It took public pressure to convict Jason Van Dyke. It will take more pressure to reform the police.
police shooting
Colonial Americans suffered under a two-tiered justice system. Later they created one.
Since before the revolution, punishment has depended on who’s being punished.
“At any given moment, I may need to be a psychologist, centurion, street lawyer, or soothsayer.”
No charges were filed against the police officer who killed Tamir Rice. But others are being held responsible: taxpayers.
Scandal and New Girl are not ordinarily “about” race. But as national conversations on police violence intensify, they’ve stepped into the discussion.
We are confronting a reality that for some of us was just an abstraction: black and white communities perceive the police differently and are treated differently by them.
Some people see violence as an absolute wrong. Others see it as a sometimes necessary evil, with considerable variation as to just how often these times come up. I’m at the dovish end of the latter group: I believe that there are times—not many, not remotely as many as American foreign policy consensus or law enforcement norms would have it, but some times—when a violent action might be the least-bad available option. But a necessary evil isn’t a virtue; “least bad” doesn’t mean “good.”