The White supremacist police force in the US never seems to change. And it acts brutally because it has societal sanction

There’s a sense of déjà vu about the Minneapolis protests that come on the back of the use of excessive force by a White policeman Derek Chauvin, resulting in the death of a peaceful, 46-year-old Black man George Floyd, who was not resisting arrest. Remember the 2014 death of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown by the police in Ferguson, Missouri and the race riots that it sparked off? Nothing seems to have changed since then. White supremacists in the US police force continue to slaughter innocent law-abiding Black people with impunity. Floyd’s death has also prompted action in other US cities like New York City, Denver, Columbus and particularly Louisville in Kentucky, which witnessed the death of an innocent Black woman Breonna Taylor in March. Here the victim was shot in her own apartment by police officers for an investigation that she wasn’t involved in. Relations between police and citizens of colour have been bad for years in the US, yet only one in every 100 citizen complaints leads to disciplinary action. So, the big question is when will America learn its lesson and reform the police force? Or practise diversity from the heart and not as a ritual?

It is not enough that the video of Chauvin kneeling on the neck of a prostrate, handcuffed, dying Floyd, pressing his considerable weight down with a bland, almost bored look on his face has drawn condemnation from police departments across the US. What matters is the indifferent attitude of the officers standing next to the murdering cop with a past record of brutality and use of excess force against Blacks and their failure to stop the cold-blooded killing. What is even more chilling is the fact that his sadistic act was being recorded on a mobile phone by a bystander and it did not worry Chauvin one bit. He just assumed that he could get away with murder! This episode reeks of a systemic cultural rot, one that is being fanned by supremacist President Donald Trump who called the protesters “thugs.” He even suggested that they’d be shot for looting. What is even more worrying is the fact that the Minnesota Department of Public Safety has said that State leaders have intelligence that White supremacist groups and drug cartels are possibly playing a big role in the anarchy. Maybe to turn a genuine outpouring of public anger over injustice into a more sinister “us” vs “them” confrontation. All this as a nation battles COVID-19, the management of which has robbed the sheen off Trump’s presidential campaign. Little wonder then that he is aggressively playing to his own gallery.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)

The White supremacist police force in the US never seems to change. And it acts brutally because it has societal sanction

There’s a sense of déjà vu about the Minneapolis protests that come on the back of the use of excessive force by a White policeman Derek Chauvin, resulting in the death of a peaceful, 46-year-old Black man George Floyd, who was not resisting arrest. Remember the 2014 death of unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown by the police in Ferguson, Missouri and the race riots that it sparked off? Nothing seems to have changed since then. White supremacists in the US police force continue to slaughter innocent law-abiding Black people with impunity. Floyd’s death has also prompted action in other US cities like New York City, Denver, Columbus and particularly Louisville in Kentucky, which witnessed the death of an innocent Black woman Breonna Taylor in March. Here the victim was shot in her own apartment by police officers for an investigation that she wasn’t involved in. Relations between police and citizens of colour have been bad for years in the US, yet only one in every 100 citizen complaints leads to disciplinary action. So, the big question is when will America learn its lesson and reform the police force? Or practise diversity from the heart and not as a ritual?

It is not enough that the video of Chauvin kneeling on the neck of a prostrate, handcuffed, dying Floyd, pressing his considerable weight down with a bland, almost bored look on his face has drawn condemnation from police departments across the US. What matters is the indifferent attitude of the officers standing next to the murdering cop with a past record of brutality and use of excess force against Blacks and their failure to stop the cold-blooded killing. What is even more chilling is the fact that his sadistic act was being recorded on a mobile phone by a bystander and it did not worry Chauvin one bit. He just assumed that he could get away with murder! This episode reeks of a systemic cultural rot, one that is being fanned by supremacist President Donald Trump who called the protesters “thugs.” He even suggested that they’d be shot for looting. What is even more worrying is the fact that the Minnesota Department of Public Safety has said that State leaders have intelligence that White supremacist groups and drug cartels are possibly playing a big role in the anarchy. Maybe to turn a genuine outpouring of public anger over injustice into a more sinister “us” vs “them” confrontation. All this as a nation battles COVID-19, the management of which has robbed the sheen off Trump’s presidential campaign. Little wonder then that he is aggressively playing to his own gallery.

(Courtesy: The Pioneer)