it’s weird to say in 2024, but i think a lot of people still haven’t really processed how violent American police really are. watching them do crowd control just once will shake any residual trust in them out of you

I want to resist any sort of grand theorizing, but so many people have no imagination and can’t understand an issue until it happens *to* them. This happened in so many ways in the height of the pandemic, like when people realized mental health existed bc their own got bad during lockdown

i’ve gotten patted down by a guy with an ak-47 in an anterior room with an interior steer door in order to buy weed and molly from a different guy. interacting with american cops in any kind of adversarial setting is significantly scarier

No shit. A lot of people are finding out the truth.

even though I was raised to not trust the cops and thought I'd been sufficiently radicalized by Ferguson and its aftermath, getting teargassed while they kept their backs to Patriot Prayer took it to a level I didn't know I had

Police are not police. They are simply paramilitary thugs now. Look at a picture of police in the mid 70's vs mid 80's, mid 90's and mid 00's. That will tell you the entire story of how police change due to the "war on drugs". We the people are the enemy now to them.

Once I started thinking of cops as a gang that’s allowed to hurt and kill people, they made a lot more sense.

I got a red light ticket with my kid on bike and my kid broke down hard. It was a simple ticket, no big deal. But what struck me was that neither of the cops tried to console my sobbing 4 year old. No “Daddy’s gonna be ok”. It was as if they were trained to specifically not express empathy.

US police have more guns and armor then the Ukrainian military

It’s always shocking to see them actively beating people with their nightsticks.

There's a "type" that signs up for this. They LOVE things like this - an opportunity to stick someone under their boot is the REASON they do it.