One of the more recent cases of police violence I've followed was the case of Tyre Nichols. The story here (link) is pretty good in giving the basic background of the case, who's who and so on, while also being current. And it's an Associated Press article, so (almost) universally accepted as neutral.
First things first, I do hope the protests stay peaceful. We do NOT need a repeat of the recent events in Atlanta. We don't need "Antifa" or "MAGA" (for want of better umbrella names) to come in and escalate peaceful protests into something else. Personally, I just want a peaceful protest against an injustice.
The thing about this case is that it isn't even about race. Mr. Nichols and his murderers were all the same race. I'm sure the rhetorical "would they have done it to a white person" question will come up..... but I don't know. This just seems more like a "giving a badge to the wrong people" situation. Violent people using the law as a shield to commit violence against citizens, or to defraud citizens. The types I would consider bad cops. These bad cops come from all races, religions, neighbourhoods, economic backgrounds, so on and so forth. These are the types of bad cops that give good cops a bad name, and who create the animosity and distrust that seems to be growing between law enforcement and citizens.
Tomorrow (27 Jan) the footage of what happened to Mr. Nichols will be released. And like all the other videos, it's going to hurt like a mf'er to watch. I, for one, have yet to be desensitized to these videos. There's going to be public outcry. This close to Black History Month? This might not turn into a nation-wide protest of millions like after George Floyd was murdered. But people will march on this. And, to correct myself from earlier, this sort of is about race in the context of Black History in America. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't say "I have a dream some of you will become cops and beat the life out of your Black brothers and sister". Malcom X didn't say "Who taught you to hate yourself? You should be hating your brother.!". This is a racial issue, but I don't view it as a racist issue (at least, not by its individual merits and context).
My hope is that the protests stay focused. Focused on accountability and justice for the murder of Mr. Nichols. Focused, also, on finding ways to keep these kind of things from happening again, and opening lines of (civil) communication to make that possible.
I just hope we've learned that fighting fire with fire in a vat of gasoline is great fodder for a 24/7 news cycle, but not much is going to change if the continued course of action is huge marches and rallies that devolve into violence and crime and ultimately exacerbate the exact problem(s) they were supposed to be fighting against in the first place. Yes that's a huge run-on sentence, but so what.
Sweeping things under the rug has also shown to be extremely ineffective in solving literally anything.
So we have here and now to grow and stop making the same mistakes and start taking steps to make the right choices. In this case, the right choice is to get the government, law enforcement, and the community together and start brainstorming on how we can get off this carousel.
That would be a great way to start Black History Month, and it would be a great way to honour the memory of Tyre Nichols.
Update (27 Jan, evening):
To expand on the two points I brought up in the first paragraph on why I'd been kind of quiet on these issues:
(1) The amount of people who showed up to Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd was....amazing. I was shocked (in a good way) that literally millions of people were showing up for the cause. And then it started becoming apparent that some people were there more for Anti-Prez45 protests than to remind the world that the lives of Black Americans matter as much as everyone else's lives. And some people were there for the sole purpose of being violent and to be destructive, and they just wanted the cover to do what they wanted to do. Some people just wanted an excuse to get out of their COVID lockdowns. So I guess, post-45, post-COVID, and with a lot of far-Right extremist groups kind of leaderless with the 6 January trials and sentencings still going since 2021, I was curious as to how the response would be to what I knew would be a continued problem. The videos kept coming, but they stopped showing up on the news as much. And, as far as I could tell, a lot of people took the "out of sight, out of mind" out, the "I don't hear about it, so it must have ended with Trump" out, or they were just tired from at least 5 years of protests (basically from 2015 to 2020). I can definitely understand the last one. Going all the way back to Ferguson and Baton Rouge and all of the early incidents that lead to initial protests, up to George Floyd...it's a lot to deal with, especially with the pandemic and a ridiculously divisive president who seemed to think the national motto was "tons of violence, trolling, and hate-mongering in the name of ratings".
I guess I was just interested in sitting back and watching how it played out.
(2) I guess this is mostly answered in (1), but I was dismayed by how the aftermath of the I guess "BLM"-era protests ended up. I know a lot happened since 2020 (inflation, Ukraine/Russia, a high stakes midterms, severe droughts, etc). I guess And a lot of issues that have come up (especially economic/cost of living issues) are pretty big. You can't ignore those issues just because there's another issue still lingering. At the same time, you can just sweep that "other issue" under the rug. Like I said in the main post, that hasn't worked. It never worked. It's not going to work. So you do something proactive. It's cool that Joe Biden has a pretty diverse staff, but I think most people of colour would prefer more protection and safety over seeing a person of colour answering questions for Pres. Biden, or a person of colour carrying envelopes and files to Pres. Biden's office. I don't think anyone voted for Biden and expected racism to be over. If it didn't end under Obama, it wasn't going to end under Biden. I guess I just expected more. That maybe we learned that this kind of thing isn't going away until the problem is dealt with. If we don't deal with it, in a real and substantial way, these nation wide protests will keep happening over & over, in cycles.
Update 29 Jan:
I was really glad to see that the marches/protests immediately following the release of the video footage were almost universally peaceful. The only thing I saw that I'd categorize as violent was one (non-black) d-bag in NYC who smashed a cop car.
I didn't find out about the march/vigil in PDX until after the fact, but I was happy to see that that march/vigil was very calm. Lots of skateboarding (Mr. Nichols was an avid skateboarder, as I understand it) and some signs and chanting. So nothing anyone could call a riot. Which is good. And it's respectful of Mr. Nichol's parents' wishes.
Good job everyone, nationwide.
Also, I appreciate how focused the protests in Memphis were. There was a lot of emphasis on eliminating the Scorpion unit that the offending former-officers were members of. And seeing how that unit is now disbanded and closed....results.
There's still bigger issues to tackle, and hopefully some maximum sentences handed out, but I think that this shows what a focused protest with perfectly reasonable demands can accomplish. The police weren't asked to defund themselves, there hasn't been any calls for top to bottom resignations for police leadership.... a toxic unit was weeded out and discarded. Seems reasonable enough, and I'm glad the mission is accomplished...peacefully and civilly...on that front. Thank you to the Memphis protestors for giving the rest of us a blueprint.