The police departments seem to have become incapable of separating the difference between "enforcing the law", and "being the law". They also don't seem to und

The police departments seem to have become incapable of separating the difference between "enforcing the law", and "being the law". They also don't seem to understand that they are not on equal grounds with private citizens. They are civic servants. Police have an obligation to protect their fellow citizens, even if those citizens are protesting Police.* The amount of examples of police actively instigating violence [1] in the last 48 hours is horrifying, but perhaps not surprising. Police have a 2-4x the incident rate of domestic violence [2] than the rest of the population. And with the President tweeting support for them to respond to protests with violence, it makes sense that they would feel enabled to act accordingly. In every city protest the exact same script has unfolded: * A peaceful protest starts * A heavily militarized police force descends on the protest and begins oppressing it without overtly instigating any engagement * SOMEONE pushes things over the line. That someone might be a protestor, but honestly looking around and reading the news it seems like it is equally likely right now to be Police themselves, or a provocateur masquerading as a protestor. * Police overreact, violence and property destruction abounds * Mayor/governor instigate curfew * AHA - now any private citizen on the street is automatically a criminal * Police take the initiative and run with it targeting journalists and instigating violence. So what's next? I think this needs to be a reckoning in the US unlike any since 9/11. 9/11 created The Department Of Homeland Security. And regardless of what you think of the execution of that program, the point was that it was a serious action designed to take the threat of terrorist attacks against the US seriously. I believe the US needs an equally powerful independent government agency to oversee local police departments. There are simply no checks and balances otherwise. No oversight. No one watches The Watchmen. Before you tell me that this is a massive Federal overreach, I believe this could be similar in scope to Desegregation and School Integration, which were federal top-down projects. P.S. If you turn this thread around to talk about the "looters", so help you god. You are a lost cause. So let's just get this out of the way: No, looting is not morally justifiable. But in the grand scheme of things, the moral failings of those protestors that are taking this opportunity to loot is incomparable with the overall message of the protest or the harm inflected upon the African American community by centuries of systemic racism. * * Or at least, they SHOULD. I think we can all see that is not actually the case. * [1] https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1266952661791674370?s=19 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1266952661791674370?s=1... * [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...