I don't know what kinds of qualifications are required for one to become a police officer, but of those for whom it does not come naturally, there should be a training course in compassion. I post a lot about police brutality because I think it is a unique form of violence. Inherent in the kind of public service police officers hold should be a community's trust. When a community cannot trust the people who are armed and licensed to protect them, there is a fundamental breakdown in the level of civilization in that community's social contract. Lately, here in New York City, I've been relieved to see the presence of police officers on the streets and subways -- but that doesn't mean I fully trust them. Rather, it's a matter of the worst of several evils: I'm much more afraid of the unmedicated psychotics and the thugs with a chip on their shoulder than I am of New York's so-called finest. And, of course, not all police officers are bad people. Some are very good people. But too many are either not intelligent or compassionate (or both) enough to hold their positions. Whenever I ask myself how we got here, I often come back to the same question: What kind of person would want to become a police officer? Someone who feels a natural sense of authority and courage and a desire to protect others? Someone with a sadistic streak and a bloodthirst to have license to kill someone or kill a particular group of people? Someone once bullied who now wants an opportunity to intimidate others? Someone who didn't perform well in school and saw this career as the most reliable and available route to a lifetime of employment and security? Someone who grew up in a family of other police officers and who never really considered the gravity of this responsibility and simply followed a family's professional legacy? As evidenced by the recent murder of Tyre Nichols, the phenomenon of police brutality transcends racism. And yet, racism often transcends itself in a kind of circular irony. I doubt very seriously that these five police officers would have brutally murdered a white man who committed the same perceived offense. I have no evidence to back that up. But too often I've observed the way black people, men in particular, in positions of authority pounce on the opportunity to exert dominance over other black men in an imitation of their own perceived oppressor. Compounding this, too many black men grow up in households without a male figure and don't know how to respond to the threat of another male authority figure. It is simply never learned. To me, this is very significant. In my opinion, this is why there is the instinct to run away, to resist arrest: it's an instinct. I have no evidence to back up any of these suggestions, but I've been a black male for almost half a century, if that counts for anything. Fortunately, despite being profiled more than once, I have never had the kind of police encounter that came anywhere near violence. You have to know how to talk to the police when you are a black man, whether you are in the wrong or the right, or some ambiguous space in between, and I am blessed having been raised in a family that includes one judge and three police officers. So I've always walked away from these incidents unharmed. Whatever the case, there needs to be a serious conversation about all of these issues before another Tyre Nichols is crying for their mother while being murdered in the street by those hired to protect him.
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