The circumstances that led to the police killings of George Floyd and thousands of others over the years could have been avoided if the elected leadership in the 1960s had responded to protesters’ demands for socio-economic inclusion. Instead, they blamed black people for the instability, ignoring the buildup of centuries of racial oppression.
The police have long operated as the guardians in white-class communities, protecting property from outsiders. But in segregated urban neighborhoods, the leadership has deployed militarized police forces and expanded the prison system instead of working to address the root causes of the uprisings, such as, mass unemployment, dilapidated housing, failing public schools and deterioration of basic necessities like clean water.
According to The New York Times: It took Portland, Oregon, almost US$1 million in legal fees, efforts by two mayors and a police chief, and years of battle with the police union to defend the firing of Officer Ron Frashour – only to have to bring him back. Today, the veteran white officer, who shot an unarmed Black man in the back a decade ago, is still on the force.
Meanwhile, former mayor of Portland Sam Adams said the frustrated disciplinary effort showed “how little control we had” over the police. “This was as bad a part of government as I’d ever seen. The government gets to kill someone and get away with it.”
The report said, the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis officers in May, is a failure of generation of leadership, and spurred huge protests and calls for a nationwide reset on law enforcement. Since May, nearly 40 police officers have been fired for use of force or racist behaviour.
It is to be noted that the effort took off in Detroit, partly as a backlash to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when police officers around the country — who at times acted as instruments of suppression for political officials or were accused of brutality in quelling unrest — felt vulnerable to citizen complaints.
To create a new future of policing, the US leadership should not fall back on the unsuccessful, top-down approaches of the past. What is needed in the USA and other countries that the police are not an oppressive machine for keeping an oppressive government in power.
The police have long operated as the guardians in white-class communities, protecting property from outsiders. But in segregated urban neighborhoods, the leadership has deployed militarized police forces and expanded the prison system instead of working to address the root causes of the uprisings, such as, mass unemployment, dilapidated housing, failing public schools and deterioration of basic necessities like clean water.
According to The New York Times: It took Portland, Oregon, almost US$1 million in legal fees, efforts by two mayors and a police chief, and years of battle with the police union to defend the firing of Officer Ron Frashour – only to have to bring him back. Today, the veteran white officer, who shot an unarmed Black man in the back a decade ago, is still on the force.
Meanwhile, former mayor of Portland Sam Adams said the frustrated disciplinary effort showed “how little control we had” over the police. “This was as bad a part of government as I’d ever seen. The government gets to kill someone and get away with it.”
The report said, the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis officers in May, is a failure of generation of leadership, and spurred huge protests and calls for a nationwide reset on law enforcement. Since May, nearly 40 police officers have been fired for use of force or racist behaviour.
It is to be noted that the effort took off in Detroit, partly as a backlash to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when police officers around the country — who at times acted as instruments of suppression for political officials or were accused of brutality in quelling unrest — felt vulnerable to citizen complaints.
To create a new future of policing, the US leadership should not fall back on the unsuccessful, top-down approaches of the past. What is needed in the USA and other countries that the police are not an oppressive machine for keeping an oppressive government in power.
