My children never want to talk about politics. They don't like being in the same room with it, let alone the same car. Especially not in the car, where they can only wriggle around under the protective hold of a seatbelt wishing for a room of their own to which they might retreat.
They'd rather turn up the radio if they can't climb into the trunk.
They are privileged. They wrongly believe they are colorblind.
But the murder of George Floyd and the civil protests his killing sparked nationwide have opened their eyes to police brutality and racist injustice as a coupled pair.
They can't just unsee it.
As the cameras roll and spill into their media feeds, they witness a police response they wouldn't expect from a person in uniform; a person who might even resemble their friendly, neighborhood DARE officer.
And though they are used to hearing and saying all the surgically specific rejoinders to the sounding of general alarms, they can't muster a "not all ..." that usually begins every defensive statement.
In this case, they are wondering why are there so many?
Who can believe that All Lives Matter if we can't even say the words Black Lives Matter?
As videos roll, they see more and more police outfitted in riot gear release clouds of tear gas and rounds of projectiles into noisy but otherwise peaceful crowds. They see the unprovoked use of force as patience grows thin.
A man in uniform punches a woman sending her sprawling to the ground. An officer spits on a protestor sitting directly in front of him. A journalist is tackled by police and battered with a shield. Police ransack a medical area, slashing water bottles and scattering supplies. We watch the footage of police unloading bricks under the cover of darkness. We see them lobbing flashbangs, or using tear gas against citizens who had gathered peacefully.
We stop thinking about broken windows.
It doesn't look like a bad cop movie; it just looks like bad cops.
It's not all, certainly, but it sure seems like there is a united front, with few who are willing to stand against the abusers in their ranks, even with the application of public pressure.
Police brutality is not new. Abuse of power doesn't even seem particularly rare. My kids have heard me talk about my own experiences as a suburban youth, which involved a dubious traffic stop, unnecessary verbal abuse, and racial profiling in which I intervened.
I grew out of the unwanted attention -- youth being another way to profile criminal potential.
Maybe they didn't believe that kind of stuff happens in modern-day times.
Maybe it's because the extent of policing they see in their community is sparse and mainly in the schoolroom, so they don't have the same fear.
We have the privilege to look away.
It's the video in our pockets that has begun to show how misguided it is to look away or to justify any lack
of transparency. Not when that one bad cop faces no criminal penalty -- no transparent sanction in line with the gravity of abuse of power.
What they see now is how good cops ignore the bad ones and how difficult it is to hold such fierce and furious power in check. They are also seeing how much harm comes from just looking the other way.
It's not just a handful of bad cops. It's the system that doesn't root them out that should concern us the most.
We have to stop looking the other way.
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