While binge researching, because that's what I do when I'm interested in a subject, I find this: "A final aspect of the definition of slavery and the status of slaves as people or property concerned slave resistance, rebellions, and punishment. An act of 1669 provided that a master would not be prosecuted if a slave died from punishment.The statute articulated an economic rationale: ‘it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice . . . should induce any man to destroy his own estate’.This rationale was of course faulty, since we know that some slave masters killed slaves for pleasure, out of anger, or when drunk. More importantly, the act ignored the possibility that a master’s callous and reckless disregard for the life of a slave could be punished by a charge other than premeditated murder. This statute treated the slave as property—a commodity—and not a person. British common law protected the life of all persons, but under this law the life of a slave was not protected from the whims or anger of the master.A law of 1680 further limited common law protections for the person of a slave. ‘An act for preventing Negro Insurrections’ made it legal to kill any slaves who escaped from their masters and ‘lye hid and lurking in obscure places’. A decadelater the legislature authorized local justices of the peace to order sheriffs to ‘kill and destroy . . . by gunn or any otherwise whatsoever’ any ‘negroes, mulattoes, and otherslaves unlawfully absent[ing] themselves from their masters and mistresses service’ who ‘lie hid and lurk in obscure places’. These laws effectively reduced slaves tothe legal status of wild beasts, to be ‘destroy[ed]’ by public authorities without any trial or hearing. Slaves were property, except when they might ‘lie hid and lurk’ and then they were reduced to the legal status of wild creatures. With these two statutes Virginia had adopted one of the central aspects of the Roman law of slavery—that it was not a criminal act to kill a slave."
So this exert is taken from a paper called "Slavery in the United States: Persons or Property" - Paul Finkelman (which I think it part of a larger proof). But am I wrong in thinking that this is what the police are using as policy? There is essentially no punishment for any white police officer who kills a person of color. In fact in 1680 (here is the actually law if you are interested:http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_An_act_for_preventing_Negroes_Insurrections_1680) it was expected of any officer of the law to kill a person of color if they thought they were looking to resist or rebel. Black, mulattoes or any other persons who were seen as 'people of color' were treated like animals and slaughtered for a laugh, a punishment, or just because they could. We need to stop this thought process. Hold people accountable. Make it so that black lives matter to the courts, to the police, to the people who made laws like this to begin with.
If you want to read the paper (which talks a lot about the laws surrounding slaves and them as property) see here: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5386&context=faculty_scholarship
You may want to take a breather though as its in depth and you may get insulted reading it about how black people were treated through laws and how they did and did not change, since I cannot find any document which repeals this law. It maybe because black people are no longer slaves but the law says 'negro or any other slave' not 'slave' so I'm under the impression that since this law is still in effect this is why there has been no movement to give the police harsher punishment, for the murder of black people, than a slap on the wrist.