So, is there any hope for meaningful police reform? Don't hold your breath. This cancer is so pervasive and deep that the ENTIRE criminal justice system is completely and thoroughly corrupted. This moment in time may wring a few concessions from what really is a domestic occupation army and its enablers, but when the protests stop its back to business as usual. I do not want to sound pessimistic but the fact is that in places like New York City the chances of reforming the NYPD is akin to me becoming the President of the United States - an impossibility. Police departments across America is a powerful, organized, well-armed, well-funded, and well supported domestic force that is quite literally "above the law." District attorneys, public prosecutors, politicians and judges form an organized support system that insulates police from legal redress for wrongdoing.
I n fact, the system is designed to protect cops while filling American jails, prisons and detention houses with Black and Brown bodies. In places like New York, Black and Brown bodies are incarcerated in "Up State" jails and prisons that are the main economic engines for majority white communities. With recidivism rates in Brooklyn about 45 percent the Black community subsidizes white progress and socio-economic well-being with Black prison populations. The fact is that there are many, many individuals and organizations vested in keeping this system in place.
Its neo-slavery by another name and process. George Floyd's death is perhaps a catalyst. Maybe. The anger and outrage over the latest cop killing is only different because it was videotaped. It's one thing to read in the newspapers about the murders of unarmed Black men at the hands of trigger-happy, racist, ignorant white cops. But it's quite another thing to see it playing out on video before your very eyes - you cannot doubt it and believe the cop narrative about "an angry Black man who resisted arrest." It's before your eyes.
Will that be enough to force change? I doubt it for one simple reason: the police departments in America are part of a criminal justice system that is built on a foundation of racism, white privilege and white deniability with the support of the institutions that purport to be fair and seeking after justice but are complicit in this unholy compact. Consider this: a white cop put Eric Garner in a stranglehold that Japanese martial artists call - NAKED STRANGLE. Its intent is to kill by using the flat part of the arm to ram the victim's voice box into the windpipe. I know. I am a Blackbelt in Shotokan Karate. So, when the NYPD cop executed this technique, he MUST have known that it was very likely going to kill Mr. Garner. That's murder. But, again, the cop walked and never spent a day in prison.
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