[Ped]

While I certainly don't condone random violence or looting, quite often protesting is the only means of achieving change, because it's only when people feel scared that they are inclined to actually change things. Look no further for examples of all these people who think COVID is a hoax and not dangerous until they get it, and then they're in the news talking about how stupid and how blind they were.


Police culture, in most countries, is largely toxic. This is not to suggest that call cops are bad or even most of them. I don't honestly know how many that are. I've met more good ones than bad in my life, although since none of those encounters involved violence in any way, shape, or form, who really knows for sure?


There's that tweet floating around saying if you have 1000 good caps and 10 bad ones and the 1000 don't root out the 10 bad, then you have 1010 bad ones. I don't like that tweet, because while technically it's true, I think it's an incomplete summary, and focuses on the cops rather than the institution of policing, which is where I think the real culprit is.


Not to say officers such as this murderer are not to blame for their actions; they are. But I don't think you're going to root it out but firing and jailing them, because I think the culture not only attracts more, but breeds them.


We've seen it in Minneapolis with the official statement that was pretty much completely made up and not supported by video evidence. That happens in Canada quite often too. Cops protect each other, because they're trained to. They're taut that they're a brotherhood and they need to have each other's backs at all time. They're trained to deny, deny, deny until you have no other choice.


There are far too many examples to count of police making up stories or creating evidence. A guy I used to work with was just awarded 65000 dollars because he was falsely arrested and charged for a crime he didn't commit, a charge that made him lose his job and have to fight for over ten years, and the judge ruled that the case was a joke from the get-go. And his wife was a detective with the same department.


Every time a person is killed, usually a person of colour in the States at least, there are social media posts and news stories, and they don't change a thing. They just don't. Things fade from public (read: white) consciousness, until the next one. School shooting are exactly the same thing. People get upset, and people post about it, and nothing changes.


It's a terrible thing to contemplate, but protest is quite often the only thing that works, that gets through, and those protests get violent. When the President of the United States is a proven racist in how he describes the actions of protesters, when an entire group of people have to fear for their life when they are out jogging or driving or walking, when indigenous people are belittled because they are indigenous, change has to happen, and usually that won't happen without more violence. That's sad, but it s the way it is.


The Arab spring happened with protests, often violent ones. The examples of others are numerous.


Police forces, ,and society in general, is resistant to change. Even when that change is forced upon them by the courts, they resist. Peel Region was told ot stop carding and they kept doing. Minneapolis was told to enact reforms and didn't follow through. Why? Because there are no real consequences when they don't.


And not only does police culture need to change, the inherent racism in how they treat people needs to change. This isn't anything new, and despite the outrage, and it keeps happening. Examples all over this thread, such as Rodney King, the CRASH scandal, etc etc etc. Remember Hurricane Katrina, and a news site showed two pictures; one was black people taking from a store, and one was white people. The black person headline said they were "looting" and the white person headline said they were "foraging."



Until those consequences become real, things don't change. Until the people in power have something to lose, things don't change. That is the world we're living in, and that's the issue the US is facing right now. Continue to protest until you get that change, or let it die out until tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month. Or whenever something happens.