Pigweed and Crowhill drink and review Old Speckled Han, a very nice English Pale Ale, then discuss all the nonsense about cops.
Is the central intent of policing to surveil, terrorize, capture and kill marginalized populations, specifically black folk? There are people in our society who are promoting that story.
The media, politicians and similar cretins keep feeding us a narrative that we have an epidemic of white cops killing unarmed black people. Is it true?
Where I come from there was no secret that the police were much more brutal towards poorer people. (My father was totally blue collar and worked like a dog to support the family, and I stayed out of trouble, but I knew people who lived in the housing projects and were considerably less fortunate.) I know of concrete instances where people of a higher socio-economic status actually bribed the cops, while poorer people would not only get arrested for minor crimes, but would also get the living shit beat out of them. As blacks were on the average poorer than whites, they were of course more subject to police brutality than whites were. Blacks are of course still on the average poorer than whites. Now whether police have cleaned up their act in the last few decades and treat rich and poor (and therefore black and white) equally is another question. I doubt it though.
That matches with one of the statistics we cite in the show, which is that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be roughed up by cops, but whites are more likely to be shot.
Ok, interesting. But I can’t understand why whites would be more likely to be shot.
I don’t know, and while there may be some important influencers, generally speaking I think it’s a mistake to try to reduce these complicated situations down to one explanation.