Every Day I See New Videos of Police Brutality

When I was working on the campaign to pass the anti-police brutality bill in Washington, I ended up following every decent Facebook page that keeps track of and exposes cases of brutality I could find in order to keep track of the problem and ask them to promote the campaign. After we got the measure on the ballot with a ton of support (and by we I really mean the people of color who did most of the work and went unappreciated by the white Democrats here), I couldn't bring myself to unfollow any of them.

As a result, I literally see new videos of police fuckery almost every day, the mast majority of which is perpetrated upon people of color. Sometimes it's multiple times in a day. And I want to stress the words "new" and "videos." I'm not counting repeat cases, and I'm also not counting all the cases of police brutality that go un-filmed. 

I can no longer avoid the reality that this shit happens every goddamn day across the U.S. As a white person, I could be told that it happens every day, but it's hard for that to sink in until you actually see it. I therefore recommend that each and every one of my fellow white people do the same. Follow Police Brutality Corruption in America and Protest Police Brutality and the National Association Against Police Brutality and Stop Police Brutality, and look up any local organizations, too. If you really want to help, you need to force yourself to look at this shit daily, no matter how unpleasant it might be.

The only downside is that because I don't have the space on this blog to post about racist police brutality every day, sometimes I go a long period of time not posting about any of it. I hate having to pick and choose which case I highlight because they're all horrible and wrong. So I thought it might be better to just tell my fellow white people how to get a real sense of how common racist police brutality really is. I wish I could get deniers to do the same but they never would, but at least you can have resources to point to when you encounter them. Like me, you can say you see videos of this shit on a near daily basis, and god knows how many cases go un-filmed and un-reported.

This is not a "few bad apples" issue. This is deeply systemic. I will highlight one case here that think highlights the kind of bullshit black men in particular have to deal with and fear:

‘You don’t know my name, so how can you tell me I have an open warrant?’ — This officer tried to arrest a Black father in front of his own home after incorrectly identifying him as a suspected criminal from another state pic.twitter.com/fOPKtUDv6s

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) May 14, 2019

The white cop refuses to take his hands off of this man, claims to have a warrant but has nothing to show, repeatedly calls the man "Quentin" in an attempt to prove he has a warrant even though this man's name is Clarence Evans. Evans is desperate to keep from being arrested, likely and rightfully afraid that he'll die in custody.

The first time I saw this video, which was on one of those Facebook pages I talked about, I watched in fear that Evans would be shot down and killed by the white cops. Thankfully, he was not. But so many of these videos end in the worst way that it felt like a miracle Evans survived relatively (physically) unharmed. In a moment, either of the white cops on the scene could have whipped out a gun and ended Evans' life and gotten away with it simply by claiming they were afraid he would black man them to death.

This is terrorism. Black men have to fear this any time they're outside, even if they're in their own driveway playing with their children. Hell, they're not even safe inside their homes. Can you imagine living like that?

Cops lately have been complaining about the backlash against them and many are threatening to quit over it. Good. I hope they all quit. I don't give one single fuck if petty crime goes up. I've seen too many black people and others die.