For generations, African Americans complained of police brutality and were dismissed out of hand. Then Sony invented the Handycam® hand-held video camera and we got the video of Rodney King being brutally beaten. Since then, and especially after video-capable smartphones became ubiquitous, we have case after case where unarmed African Americans are brutalized and murdered by police officers under color of authority.
Even in an age when police know it is likely someone might have a video recording device, they still do it.
How much more brazen must they have been in the days when they could be certain that no one would be able to ever prove anything and it would just be a swarm of sworn “peace officers’” word against one solitary street “thug” (because crooked, brutal police officers said he was)?
It turns out that, in the many decades of complaints going unheard, the African American community was, if anything, understating the severity of the abuse the suffered at the hands (and billy clubs and mace and pepper spray and Tasers) of police officers.
Things are not getting worse.
They are getting uncovered.
They are getting recorded.
For generations, African Americans complained of police brutality and were dismissed out of hand. Then Sony invented the Handycam® hand-held video camera and we got the video of Rodney King being brutally beaten. Since then, and especially after video-capable smartphones became ubiquitous, we have case after case where unarmed African Americans are brutalized and murdered by police officers under color of authority.
Even in an age when police know it is likely someone might have a video recording device, they still do it.
How much more brazen must they have been in the days when they could be certain that no one would be able to ever prove anything and it would just be a swarm of sworn “peace officers’” word against one solitary street “thug” (because crooked, brutal police officers said he was)?
It turns out that, in the many decades of complaints going unheard, the African American community was, if anything, understating the severity of the abuse the suffered at the hands (and billy clubs and mace and pepper spray and Tasers) of police officers.