If I misunderstood the below statement then I apologize, sincerely.
Okay, you did misunderstand, which is not your fault, I didn't really get to the point immediately there. I was talking about your police situation as a whole, not generalizing all police officers as excessively violent. And I explained the situation as a whole, which includes the good cops and DAs looking the other way, includes police unions working to actively protect and defend violent cops. And that police situation as a whole is fucked up and needs to change, it does not mean that every police person is a violent criminal.
I am very mixed on where I stand on this issue now. I fully support peaceful protests and I agree the black community has every right to protest. Our criminal justice system and police system are corrupt. However, what I've seen the last few nights is violent riots, memorials being vandalized, car windows (With the drivers in the car) smashed in, a couple in New York brutally beaten for trying to defend their business, and I feel like the narrative is if I don't support the riots than I don't support George Floyd and I support Police brutality. I don't think any side is doing anything to de-esculate this from Trump to the Governors, to just the local level. Everyone is stuck in an ideology and I think it's going to get worse.
What happened to Floyd was terrible and it should never ever happen. I'm surprised the other officers have not been arrested yet. I think the best protest I saw coming out of this was what happened in Flint Michigan where the police put down the batons and joined the protesters for a parade. That's how you build trust. I think you need to do it from the ground up because there is no trust in the police at all.
I don't know what is going to happen, and I'm fearful that we are on the brink of another civil war. I do know that I support the message that is trying to be conveyed, but I do not support the riots and assaulting innocent people, and that includes the despicable actions I've seen from the Police as well. They are only making a tense situation even worse.
At least in this thread, nobody is asking you to support violence on any side. Any violence is to be condemned, and that should go without saying. But it is the silent tolerance of the system towards police violence which is what these protests are all about. The protests are the condemnation of the systems tolerance of the violence of a specific group of people against other groups of people.
Again, the police are supposed to be trained for and practice de-escalation, of which they are capable as we've seen just a few weeks ago when armed anti-lockdown protesters stormed government buildings, among other things.
The protesters are neither trained, nor is it their job to de-escalate. They have a right to protest, and the only thing that the law requires of them is that they themselves do not instigate violence themselves (they do, however, have a right to defend themselves), no protester is responsible for the actions of any other protester, or anybody but themselves.
An officer of the law, however, when he witnesses another police person committing a crime, especially during deployment working with people, has not just the moral responsibility, but the duty by law, to report that criminal police person to their superior, who then have the duty by law to set an official investigation in motion to not only discipline that police person, but start a criminal investigation as well. That's how the law is supposed to work, and that is where the system is broken.
