This is standard fare for any police department ever.
It took me about 4 months to get my phone back from the NYPD, which was fun.
I love it when white people are shocked by their first arrest, because it (unfortunately) means something might get done. The system sucks. Now please scare other white people about it.
It's unclear to me why race has anything to do with this. Are you implying that you expect non-white people to handle "their first arrest" more casually, as if it is something they are familiar with and know will happen?
If we really want things to improve, we need to stop complaining about how "white people don't see how bad it is for the rest of us." Focus on what we have in common, not what you arbitrarily perceive as what makes us different. The system is shitty for everybody. Your argument would have been just as informative and a lot more pleasant to read if it didn't begin by partitioning your readers by race.
I'm white. Systematic injustice has a funny way of being swept under the rug for years, decades and centuries when it doesn't inconvenience us or when powerful people of our race benefit from it.
Swaths of people go through this regularly or are targeted and treated, much, much worse than this guy for the sole virtue of being the wrong race. Somehow, many white people, especially those in the upper class, never have to see this injustice ever.
There's a reason MLK's strategy during the civil rights movement worked. It inconvenienced or scared white people into seeing the injustice of the system they are a part of and control.
Police brutality and injustice is a side of America we are privileged to be mostly excluded from. When it becomes our problem, the system at least attempts to correct itself.
As an aside, for many people I know, the whole police brutality meme really started brewing when it became common knowledge that cops can come into your house and shoot your dogs. It doesn't and didn't matter that has been going on for decades to those of the wrong race or religion, often with deadly consequences.
I don't think it's entirely unfair. I'd venture that in the US, black people (and likely other minorities) are much more likely to have heard about and clearly understand what's in store for them if they get arrested. Most probably have a family member or close friend that has dealt with this injustice.
Almost none of my white friends understand the terrible truths in the system beyond reading accounts like this in the media. I include myself among them. Part of it is probably population realities - when a minority segment of the population suffers the majority of indignities, it's more likely to hit close to home.
Yeah, I'd like to remove black and white from many conversations. White guilt feels almost vogue, I have to hear about it so often from white friends and colleagues. But when it comes to the criminal justice system...
The system is shitty for everybody and an appeal to a common humanity is absolutely critical for any reasonable expectation of humane social structures.
However, to suggest that the experience of the system is the same for everybody is naive at best. I read task_queue's comment more as the following:
"Societal structures do not change until those with more (social, political, economic, etc) power experience the inconvenience and injustice that people without the power to effect change experience on a more regular basis. That this is true is unfortunate."
Tell me more about how I'm the real racist for pointing out that the system is intractably racist.
If this makes you uncomfortable, you need to come to terms with history and the present reality.
We (white people) have been at the reigns and designed the legal system from the start to give us an advantage. I'd say we have to hold some accountability for maintaining a system we knew was broken for too long.
I'd also go as far as to say those with power (in America, well-endowed white people), who have worked hard to change the the legal system such that they get a Fast Pass through it, have a responsibility to fix that system.
That is the racists part. Some people are in power, they are white but that doesn't mean you get to slam white people anymore than you get to slam all black people for being criminals. Downvoting me won't make the former any less racists than the last.
This is the root of racial inequality in our justice system. No one is claiming that all white people are evil supervillians. But many white people don't comprehend the harsher reality people of color face when being arrested.
The comment "I love when white people are shocked" is a reference to the fact that "some people are in power, they are white". If the people in power are shocked by what it's like to be arrested, perhaps it will spark positive change in the system.
Show me where I slammed white people. No where did I slam white people.
I'm sorry if having to take responsibility for the system we've been handed and benefit from makes you uncomfortable.
But since mentioning race is inherently racist, we can go back to not mentioning race and pretending we're a post-racial society while the boys in blue continue to knock down doors and arrest every black person on the street corner because, by cop heuristics, they're all guilty.
It's almost as if being asked to acknowledge the racism of the system bothers you in some way. A way to get rid of that bad feeling is to put your color-blinders on and pretend society is race-blind as well. I can do that, too, and never once have to face the injustice of or account for the system I maintain.
It took me about 4 months to get my phone back from the NYPD, which was fun.
I love it when white people are shocked by their first arrest, because it (unfortunately) means something might get done. The system sucks. Now please scare other white people about it.