The brutal death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers has sparked protests and riots around the United States. We have witnessed humanity at its finest and at its ugliest. Citizens of faraway nations have expressed solidarity with black Americans; police officers have marched alongside protesters; protesters have defended businesses against looting and destruction. At the same time, rioters have burned down buildings and looted businesses; protesters have been pepper-sprayed and beaten; cops have been shot and run over with cars.
At the root of the unrest is the Black Lives Matter movement, which began with the acquittal of George Zimmerman in 2013 and rose to national prominence in the wake of Michael Brown’s death in 2014. My view of BLM is mixed. On the one hand, I agree that police departments too often have tolerated and even enabled corruption. Rather than relying on impartial third parties, departments often decide whether to discipline their own officers; the legal doctrine of qualified immunity sets what many say is an unreasonably high bar for civilians bringing civil-rights lawsuits against police officers. Bodycams (which increase transparency, to the benefit of both wrongly treated police suspects and wrongly accused police) are not yet universal. In the face of police unions that oppose even reasonable reforms, Black Lives Matter seems a force for positive change.
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