People of color continued to get arrested, charged and convicted in an entirely unfair manner. While I understand that basically ANY confrontation has a potential for violence merely by the fact that a cop has a gun in the first place, we need to expect better from our police officers. Many of them are straight up thugs, with
very bad training, white nationalist views, spurred on by a completely prejudiced union, propped up by prosecutors and attorney generals, a country awash in firearms, and a code of protection and violence. The problems are numerous. Many shoots are straight up bad, regardless of how "well-behaved" the subject is. Additionally, many of these cops are dealing with mental health issues for which they're not trained or effective in mitigating.
What is a mere arrest to white people (although in many cases white people wouldn't even be arrested in the first place) is a major life hardship for many people pf color. A record, strangled by court fees and fines, an inability to pay cash bail (which should also be abolished) and other factors mean a genuine struggle for many of these people. Many aren't even committing crimes, and are practicing behavior that would involve a chuckle and a warning if these people were white. In this example, breaking up a fight between two women. To most of these cops it's about being subject to their authority, and the smallest bit of resistance easily escalates the situation because these cops have WAY too much EGO. There's a reason so many cops end up as perpetrators of domestic violence themselves.
I'm not like dumb ass Joe "just shoot them in the leg" Biden. In almost all situations this isn't feasible to anyone that has an idea of what it's really like out there. Nevertheless, there were several good options available to those cops at several points throughout that confrontation. Numerous mistakes were made, that almost cost this man his life, and made it, so he'll never walk again.
Someone that is supposedly adept at critical thinking should know better than to look at the entirety of this situation throughout our country and toss out such a simple solution at what is clearly a complex problem. That should be a red flag that there's more to this than "just do what the cop says". It's the equivalent of saying that the cure for child poverty is for people to just not have children before they're financially established and ready to do so. It's a childishly simple attempt at a solution to a very complex problem, one that at its heart involves human nature, and thus has no simple solution. It's a mental shortcut so one doesn't have to deal with the complexities of the situation, and do any self-examination to find some rather unpleasant facts about their own personality, attitudes, and prejudices.
