No, it’s awful to use a vehicle to injure and potentially kill people because you are an out of control cop in a riot caused by out of control cops— Beth White (@BracoBeth) May 31, 2020
Do we blame the people for being out of control? Or the police for being out of control?
My money is on the latter. Sure, blame is a useless exercise and tit for tat for tit for tat is an endless regression with no clear starting point; but the whole point of "law and order" is "order," and you quite honestly don't get that at the end of a billy club, from a can of tear gas, or via the bumper of a car.
"I and the school children know/What everyone must learn/Those to whom violence is done/Do violence in return." Everybody's (mis)quoting Yeats these days; I prefer Auden for the occasion.
Yes, people running wild in the streets are responsible for their actions, just as the police are responsible for throwing gasoline on those actions, rather than water. This fire is being put out with kerosene, from the White House down to the street level. I don't care how many people are on the streets in how many cities: the police have an obligation, a duty, a mission, to maintain order on those streets.
Not to meet crowds with greater escalations of violence as a way of beating the people into submission. This isn't nearly so much on the people, as it is on the state, on the police, on the officials who are supposed to protect us, but seem to think that "protection" means bashing us in the head to satisfy their inability to cope; just like the President's.
I'm tired of reading tweets berating the people for the violence. I blame the police. They are the ones who need to be held to account first. In New York City police were taping over their badge numbers:
hiding badge numbers so there's no way of identifying officers later in court https://t.co/g2Np5lcYal— lvl 45 covid potus (@thetomzone) May 31, 2020
Gee, I wonder why?
Ali Velshi in Minneapolis: "This was a 100% peaceful march and the police opened fire into it. There was no reason to do so, there was zero provocation." pic.twitter.com/iiL2EgDxtw— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 31, 2020
This video is insane. Minneapolis 👇 https://t.co/PM2Pis0lZY— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 31, 2020
Share widely: National guard and MPD sweeping our residential street. Shooting paint canisters at us on our own front porch. Yelling “light em up” #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd #JusticeForGeorge #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/bW48imyt55— Tanya Kerssen (@tkerssen) May 31, 2020
WATCH: @AliVelshi reports from Minneapolis as police fire tear gas toward protesters: “There has been no provocation ... The police pulled into this intersection unprovoked.” pic.twitter.com/OEUXdPg73O— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 31, 2020
Uncovered: Last October, the head of the Minneapolis police union — which days ago warned against a “rush to judgment” of the officers involved in George Floyd’s death — spoke at a Trump rally and praised him for ending the “handcuffing and oppression” of police under Obama. pic.twitter.com/oW1olwWZh5— The Recount (@therecount) May 30, 2020
Watching this country burn from coast to coast, it’s obvious people are angry. Yes, George Floyd touched this off. But let’s not forget: 103k+ are dead, most of them black and brown. 40 million people are unemployed. This is a nation in crisis.— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) May 31, 2020
Is America great again yet?
QED.
Police unions in a lot of places are essentially fascist organizations, they need to be abolished and remade to not protect criminal cops.
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