The Only Thing that Matters, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

July 7, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 0 Comments

Being a cop is a tough job.  It requires physical and mental strength.  It requires an even temperament, nerves of steel, compassion, fairness and humility.

It’s not a job I could do.  I’m grateful to the men and women who do it well.

But I’m also ashamed of those who do it poorly.  Police kill unarmed people, disproportionally people of color.  And they get away with it.

Two unarmed black men were murdered this week.  One was shot while he was pinned to the ground.  The other was shot in front of his child.

It has to stop.  I can’t bear another murder subsidized by my tax dollars, perpetrated in my name.

These killings define systemic racism.  While any individual police officer might or might not be racist, the ones involved in these actions share the assumption that any and every black person is a deadly threat.  Dylan Root shot up a church full of people, and the cops managed to bring him in alive.  Alton Sterling was selling CDs in a parking lot and had to be put down.

It would not please me if an unarmed Dylan Root was shot by police officers.  It should please no one that any of the 558 unarmed suspects were shot by police officers so far this year.

I have heard police defenders insist that the suspects are not pure innocents, and that the police have the right to defend themselves.  We all have the right to defend ourselves, as long as that defense is proportional to the threat.

I’ve heard others insist that the police are only reacting to suspects in the same way that suspects act towards them.  There is so much gang-related violence against black people that it’s not fair to judge law enforcement differently.

My problem with both of these positions is that the demean the very idea of police.  Cops are supposed to defend the public and the law, not sink to the level of criminals.  If we don’t hold them to higher standards than those they arrest, how can we tell them apart?

We do want to tell them apart, don’t we?

I saw Gangs of New York.  I know that, historically, the police were just another gang.  I thought we had progressed beyond that.  Apparently, we have not.  To quote from the link:  “But consider: In 2010, this collaboration between the Ferguson police and the courts generated $1.4 million in income for the city. This year, they will more than double that amount—$3.1 million—providing nearly a quarter of the city’s $13 million budget, almost all of it extracted from its poorest African American citizens.”

In small towns, we expect our police to be shake-down artists.  Instead of collecting taxes raised through legislature, the cops are charged with threatening the poor.

And, because of systemic racism, they think all people of color are poor.

I’ve been poor, or at least, I’ve lived from paycheck to paycheck.  During that time, I was stopped by the cops for a traffic violation.  I was frightened, but mostly because I never got a speeding ticket before.

I didn’t fear for my life.  That was a privilege.

It’s a privilege we should all enjoy.  It’s a privilege we should insist that every human share.

This is the part of the column where I would like to issue a rousing call to action.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any new ideas.  This group looks promising.  If you know about other things to do that would help, please make suggestions in the comments.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases was going to write about anti-Semitism this week, but even though she thinks it is a related topic, was afraid it would sound like a false equivalency.