police shooting

It took public pressure to convict Jason Van Dyke. It will take more pressure to reform the police.

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.”