“Legitimacy is what is ultimately at stake here.”
Large numbers of Americans already believe the police are not their protectors but a mortal threat to themselves, their families and children, and their neighbors. That’s a big problem, made even worse by the stain of racism.
The latest incident undermining public confidence in police occurred in Chicago last weekend. When a concerned father called 911 because his mentally ill teenage son was wielding a bat, the cops shot his son and a neighbor woman who opened the door for them.
In the aftermath, shocked family members made clear they don’t trust the system that’s supposed to hold the cops accountable. “We all know how it will turn out,” the slain woman’s brother said.
America’s cops seemingly have a license to kill, and they appear to be killing citizens left and right, with little or no restraint. Killer cops almost never to prison, and usually don’t even lose their jobs; their employers often pay large settlements to families of their victims, but taxpayers ultimately get stuck with those bills.
Meanwhile, police unions snub their noses at civilian authority and defiantly assert that cops are above criticism, not to mention immune from discipline, even when they’re egregiously wrong. And then, of course, there’s America’s long history of gratuitous police violence against labor strikers and antiwar protesters.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, writing in the Atlantic, asks, “When police can not adhere to the standards of the neighborhood, of citizens, or of parents, what are they beyond a bigger gun and a sharper sword? By what right do they enforce their will, save force itself? … A state that allows its agents to kill, to beat, to tase, without any real sanction, has ceased to govern and has commenced to simply rule.”
Read his commentary here.