Cops respect power. They are racist only in that they see blacks as without power.
And for those who think this is just a racial problem, please open your eyes. This is a class problem.
Cops don't respect the law; they respect power. The middle class still has some. It still has some spending money. But the middle class is beginning to feel the rising tide of poverty lap at their skirts.
The first victims in this class war were the marginal folks in this country: the blacks, the latinos, the immigrants, the mentally unbalanced, the women, and the children.
Well, now the middle class is beginning to feel vulnerable. Some of it is already happening. Mothers live by fear and infect their children with it. The children aren't allowed out of their sight. Helicopter moms, they are called. Ten-year-olds are locked in the car while the mother stops at a convenience store for five minutes. You know: someone might just steal her perfectly normal 10-year- old son in broad daylight. From a rural Dollar General parking lot. This is the angst of the times as money and opportunity evaporates.
The gun violence has already crept into the schools. All these killings in schools are from the most vulnerable: those who see no future for themselves. It is an indicator of the pressure being put on our kids as the banks suck up all the money.
So the police will be afraid of larger and larger swatches of America as the seawalls buttressing the middle class crumble. When the largest class becomes the poor and the middle, invisible. Then the police will treat all of us the way they treated Mike Brown and Eric Garner.
The police only respect power.