All over the 50 states of the United States, there have been massive protests against racism and police brutality. Due to the death of an African American man who was killed in Minneapolis by a police officer. Despite that he was already subdued, the policeman, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for nearly 9 minutes as he pleaded to be spared.
The gross barbarity of the Chauvin’s impunity, which led to the unfortunate and unnecessary death of Mr. Floyd, was caught on video, and it caused intense emotional distress and outrage to nearly all who saw it.
This event mirrors similar protest in 2015 through Chicago, Baltimore and Minneapolis, against police brutality on African Americans.
On a practical approach towards the issue, we must contemplate possible ways such ugly incidences can be eradicated in the policing system.
Police brutality is a common theme in almost every country of the world, arguably worse in third-world countries. So, it can be inferred that police brutality isn’t necessarily conjoined with the issue of racial bias by policemen.
By global estimation, South American countries such as Venezuela, El Salvador, Brasil, the Bahamas all have the highest per capita shooting rates in the world alongside Syria, Philippines, Afghanistan, etc.
In the United States, from 2014 to 2018, at least 5,500 people have lost their lives to the police.
When estimated by race, we see quite an interesting distribution of fatality along diverse racial lines.
The argument that there are avoidable police killings involving black people that were racially motivated is quite valid. Still, the penitent question should be – how do we distinguish between police killing of a black man that is racially motivated and ones that aren’t?
One could imagine that we do not ordinarily assume that police killing involving Caucasian victims are caused by racial bias against them. It would also be logical to assume that, given the above nuance that police killing isn’t always necessarily due to racism as demonstrated by a substantial number of white people killed, we can safely say that not every police killing is racially motivated.
So, assuming somehow racism and personal bias along tribal lines suddenly ends in America, would this stop another black man from being killed by the police? Of course not. Given that not every police killing is because of racism, it is entirely guaranteed that police shooting against black man will continue, albeit, not racially motivated, just another occupational mistake, high-handedness or necessity.
We can understand that police racism’s focus won’t solve the problem of police shooting because, unless we assume everyone killed through police violence was because of race, we cannot say that stopping racism stops police brutality.
So, the idea of focusing primarily on race is a classic mistake of pursuing shadow instead of substance.
The primary problem of police killings is simply put; Police brutality, which is a dividend of Statism. The police institution enjoys so much State given authority, that abuse of such power is inevitable. Power, as can be easily inferred, dangles the wielder at the edge of misuse. The bigger power gets, it requires higher ethical and moral orientation to keep its wielder from abuse.
So, if we want to end police killings, ending the personal bias in police officers is an inept way to achieve this. It can be achieved by diluting Statism in police institutionalism. By diluting the power wielded by the police, the platform for abuse weakens with it.
So, in conclusion, policing is a dangerous job for those who are in it and also an essential institution for any complexly large social structures that hope to maintain a decent degree of order. However, much like every powerful institution subject to State oversight, the potentiality for police power to be abused is quite high. Given the history of systematic racial discrimination and abuse against African Americans within the American structure, which even to this day, ripples of this ugly discriminatory practice is still felt directly or indirectly. One can understand that there are cases of outright racial bias and profiling typically tipped against the African Americans, but if we are to come up with a lasting solution to the problem of police brutality, diluting Statism will be a more effective solution than bemoaning racism which is simply a fraction of the institutional problem of police abuse.
The solution to police killing isn’t for them to stop killing because of race. But to simply, stop killing. That solves both killings, which are a consequence of race and ones that are not – I believe that is a more reasonable result.
