Zachary Hammond’s murder is only the most recent example, not of institutional racism, but of the increasingly blurry line between our civil and military authorities, likewise the dug-in adversarial, even predatory, relationship that now exists between law enforcement and the public it ostensibly serves. This phenomenon transcends race, although race admittedly can be a factor in how it plays […]
The great American melting pot is at a rolling boil. Thousands of protesters blocking traffic and staging “die-ins” in response to a spate of white-on-black killings committed by police officers in New York (Staten Island, Eric Garner, 7.17.14), Missouri (Ferguson, Michael Brown, 8.9.14), Ohio (Cleveland, Tamir Rice, 11.22.14), and Arizona (Phoenix, Rumain Brisbon, 12.2.14). I hope their efforts amount to […]
Last Thursday’s Diane Rehm Show focused on events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the fact that law enforcement officials nationwide are more likely to stop, question, arrest and kill black people than they are non-blacks. You heard it here first, folks. But when one man called in to suggest that police officers do these kinds of things because they’re bullies, […]
