To the people who refuse to criticize the actions of a person simply because of the title they hold: would you refuse to criticize the President simply because of their title? Unlikely. In case you don’t know this already, you can have a great amount of respect for an organization or a position while simultaneously criticizing those in that position or organization who do not meet the higher standard of respect, decency, and justice that is required.
I live in a town with a reputation of white privilege and hypocrisy bubbling under the surface of high property taxes and a good school system. People were legitimately angry when my town decided it would make our little beach accessible to non-residents, yet those same people visit nearby town beaches with no complaint. A typical week in my hometown’s police reports are filled with occasional DUIs, underage alcohol possession charges, and some of the most boring and ridiculous things that make you think “This is what they call the police for?” These folks either love having the police at their beck and call or they really, really trust them. Maybe it’s a little of both.
Now you’ll have towns like mine, where police aren’t throwing their life on the line every day on the job, and you’ll have cities where that's a dangerous reality for these officers. One is not more important than the other, it's a circumstance of the job.
Despite the circumstances being different, you still have your mix of “good cops” and “bad cops” no matter where you go. There will be officers who will always do their best to protect and serve the people, and there will be officers who talk down to you and make you feel uncomfortable (or worse) just because they can. Circumstance doesn’t really mean much when both “types" of officers received the same training. Granted, I've never been through the police academy, so unless they are training officers to shoot now and ask questions later, the source of this brutality comes down to the personality of the officer. Just because an officer works in an area with a higher crime rate, doesn't mean they should be more likely to use excessive force or carelessly make irrevocable decisions regarding another person's life. Good people don't have a blatant carelessness towards human life, sociopaths do.
Yes, officers are regular people. Just like you and me, they have their good and bad days, but "having a bad day" and "being in a stressful situation" doesn't give you the right to kill somebody, especially when you've been trained how to deal with situations like that. That's not a bad day, that's bad police work. You can’t grab any old person, toss them in a uniform, give them a gun, and send them on their way. Officers need training to keep people safe, deescalate situations, and not kill anybody they feel even remotely threatened by.
When people talk about police brutality, and especially racially-motivated brutality, they aren't talking about a good officer having a bad day, they are talking about a bad officer abusing their power to control the fate of those around them. We know that not all officers are bad, we aren't stupid. The problem isn't just with cops either. The problem is also with the unjust justice system that applauds and acquits the police officers who abuse their power to disproportionately target people of color and carelessly murder innocent men, women, and children because they "feared for their life". You didn't fear for your life, you just didn't value theirs.
