted standard of reasonable force by cops apparently does not exist. Bad cops keep demonstrating that even when they know they have cameras on them. They’re routinely given immunity for actions that are excessive, and they know it. Where do those immunities come from? The prosecutorial community. Who upholds the prosecutorial community? The state and federal judicial branches, judges. What agency nurtures and protects its members at all levels? The American Bar Association, from law school through practicing attorneys including prosecutors, and trial lawyers, through seated judges. Everyone of these granular institutions tip their hats to one another daily as they march the unruly masses through the criminal justice system.
It’s easy to march, preach, scold, riot, blame, and demonize someone for the abstraction called racism. It’s even easier to sucker punch broad segments of the unsuspecting public for any implied ‘acceptance’ of ‘racist’ institutions. But it’s hard work and incredibly dangerous to stand up to the fraternity that is the entire criminal justice system to include most notably, the individual building block that makes it up at every level, the lawyer. To do so invites reprisal and ultimately, personal and financial destruction. It is perpetuated even more that a huge percentage of law makers are themselves, lawyers.
Go after the judicial/legal enablers and police departments will conduct themselves appropriately.