> We need a publicity machine to remind people that cops do many positive things and pay great sacrifices. This is the status quo. The Internet is full of thes

> We need a publicity machine to remind people that cops do many positive things and pay great sacrifices. This is the status quo. The Internet is full of these stories; the front page of reddit, for example, almost always has a GIF of a cop doing a kickflip for some kids or helping an old lady cross the street or something. Turn on the local news; cops are universally praised and shown to be the "good guys" fighting criminals and keeping us safe. Nearly every TV show or movie has cops as the good guys, or at least not the bad guys. Football games will show cops on the jumbotron during the national anthem, and public figures regularly praise police for their supposed sacrifices for everyone's safety. What more propaganda could you possibly want? The mainstream narrative in all forms of mass media is that cops are the good guys. Even on social media there is a lot of reluctance to admit that the police are systematically discriminatory and militarized. The fact of the matter is that policing is a brutal, discriminatory system and always has been, and people have begun to accept this much more openly than in the past.