Police Shootings as Schelling Points for Rage

KulakRevolt makes a great point about how individual instances of police shootings don’t matter on their own, but instead primarily act as a Schelling point for thematically related anger.

I agree completely. There seems to be a disconnect regarding focusing on specific incidents when in reality their individual merits absolutely do not matter within the broader ethos, they're just equilibrium points for people broadly angry to rally around. The people who take up the mantle in trying to "debunk" specific incidents miss the point.

The veritable floodgates here has been the notion that the job of the police is to protect you will also safeguarding your rights. Throughout US history, there have been more than a few flashpoints where those floodgates burst. The beating of Rodney King was one instance, and the fact that it made the news only because some random bystander decided to start recording from hundreds of feet away was telling. So now every outlandish claim of police abuse previously reported and previously dismissed was seen with a new light. No one already suspicious of law enforcement saw it as an isolated incident because the attenuating circumstances were way too much of a coincidence.

When Ferguson happened, what the poor residents of the various St Louis fiefdoms knew (but couldn't prove) is that law enforcement existed primarily to extract resources from them. So when Michael Brown was shot, maybe he was lunging at Darren Wilson, maybe he was reaching for his gun. But you know what? The notion of "we don't trust any of you" was implacable at that point.

This incident from Washington DC from 2011 is the one I keep going back to to illustrate this point. A guy in a wheelchair gets cited for drinking at a subway but in refusing the citation, he resists arrest and gets charged with felony assault on a police officer. Completely unremarkable incident normally, but in this case it showed video footage clearly contradicting the police narrative.

What I found deeply deeply disturbing about the incident is that the police not only blatantly lied, but the fact that they felt comfortable doing so were it not for some very lucky video footage. As far as I can tell nothing happened to them besides being assigned to desk duty.

If the cops are emboldened to lie about a petty drinking citation, what else are they capable of? Why should we take their claims at face-value on anything? This where I admit that before working as a public defender, my opinion of police was much lower. All it took is watching hours and hours of routine arrest footage and getting a full picture of just how fucking awful some of my clients were, and how calm and professional the police were. But I can't transfer that holistic understanding to anyone else wholesale.

Regardless of what you think about individual incidents of police abuse, the factual reality is that trust in law enforcement is extremely low among certain segments of the population. Arguing, even conclusively, about specific incidents does nothing to rebuild the trust. Maybe the use of force in this particular instance was good, but again, "we don't trust any of you" because the accountability structure is severely deficient. All you need is one instance of cops feeling fully comfortable in blatantly lying for the entire edifice of trust to remain buried in the ground.

If you disagree, the response on your end absolutely should not be to just roll over. But my question would be: Do you believe there is a robust accountability structure for misbehaving police?