While headlines tend to focus on falling clearance rates in large liberal cities, the decline occurred nationwide in both red and blue cities, counties and states. The violent crime clearance rate, for example, fell considerably between 2019 to 2022 in big cities, which tend to be led by Democrats, as well as in small cities and suburban and rural counties, which tend to be led by Republicans.
I’m white and have been illegally searched and detained by the police and had property damaged in the process.
Let’s not pretend that’s a remotely normative experience for white people compared to people of color. My parents never had to sit down and have the talk with me about the police.
I’m white, and my father damn well talked to me about the police. He told me to be polite and cooperative until they ask to search my shit or want to ask questions. Until that point, it’s, “Yes, officer”, “No, officer”, and “It won’t happen again, officer”. But if they go to search or want to ask questions, it’s “Officer, I do not consent to a search” and “Officer, I stand on my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent”.
Yes, but that’s not a normative discussion for most white families. It is for most black families.
I had an outlier experience as have you, but that doesn’t change the role racism and bias play in policing.
Nor does it change the role class and bias play in policing. My family might have been white, but it was poor white trash. If your family wasn’t poor enough for you to need a lesson in how to talk to pigs so that they don’t beat the shit out of you, then bully for you. But don’t tell you me you know shit about most white people. You don’t know any more than I do.
You and I have the option of “cleaning up nice” and avoiding that kind of harassment. The richest black people in the United States do not have that privilege. Literally.
It was just a joke.
You and your parents are class ignorant if you think the role of police in American society has anything to do with skin color. It is to protect Ruling Class property interests first and foremost rejecting that reality makes you a fool at best, and a class enemy at worse.
OK - you’re right that the entire role of the police is to protect the propertied interests of this world.
However, that is accomplished through the systemic abuse of race as well as class. The people who choose to become police are filtered by a determination to enforce policies which are at their core racist. Even the police who are themselves non-white are often the most violent against other non-white citizens.
That’s the purpose of the institution “police”. You’re ignoring that every institution is made up of individuals, and the sorts of individuals that like joining the monopoly on violence tend to be of a very specific sort.