Bad Apples

Frankly, I'm tired of the "one bad apple" rationalizations that people come up with regarding cops that kill unarmed, and sometimes already restrained, people. In the most recent murder of a man who was falsely accused of forgery, it's not just the cop who had his knee on George Floyd's neck. He was also being restrained by two other officers while a fourth stood by. If it's "one bad apple", didn't any of the supposed "good apples" think to say "Hey bro, back off, he's cuffed and face down on the ground, he's not going anywhere, ease off"? Apparently not.

And let's take a minute to look at this whole "face down, handcuffed behind the back" default arrest position. It's probably been going on forever, but I first noticed it during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. Once the police decided to break up the protesters' encampments and arrest the participants, peaceful, nonresistant protesters were uniformly forced face down on the ground with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Another issue is the eagerness with which police officers draw their weapons in situations that are not violent.  How many times have we seen militarized police departments pointing their rifles at protesters who are doing nothing more violent than yelling? I remember working for the New York City Police Department pistol license division one summer and being told that you never point a gun at someone unless you are prepared to kill them.

It seems like the entire rationale behind an officer's actions is "the safety of the officer". I'm all for "the safety of the officer". My younger brother and father were both career police officers, and thankful that they always made it home in one piece. But in so many cases a cop who shot someone merely feared that he was in danger, reacting in a way, that resulted in an innocent person being killed. The mission of individual police officers isn't "To Protect and Serve"...not to protect and serve the public anyway, but to protect themselves at the expense of anyone who they fear is dangerous. The hell with any protection for people who get between them and their fear.

And let's further dispense with the "one bad apple" viewpoint. Not only do cops cover for one another, but the whole system allows these abuses. The killer cop in Minneapolis had 17 complaints against him for excessive force, including at least one for shooting an unarmed civilian. Police unions aggressively defend their members despite egregiously violent actions. Dismissed officers are hired by other police departments.

And lest we think that this isn't racism, Tamir Rice, at 12 years old, was shot and killed without warning while playing with a toy gun, Philanro Castile was shot in front of his girlfriend, even after informing the officer that killed him that he had a permit to carry a weapon and where that weapon was. Yet hundreds of gun carrying protesters rampage through state capitols and on streets without a peep from the police.

The axiom about bad apples, is not "There's only a few bad apples, so everything is fine since most of the apples are good" - the saying is that "One bad apple  spoils the whole bunch" (similar to the biblical saying that "a little leaven leavens the whole lump"). By tolerating the presence of these so-called bad apples, the good apples, if they were ever there, turn bad.