Is anyone else terrified at the thought that American citizens are being murdered by police and our collective expectation is that nothing will happen? Think about the implications of that. We have institutions that are murdering our citizens, investigating themselves, and saying that everything is A-OK. If this doesn't frighten you, why not?
It is terrifying. It's terrifying but predictable that some people are only just realizing it happens
Especially since its been happening for quite a few generations now. There was this illusion that it stopped. It never did. With each wave of new media there is an outcry as the reality sinks in to a new set of people. But it was always there. Always. And some communities never got to forget.
It wasn't that long ago that happy, smiling white people took pictures with lynched black men. What is surprising is that these things are coming back into the open, and our reaction so far has been very quiet. The horrible question is, how far does this have to go? Will we have Full Metal Jacket style mass executions before the injustice is too much for happy, smiling white people? Economic and criminal reform should be the only thing that matters to anyone until the United States re-enters the civilized world.
I'm not any more frightened than I was before now. This isn't some new pattern that's just now started. In fact, the way things are now is an improvement over the way things used to be. There are three major differences between how things are now and how they have always been regarding police killing citizens: 1) probably the most alarming is that police have been receiving large amounts of military hardware as part of an ongoing government program. Comparisons have been made to the police behaving like "an occupying force", and they are increasingly able to be an occupying force with all the hardware they're getting. They are also able to escalate a situation far above what they formerly were able to because of the increase in hardware - despite the otherwise improving situation. 2) White people are now beginning to also find themselves in the crosshairs 3) Everyone has a video camera in their pocket. So now there is incontrovertible evidence proving what black people have been saying for decades; namely that the police have been beating, killing, and wrongfully arresting people with impunity. Couple those things with a 24 hour news environment and it could seem like everything's worse now and it's time to be terrified. But I think that the facts point more to the notion that if you weren't terrified ten years ago, then you don't really have reason to be terrified now. It is an objectively bad situation. But as far as it being the End of The Republic, or The End of The American Way of Life, I don't think it's quite up there. So no, it doesn't frighten me.
I would like for the media to really dig into what cops did what, when. Who filled out her intake form, and when? Are we sure? Who was in the jail the morning she died? Is the coroner buddies with someone who was at the jail that morning? Who all has access to the dashcam and jail videos? If these are all different people who don't know each other well, maybe there's nothing to this aside from a crazy unjust arrest and a sad suicide. But if everyone in the police force decided they hated Sandra Bland, and the sheriff in charge has a worrying history, I worry that we're seeing an IRL example of the Stanford prison experiment.
I think at this point, what looks like murder should be assumed to be so. There is no pretense of rule of law, anymore. When the people that are committing the crimes are also the ones investigating them, there's no "waiting for all the facts to come out." The facts aren't going to come out. We'll never get the facts that matter, we'll get the facts that the criminals committing the crimes want us to get. When the institutions that enforce order are committing the crimes all the "rule of law" stuff goes out the window. There won't be a fair trial, there won't be an indictment. The only judgments we can make are now going to be based on incomplete information that is provided by those that are committing the crimes. It's all fucked. Properly fucked.
