Police murdering civilians is not just a 'black people' problem
I've signed the petitions to bring federal charges against Darren Wilson, the murderer of Michael Brown, now where's the coverage on the circumstances of Eric Garner's death and the petition to charge his killer? Where are the petitions to hold accountable the killers of Tamir Rice, Christopher Roupe, and Akai Gurley?
Where are the petitions and public outcry to have federal recognition at the highest levels that too many cops are killing too many citizens?
Even the intentionally-misinformed ignorant public who only ever hear 'cop shoots black robber as robber attacks him' will have a harder time finding it acceptable for a police officer to choke a man to death on camera for selling loose cigarettes, or shoot a child with a bb gun or a teen with a game controller, or for simply shooting at a noise in a dark stairwell.
Michael Brown deserves justice just as much as every other victim of our out-of-control law enforcement, but addressing the problem of the police will not get the public backing it needs when the focus always seems to be on the victims that can be portrayed by the police and media as drug-and-crime types. Brown's petty shoplifting, pushing a man back a step, and jaywalking, did not make him a hardened, violent criminal, and they did not justify an execution in the street. But they did contradict the narrative of him being a harmless 'gentle giant' angelic innocent.
Eric Garner's murder was videotaped, an officer >choking a man to death on camera< is infinitely harder to spin into "he had no choice," as is shooting children or a supposedly trained man firing wildly into the dark because he is afraid, so those stories are not getting the same coverage in the media - OR by all the supposed-warriors-for-justice on tumblr/twitter/whatever else.
The 12 year old boy gunned down for having a bb gun, the man shot in the chest and killed simply for entering a stairwell and startling the cop who had his gun drawn and immediately fired at the noise, the teen who was killed when he answered the door with a game controller in his hand that the officer thought was a gun and just fired on him - and COUNTLESS other instances of civilians being murdered by police - why do these stories never get coverage like the ones that do?
Because the ones that do get coverage are the ones where both sides do the "he was an angel/he was a demon/criminal/thug" thing for the victim and "he was defending himself/he was a racist itching to kill a black" thing with the killer, both of which are usually outside of what immediate evidence indicates, and easily dismissed by anyone siding with the other narrative. Brown was not a harmless gentle giant, but nor was he a demonic supercriminal. A person does not have to be a pure angel to deserve better than an execution in the street and a cop who kills a civilian needlessly does not need to be a card-carrying Klanmember to deserve to face consequences and justice for his crime. So people need to stop acting like that's the case, and focus on the real issue here: Law Enforcement is broken in a way that affects us all - EVERY unarmed civilian who is killed by an officer of the law is an incident that deserves equal scrutiny and public awareness. If our police are not being trained sufficiently to feel confident in their ability to overcome an unarmed assailant, then they are not suited to be placed in a situation where they may feel their only choice between life and death is to murder an unarmed civilian.
The issues in Ferguson are deeply entrenched in race, but they are not JUST race. Local police having their funding determined by simple numbers of arrests - without scrutiny on how many of those arrests are justified - incentivises police to target the most vulnerable for easy busts rather than the most prominent actual problems of crime. Police being awarded fancy "badass" equipment and vehicles feeds into ego and glorifies the notion of being some supersoldier force with the power and authority of Justice supporting them no matter what they do - military equipment given to non-military people to point at civilian populations is a serious wrong. Drawing attention to excessive force by police only when race is also a factor only serves to further the distraction tactic that wrongfully paints this as only a problem of race - it allows the less-educated and misinformed populace to think "after all, if the problem wasn't just black people giving the police trouble, if it was actually just the police themselves, then we'd be hearing about police having these problems with white people, too." Too much gets dismissed as 'see, that person's racist' when the truth is more often that person just doesn't know what they are talking about - because nobody is informing them outside of those calling them racist and lecturing about history more than talking about the honest specifics of present-day wrongs - and how can anyone expect them to listen to that person?
The Power of all of us coming together CAN and DOES make great change happen. PLEASE recognize that only shining the spotlight primarily on the cases most easily reduced to simply black vs white/cop vs criminal racial animosity just plays into the same tactic the media uses to divert our attentions from the real issues behind these problems - and keep us a nation divided. Racism in America is an enormous obstacle we will never overcome if white and black are forever kept against each other. All the problems of racism tend to have other factors contributing to the persistence of racism - and those factors can be addressed much more directly by identifying them and bringing people of all races together to speak out against them.
When police brutality and murder of the innocents is treated like only a racial issue, then it's one side saying "this problem doesn't affect you," and the other side saying "this problem doesn't affect me." While this problem DOES affect one race exponentially more than any other, it IS still a problem that affects us all, and ALL people need to be made aware of that in order to get ALL people equally involved and invested in getting the problem solved.
Gays are on the cusp of winning marriage equality. It wasn't achieved by driving a wedge between gays and straights, presenting is as just a 'gay people' issue, telling straights "this is our problem," it was achieved by people on both sides of that line coming together, seeing each other not as 'fill-in-the-blank people,' but simply people.
Most of the problems in our country that affect blacks significantly more than whites have solutions that will not happen so long as they're painted as just 'black people' problems. Nor will the solutions to any of the other problems that affect one group more than another ever happen when those seeking justice and equality act like those are only the goals of their group, and 'everyone else' is an enemy.
