Believing the police are protecting everyone is something we are taught from a young age, as the numbers 999 are being embedded in our mind. The reason they carry batons and tasers is for sole use on criminals, right? A few years ago, if anyone had told me that some people with the same profession as good old PC Plum were all too ready to kill someone after something as simple as changing a lane without signalling, I would have been more than sceptical.
Now, however, social media means we can no longer hide from the truth about police brutality, and the police can no longer hide their actions from us. In the UK, there have been enough incidents to worry certain members of society, but when we think of our local officers, it is usually the image of them handcuffing some alcohol soaked idiot that comes to mind, rather than the terrifying concept of police brutality. In the US, however, racially motivated attacks by the public’s supposed protectors seem to happen as regularly as when the light of day bleeds into darkness. Black boys murdered for jaywalking, Muslims attacked for having the audacity not to shave their beard, the supposedly-fake suicide of a woman arrested with little reasoning: this grotesque parody of protection is not something I am willing to support. Without the internet, I would be sheltered by trust and naivety, but now anyone with a smartphone can help make the voices of the marginalised heard.
It is horrifying that there are hundreds of videos of black people being attacked by those in positions of power, whether an innocent teenage girl at a pool party being thrown to the ground or tear gas unleashed on protesters, but these short clips are forcing people to acknowledge that the justice system is ignoring its main aim, which should be blatantly obvious since it's in the title: justice. Instead of protected, racial minorities (particularly black people, and increasingly Muslims as well) are being abused by the perpetrators of systematic oppression.
So who are the police really protecting? Whilst most of them are just trying to do the best they can and make a real difference, it is difficult to remain completely fair in countries built upon centuries of racism and white colonialism. There are certain police officers out there whose sense of justice is rooted in a 1960s ideology of supporting ‘their own kind’. While black officers had to provide the racist murderer, Dylan Roof, with a bulletproof vest, there are white officers literally killing black youths. The US and Europe have become an extremely diverse set of states but this amalgamation of races needs to be accompanied by a justice system that serves everyone. We are all human, and therefore we all deserve to treated with humanity.
