According to the Supreme Court, police have no duty to protect the public from harm. In fact, police are trusted to use their own discretion about when to intervene in a deadly situation.
Perhaps that's why nearly 400 law enforcement agents responded to the active shooter in Uvalde, Texas, but did little more than stand around for over an hour as small children were shot, cried out in terror, and died. Perhaps that's why hundreds chose their own safety and handcuffed parents who were braver than them as they stood idly by.
The problem with police, across the nation, isn't lack of resources, arms, training, or sensitivity. It's a culture that breeds a callous disregard for life outside of their thin blue line. It's high time our governments–state, local, and federal–actually hold them accountable, instead of giving them a huge payday every time they mess up this big. White nationalists are infiltrating law enforcement at alarming rates, and not only are we doing nothing about it, but every single House Republican blocked a measure that would help us root out the extremists in blue. Conservatives are actively stopping us from eliminating violent racists from the ranks of officers.
Of course, bought and paid for politicians aren't the only ones who thumb their noses at the very notion of police accountability. Rightwing private citizens freely open up their wallets to murderers with a badge, particularly when Black and brown communities rise up in anger and demand justice.
When we have hungry kids who can't afford school lunch, people going bankrupt from medical debt, state-sanctioned bullying and sexual assault of transgender children, and poor mothers being forced to birth more children, it's a dereliction of duty and poor stewardship of our tax dollars to continue to throw money at police to clean up their act. Keep fighting,
Irna Landrum, Daily Kos. |
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