JUSTICE

Media Silence as Police Brutality Continues Unabated is Alarming

The stories of police brutality and death at the hands of police continue while the public looks away

Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash

After a record year of police killing people in our communities, the problem of police misconduct and brutality has continued to grow since the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It seems that every time progress is made on any given issue, those that oppose civil rights legislation lead attacks to sabotage those successes. Efforts to undermine many measures — including the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act — continue today.

Just as our right to vote is being impeded, our voices silenced, and our history robbed of us, so are our civil liberties out in the world. Attacks on peaceful protesters, except for far-right actors whom cops seem to allow free reign to spread their hate (and politicians leading attacks on anything non-white), are the more glaring examples. The continued militarization of the policing apparatus to silence dissent has only exacerbated the state of affairs in civil society.

Warrior training for police and an “us vs. them” mentality — taught to them from the first day of training — then handing them weapons of death isn’t working. Police don’t need more training as their willingness to use restraint with a White suspect is seen in case after case. However, the implicit bias that leads to the disproportionate deaths of Black, Latino, and Indigenous people is pounded into them by racist trainers who were trained by racist trainers who train cops.

It’s easy to see the systemic issues in policing and where they originate. It goes beyond being raised by racist parents, although that does play a role. The true impact happens when trainers validate those ideas and allow them to spread among rank-and-file officers. The worst problems in policing stem from the culture so broadly accepted and perpetuated by trainers, police unions, and those that financially…