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If Black Lives Matter, End the War on Crime

By Jonathan Simor

From the perspective of tens of thousands of protesters around the nation this week, the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, reflected an unfathomable decision by white police officers to kill unarmed black men engaged in trivial criminal (if any) behavior.  To thousands of police officers (and their families), these deaths fit in a different narrative, one where very large and powerful men responded to lawful police efforts to complete a stop (in Brown's case) or an arrest (in Garner's) with violent resistance.  From the first perspective, these are cases of outright murder, and the failure of grand jurors in Missouri and New York to indict them, evidence of clear racism.  From the second perspective, these cases are work accidents, tragedies that might have been avoided with better technique but hardly felonies...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on December 05, 2014 (boomark / email).