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[return to "My family saw a police car hit a kid, then I learned how NYPD impunity works"]
1. pjc50+Ck[view] [source] 2020-06-23 15:42:03
>>danso+(OP)
> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.”

Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police.

(Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the police" or "defund the police", because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street, more so than random criminals)

> “Young teens or pre-teens of color were handcuffed, arrested, or held at gunpoint while participating in age-appropriate activities such as running, playing with friends, high-fiving, sitting on a stoop, or carrying a backpack.”

This is child abuse.

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2. dragon+dt[view] [source] 2020-06-23 16:15:02
>>pjc50+Ck
> Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police

They are both worried about criminals. The fact that some criminals have badges and guns and a conspiracy of accomplices in positions of power shielding them from accountability for their crimes doesn't make them any less criminals.

> Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the police" or "defund the police", because from their point of view the police are the people most likely to assault or kill them or their children on the street, more so than random criminals

That's starting in the general direction of the truth, but not correct. It's not so much that Black community members (much less BLM activists, who are more likely to have detailed statistics at hand) think police are the most likely threat, but that police as currently constituted are a threat that Black communities both pay for and get poor returns from, both because of actual abuse by police and because their actual law enforcement needs (and other needs which society has shoveled into the police portfolio) are simultaneously underserved (and not just when it comes to crimes by cops; BLM, after all, didn't start in response to police violence.)

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3. flarg+PM1[view] [source] 2020-06-23 22:10:39
>>dragon+dt
I take issue with your framing of the police as criminals because it misses the point; the police are not criminals, the law and the legal establishment fully supports their actions. Those actions are institutionally racist as they are intended to be. There are no bad apples here, it's the barrel that is rotten.
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4. thayne+fV1[view] [source] 2020-06-23 23:06:22
>>flarg+PM1
On the contrary. Many of these actions are illegal, sometimes even unconstitutional. There may be other laws that make it difficult, or impossible to actually enforce laws against police brutality, but that doesn't change the fact that police officers are breaking the law.
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