I urge you all to look up the history of policing in the United States, especially if you are on of those who doubt that systemic racism exists, thinks this is a false flag or fake, or thinks this is somehow blown out of proportion.
Although if you are, please do not identify yourself. As someone that experienced police brutality personally, it’s triggering.
The police in the US stemmed first from two groups: Slave Patrols and Night Watchmen.
Slave patrols were comprised of white men and had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules.
Night Watchmen were more common in the North where slavery was generally unacceptable, BUT there was still systemic racism. The Night Watchmen were normally paid native Americans or lower class white and blacks people encouraged to report vagrant behaviours amongst their own kind.
Following the Civil War, Slave Patrols evolved into modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing "Jim Crow" segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.
The Night Watchmen evolved into formalised police departments whose primary purpose was to control disorder. Due to the mercantile economical interests of the North, this became social control, as a stable workforce was needed in factories. One that wouldn’t protest and wouldn’t destroy property or merchandise, despite horrible working and living conditions, no centralised labour protections and wages too low to survive on.
If you wonder why police brutality is so rampant and why police are behaving this way with protestors, this is why. And if you’re in doubt STILL, take a look at the shield of the New York City Police department, the second oldest police department in the US and largest police department in the world. Slave Patrol on the left, Native American Watchman on the right.