And finally, we must ask, "If our policing system is a draconian, military-style, Orwellian model used to consolidate an entrenched class hierarchy, then where did it come from? How did we get here?"
- As detailed in "Our Enemies in Blue," the American police system originated from slave patrols, which turned the streets of towns into patrol routes for what was a quasi-military force. From its earliest days the American model was a racist tactic to protect the higher class people from the downtrodden and oppressed. The numbers don't lie. The system has not largely changed since those early days.
Prof. Vitale writes, "The reality is that the police exist primarily as a system for managing and even producing inequality by suppressing social movements and tightly managing the behaviors of poor and nonwhite people: those on the losing end of economic and political arrangements."
These 19 facts should fully flip the script on how we view police in America. We need a completely new/different/smaller/less-violent model. And we need it starting 400 years ago.
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