Things get sillier. My friend, let's call him Anusha, is getting a bit rowdy and standing on mailboxes and yelling shit about the yankees. But there's no fires or destruction. Nothing felt dangerous. Hell, there was even a hippy guy playing a drum.
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Things would get worse after that. Both in terms of the few idiots who would get overzealous and the officers being way way too excited to exercise a little "crowd control" This of course spiraled and resulted in the death of fan.
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You can read the details here. He just wanted to shoot someone and "didn't realize" rubber bullets could easily kill someone. Of course, the police stepped back their aggression after and things magically "got better." http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/09/21/in_snelgrove_files_officers_recount_night_of_chaos/ …
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There's the psychological heart of all this that is impossible to ignore. I know my high school class. I know every kid who became a cop. For every truly decent person who went in with good intentions, there were three of the meanest, most vindictive, sadistic assholes I knew.
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And there are so many smarter writers out there covering the institutional reality of how the profession is broken. And how it HAS been broken for so fucking. To the point that it's almost defined by it's brokenness. We all know this. But so many white people rarely face it.
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So from the outside, we just have to understand that reality because we are forced into a relationship with that brokenness. Police officers ask me if I don't trust them because they're a cop and I say I don't trust the profession.
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Because it's as impossible, one-sided civic relationship as there is. And until we wrestle with the dark heart of that reality, we can't buy the viral fluffy P.R. that seems like "a ray of hope." Ultimately, it's just anecdotal charm, a literal way of dancing around the subject.
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And the guy who gives you a high five will later hurt you just because it's fun. And because he's allowed to. And for a million other reasons. And if you're not white, it's probably going to be much much much much worse. [end]
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End of conversation
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