![]() In Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, for example, only 8 percent of officers live in the city, according to an analysis by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The contrarian mentality exists, Douglas said, because many officers do not live in the cities or towns they patrol. “No, there has to be a cultural shift from the warrior-versus-them mentality to more of a guardian mentality.” “‘They need training’ is the narrative that makes white folks feel good because it excuses their biases,” he said. Many people have called for more training for officers, but Douglas insisted that is more of an excuse than a solution. I am optimistic, because I did see white people marching on behalf of Black civil rights, and that is progress. Change moves at the speed of an ocean liner and not a speedboat. I have been in this civil rights game 42 years. “So, regrettably, I am not surprised by the numbers. “Even in California, which is supposed to be the bastion of liberalism, we were only able to pass a watered-down version of a police reform bill in the wake of George Floyd,” he said. “There’s nothing that actually addresses the root issues that exist within policing, whether that’s under-accountability, whether that’s the amount of weaponry they have at their disposal or whether it’s in who they’re accountable to.”Ĭarl Douglas, a Los Angeles civil rights lawyer, used his state as a barometer of the country’s likelihood of achieving change around policing. “We’ve seen a double-down on reform measures that have already been proven to not work, that don’t get to the heart of the white supremacy that is built into policing in this country,” Mac said. Leslie Mac, an organizer and activist from Brooklyn, New York, who calls herself a “staunch abolitionist,” said she was not surprised by The Post’s numbers, saying they stem from a lack of movement on policies to change officers’ attitudes. ![]() “We can say, ‘Things have changed because the national dialogue is changing.’ But until we get to the crux of the problem, we’re going to see this continue,” she said. Williams said the data mean that “until we get to policies that dismantle the system that exists, we’re not going to see this stop.” “And until we get to the root cause of policing and police brutality and the differences in the way police treat Black folks versus white folks, we’re not going to get to change.” “The system wasn’t built to protect Black people,” Williams said. Williams said there is also an inherent foe that prevents widespread change. “What we see in the immediate aftermath of the demonstrations is police officers’ hunkering down and standing behind the blue wall of silence even more.” And in this case, we’re talking about officers resisting the change,” said Ray, who is also a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. “People perceive that people protesting in the streets leads to people caring more, and sometimes it leads to people resisting the change more. Rashawn Ray, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, said it is a flawed notion that paying more attention to police brutality will result in less police brutality. But we never really got underneath the problem.”Īnd the problems are many. But then the media tends to move on to other things, and that consciousness decreases. “When we have moments of racial injustice that is thrust in the national spotlight, there is an uptick of outrage, and people take to the streets. ![]() “It’s bad and it’s sad, but it’s not shocking that we’re still being killed at a higher rate,” said Karundi Williams, the CEO of re:power, a national organization that trains Black people to become political leaders. That means Black people are twice as likely as white people to be shot and killed by police officers. population, accounted for 27 percent of those fatally shot and killed by police in 2021, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit group that tracks police shootings. Black people, who account for 13 percent of the U.S. ![]()
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