2.4 Doesn't Police Brutality to Blacks Prove that Whites Are Racist?

My son was told by his fifth grade teacher that the origin of police was people who hunted down escaped slaves. In reality police started before Europeans even knew America existed. Policing—enforcing the law, preventing crime, apprehending criminals—has a very long tradition of existence. Augustus Caesar, born in 27 B.C., created the cohortes urbanae near the end of his reign, to police Ancient Rome. Policing in England takes rudimentary form with Henry II’s proclamation of the Assize of Arms of 1181. American police were based on the policing system in Europe and started mostly as constables, volunteers and posses. In 1631 Boston created a nightwatch. The first constable on record was Joshua Pratt in the Plymouth colony in 1634. The first police force paid by a city was in New Amsterdam in 1651. It started as a rattlewatch. In 1658 its members started to get paid. When the English captured New Amsterdam in 1664, they installed a constable whose duties included keeping the peace, suppressing excessive drinking, gambling, prostitution, and preventing disturbances during church services. In 1700 Philadephia created a night watch. It's true that formal slave patrols were created 1704 in the Carolinas in order to prevent slave rebellions and enslaved people from escaping however, there were police long before that and their purpose was to prevent crime not capture escaped slaves. So why did my son's fifth grade teacher distort the truth? It's not just my son's teacher who did that, the NAACP does the same thing on its web site. Democrat politicans and reporters say the same thing. We can't read their minds but it seems clear that their goal is to demonize the police. Demonization of the police has resulted in defunding of the police which weakens our society and government, results in large increases violence and makes us all less safe. Senator John Thune wrote in June 2021:

As of the end of May, Portland, Oregon, was on track to exceed 1,000 shootings for this year. In the first 14 weeks of 2021, New York City shootings were up 81 percent. In Oakland, California, carjackings are up almost 88 percent. Unfortunately, these are just a few examples.

The desire to demonize the police force may arise in part from stories of police brutality toward black people and a belief that this brutality stems from white racism toward black people.

In January 2023 in Memphis Tennessee Tyre Nichols, a black man, was driving recklessly. Police ordered Tyre, to get out of his vehicle. An officer pulled him out. "Damn, I didn't do anything," Nichols says. The officers push Nichols to the ground while yelling at him to comply.
Officers order him to the ground, threatening to tase, spray and beat him as they struggle with him and hold him down.
Nichols says, "All right, I'm on the ground ... Stop, stop ... You guys are really doing a lot right now. I'm just trying to go home. ... Stop. I'm not doing anything."
Nichols breaks free and runs away. An officer fires his taser and police chase after him. Two officers hold him down. A third officer arrives on the scene. One of them says: "Do you want to get sprayed again?" as two officers punch and slap him.
"Mom! Mom!" Nichols cries as the newly arrived officer sprays him. "Mom! Mom!" he cries again and again.
The officers order Nichols to "give me your hands."
A fourth officer arrives on the scene.
One of the officers kicks Nichols in the face twice. An officer with the baton hits Nichols with it three times as other officers begin to stand him up.
One officer punches Nichols at least five times in the head while two others hold him up. Nichols goes down to the asphalt and officers hold him down. mm
A fifth officer arrives on scene and kicks Nichols. Then another officer kicks him.

If anything proves white racism this story does, except there is one problem. The officers were black. What this story does show is that resisting arrest is a very bad idea. If you resist arrest the police have to subdue you and the way they do that is by tasing you and hitting you. In Tyre's case the police were brutal even after he was subdued. They were so brutal that he died 3 days later. The solution though is not to eliminate police, because that allows for criminal brutality. The solution is to it is to remove police who are brutal from the police force.

“So this happened in Montana. I'm on my way to go to my interview this morning when I get pulled over by a police officer. I am native American and my friend that was with me is black. Just saying.

Both brake lights decided to go out this time. As he walked to the car and I was pulling out my stuff, he quickly said, "Don't worry about pulling anything out. I just want you to know that your brake lights are out."

So I'm immediately upset, because I just got them replaced like last month. So I explained to him how Firestone wants to charge me $600 just to run a test on the wiring of the car. He looked at me like

and told me to pop the trunk. He checked the lights in the trunk and tapped them, but they didn't come on. So he told me to pop the hood to check the relay box then asked me to get out to check the other one. Then worked on the wiring under the dash. He could've easily given me a ticket, but Officer Jenkins stepped out of the officer role, and into the mechanic role, and human role to make sure I was straight. By the way, HE FIXED THEM. Not everyone is racist or a bad cop.”

If a white policeman is brutal it doesn't mean all police are brutal and it doesn't mean all whites are brutal. Some as the above story shows are very nice. The brutality of black police toward Tyre Nichols doesn't mean all black police are brutal.. If the person the policeman was brutal to happens to be black that doesn't mean that they were brutal because that person was black. There have been many tragic killings by both black and white police of whites as well as blacks. Many of the tragic shootings by police happened after they were attacked by the person they were trying to arrest.

In the tragic case of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend shot a policeman before he and his fellow officers shot back. Tony McDade pointed his gun at a policeman before the policeman shot back. Dion Johnson tried to grab a policeman's weapon, and in the struggle that followed he was shot. Rayshard Brooks fired a taser at a policeman before he was shot. Atatiana Jefferson pointed a gun at a policeman before he shot her. Tamir Rice pointed a toy gun, whose orange barrel had been removed so that it looked like a real gun, at officer Loehmann who then shot Tamir. Officer Loehmann explained his actions with: "I knew it was a gun, and I knew it was coming out." Michael Brown ran toward Officer Darren Wilson and wouldn't stop despite repeated commands to get down on the ground. If we look deeper into a lot of the accusations of police brutality we find out that many are unfair.

In the video below a black police officer answers the question of whether he has experienced racism. He experienced a lot of unfair hostility to the police but he didn't experience racism.

Larry Elder talks about the question of whether police target blacks in the video below.

Chris Rock gives some hilarious but very good advice about how not to get in trouble with the police in the video below.

Buddy Brown wrote a song called Back the Blue (the police). You can watch him sing it below.