While an individual police officer might be brought to trial, and even less likely might end up being incarcerated, this really does nothing at all to shift, change, uproot the systems and structures that are actually responsible for the killings, and the harassment, and the injury done to particular populations by the institution of policing. We devolve to the individual so often because the structural and systemic feels so daunting, and how are we going to actually shift and change that? Also, because it feels so good to enact vengeance on people who’ve harmed us. Part of the conversation we don’t have is just how much liminal pleasure people get out of vengeance, which is a big part of why it’s so hard to uproot that feeling and that desire within us as human beings. 

The cops are still killing people now! George Floyd is dead, and so are many other people. And the killing hasn’t stopped. The harassment hasn’t stopped. The injuries haven’t stopped. And yeah, sure, Derek Chauvin, maybe he’s convicted, maybe he’s not. But we’re still gonna see 1,000 people killed every single year. That just should tell you something about the futility of these responses. 

 

And just how I get it, like individual people might want individual — what they call accountability — and what I call really what people want, which is punishment. But you know, that’s not going to actually solve anything, policing is derivative of a broader social injustice. So it’s really impossible for non-oppressive policing to exist in a fundamentally oppressive and unjust society.

 

 

Mariame Kaba (We Do This Til We Free Us)

 

they named a police reform bill on a man murdered by police who would not be protected by the bill. the only way to reduce police violence is to reduce the police and put the money into the community to alleviate people's suffering and meet needs.