Maybe there are no good cops.
If there were good cops, one of the Connecticut state troopers would have been reluctant to conspire with other officers to concoct charges against a man with a legal gun as they were caught on video. If there were good cops, one of the cops in the same van as Freddie Gray would have said, “Slow down.” A good cop would have strapped him in well. If any one of the six officers found innocent of his murder, or the 11 who interacted with him during his arrest and detention, were good cops, they might have raised the question of why he was arrested even though he had committed no crime.
It is difficult to believe that there are good cops who genuinely want to protect and serve but who also stay silent when fellow officers with predilections for racism or violence are not called out on the carpet. The cop who shot Tamir Rice had a documented history of instability in pressure situations, yet no other officer pointed it out. Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City police officer who strangled Eric Garner, had been sued three times for violating the rights of black men but still wore a badge and carried a gun. There are men in white hoods who never light crosses on lawns or tie nooses around necks, but if you see them in uniform, you just know they’re Klansmen.
Let’s cast aside the incendiary statements and look objectively at an organization whose members have done the following:
Sent racist text messages calling minorities “beaners” and “nigs”;
Hidden video evidence about the fabricated story of a murder for almost two years;
Repeatedly raped women who were under arrest;
Employed a member of Mexico’s most dangerous cartel as an officer of the law while he sold thousands of dollars’ worth of cocaine (and was named Officer of the Year).
If you saw those facts, you’d call it one of the most corrupt, villainous organizations in America. We know that this organization kills blacks more often than it kills white people. It is a fact that police officers arrest more black people for dealing drugs, even though more white people actually sell drugs. One cannot dispute the fact that black drivers are stopped by police more often and, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, are three times more likely to be searched. That is the definition of systemic racism. An organization that is inherently corrupt and racist is—at the very minimum—bad.
Reposted from The Root. Written by Michael Harriot. Read the rest of the article here