Column
Police Are Hurting People Because They Want To
To suggest otherwise is to blindly ignore reality
In at least 30 cities this weekend, protests spread over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. In an ironic — and entirely predictable — twist, police officers in city after city responded to the demonstrations against their brutality with yet more violence.
Cop cars in Brooklyn mowed down crowds of protestors. The National Guard in Minneapolis shot paint canisters at residents standing on their own porches. A Pennsylvania officer was filmed kicking a teenager who was already sitting on the ground, her hands covering her face. An officer in Utah knocked over an elderly man walking with a cane. And across the country, officers shot journalists with rubber bullets (once on live TV), arrested reporters, and pepper-sprayed members of the press, even as they clearly identified themselves as working journalists.
With each new video shared on social media, it became increasingly clear that police officers were the ones escalating the violence. Their attacks on civilians were not made in self-defense or because they were needed to maintain order — police hurt people because they wanted to.
In response, conservatives bemoaned property destruction and theft — the…
