Before I moved to Los Angeles, I didn’t know what it was like to live in a police state. Once I moved there, I realized that it’s a city where people are used to the constant helicopter flyovers, violent pullovers, sirens ringing out 24 hours a day, cruisers speeding down their residential streets, and cops who pull out their weapons just to approach you. Many Americans don’t see this kind of behaviour from their police as wrong. The mantra of cops being “heroes,” a kind of domestic military fighting crime on their behalf, is so ingrained into American imperial doublespeak that there’s actually a debate around whether cops should be able to shoot unarmed civilians on sight. Because that civilian pissed them off or questioned their authority or looked like they were scared and about to run. It’s not normal. And while I know this happens in a lot of countries, there are also many places in the world where cops aren’t given the green light to terrorize citizens in this way.
Because yes, in America @cops_are_terrorists, and this account does a great job of collecting the evidence. Watching how these cops behave, I see immense fragility. I see anger issues, pettiness, and rage. I see low vibrational, underdeveloped people who are given power by the state to snap at any perceived slight from the public and weapons to back it up. And I see a coordinated, state-sanction terror campaign designed to keep Americans living in fear and to discourage them from exercising their right to fight back against despotic governance. It’s not freedom or protection. It’s pathetic and a form of mental and emotional imprisonment that so many Americans don’t realize they’re living in. We would all be so much better off with a system focused on rehabilitation, recovery, therapy, education, health, and income subsidy instead of allowing inequality to flourish and using uniformed thugs to enforce it.
