Let’s be honest about why George Floyd died

It was the look on Derek Chauvin’s face wasn’t it?

The casualness of his violence was the shocking bit right?

This wasn’t an officer under pressure, this was the muscle memory movement of someone who has used this level of unnecessary force with gleeful abandon, many, many, many times.

This was the action of a person who believed they had the total right to brutalise any other human for merely disrespecting his authority.

This is the mindset privilege that utterly rules American Police…

…the two cultural forces that have collided within American Policing is one of white supremacy and one of their Military Industrial Complex.

The NZ Police Force was created out of the Mounted Constabulary who were formed to beat the Christ out of Māori as white settlers nervously started stealing land. Likewise, the embryonic American police force spooked by slavery revenge fantasies found early recruits in the south from ex-slave hunters.

Police founded by white supremacy to protect laws that were anti African-American took until the 60s and 70s to reform, but those blatantly racist laws were simply modified to ‘broken window’ policing that allowed the same level of racism under the old laws.

Add to this deep culture of racism the Military Industrial Complex who managed to get Billions out of Federal Budgets to sell surplus war equipment from the Gulf War into domestic Police forces.

Alongside this equipment transfer came the military culture of total dominance by use of over whelming force.

This blank cheque to use lethal force at anyone for any transgression is a terrifyingly brutal way to police your civilian population in a democracy, especially when those using that force have deep cultures of hateful white supremacy.

Those titanic forces were all on display in Derek Chauvin’s actions as he casually snuffed out a human life with as much detachment as a self important bureaucrat ticking a box.

We are fortunate that African-Americans are only looking for equality and not revenge.

The toxic culture of white supremacy and domestic Military Industrial Complex profit margins are what killed George Floyd, not just one Police Officer’s knee to his throat.

 

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