Police Are Hurting People Because They Want to

To suggest otherwise is to blindly ignore reality. Police stand guard outside the White House May 31, 2020, as people gather to protest the death of George Floyd.

In at least 30 cities this weekend, protests spread over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. In an ironic — and entirely predictable — twist, police officers in city after city responded to the demonstrations against their brutality with yet more violence.

Cop cars in Brooklyn mowed down crowds of protestors. The National Guard in Minneapolis shot paint canisters at residents standing on their own porches. A Pennsylvania officer was filmed kicking a teenager who was already sitting on the ground, her hands covering her face. An officer in Utah knocked over an elderly man walking with a cane. And across the country, officers shot journalists with rubber bullets (once on live TV), arrested reporters, and pepper sprayed members of the press, even as they clearly identified themselves as working journalists.

With each new video shared on social media, it became increasingly clear that police officers were the ones escalating the violence. Their attacks on civilians were not made in self-defense or because they were needed to maintain order — police hurt people because they wanted to.

In response, conservatives bemoaned property destruction and theft — the president even tweeted that “looters” should be shot — as if broken windows or stolen clothing could compare to the thousands of lives lost to police violence. This focus is not accidental: By painting mostly peaceful protestors as criminals, those on the right hope it will provide cover for — and distract from — the unchecked thuggery of police officers across America.

But there is no “both sides” argument to be made here. Police officers, armed and armored, act with the power of the state behind them. Protestors have no such power. Cops are tasked with protecting the community and deescalating tensions. Protesters have no such responsibility. To act as if this is a fight between equals is ridiculous.

Equally ludicrous is the idea that police officers need to be aggressive in their own defense. In response to the video of a police vehicle running over protestors, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “If those protesters had just gotten out of the way and not created an attempt to surround that vehicle, we would not be talking about this.”

But restraint is part of a police officer’s job — and it’s something they’re absolutely capable of. It was just a few weeks ago, after all, that heavily armed white men stormed into the Michigan Capitol building to express their anger over the coronavirus stay-at-home order. None of those armed and angry protestors were beaten, tear gassed, or shot with rubber bullets. Nor was there any retaliative violence in Sacramento when white people screamed and rushed police officers as part of their protest against the lockdown.

Police violence is a choice. In fact, videos this weekend showed that some officers, including one who maced a little girl, covered their badge numbers with black tape to avoid identification — a decision that suggests they knew they’d be engaging in illegal and violent behavior.

Some have called for the police to be defunded, or demanded that the country move toward restorative justice instead of the punitive model that harms so many black Americans. Whatever comes next, there must be a reckoning with the way violence and racism are embedded in the very foundation of American policing.

That reckoning will never happen under Trump. On Sunday afternoon, the president tweeted that mayors and governors need to “get tough” on protestors. The only people that state leaders need to get tough on right now are police officers — if it wasn’t for them, people wouldn’t be on the streets to begin with.

By the time this column publishes, there will be who knows how many more examples of police violence. Not because it was necessary, or accidental, or defensive — but because it was desired.

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