People Talk About Officers Being Assaulted During the George Floyd Protests. Not Enough Talk About Protestors Being Assaulted by Officers.


     During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the right made a spectacle of looters and criminals who took advantage of diverted police attention to commit crimes. It's a stretch, for sure, given that 99 percent of protests were peaceful and those that were not often saw violence instigated by far-right groups like the Proud Boys, but lying is what the right does. Mike Pence falsely blamed the 2020 murder of a federal agent in California on nearby George Floyd protestors, when it was in fact committed by a follower of the far-right Boogaloo movement, which seeks to start a race war between blacks and whites.

     However, one aspect of this that isn't talked about enough is that the instances of violence were less an assault on police and more a back-and-forth between police and rioters. On January 6th, not a single Capitol cop was ever charged for excessive force against rioters; in fact, most criticism came from officers not using enough force, although in many cases these officers were simply too overwhelmed in number to be reasonably expected to do much.

     During the summer of 2020, on the other hand, dozens of police officers faced charges for attacking peaceful protestors. I've already highlighted a few examples: 19 police officers were charged with assault in Austin, Texas, for permanently disabling a number of protestors with pepperball guns (two more have since been indicted for brutality during the protests, with one officer even taking the finger off of a medic); in Kentucky, Cory P. Evans was sentenced to two years in federal prison for clubbing a protestor in the back of the head while he was on his knees. There are more indictments to inform you of: Louisville Officer Katie Crews was arrested on federal charges related to the killing of popular restaurant owner David McAtee. In Kansas City, a video showing police pepper spraying, grabbing, and slamming a man to the ground for a curfew violation went viral; Officer Nicholas M. McQuillen was indicted on a misdemeanor charge for pepper spraying a teen female protestor next to McQuillen.

     Let's also not forget the root of these conflicts was violence by police: two KC officers would be charged with felonies for using excessive force against Breonna Hill during a trespassing arrest in 2019; Officer Eric Devalkenaere was convicted of manslaughter and armed criminal action for killing Kansas City resident Cameron Lamb; that's in Kansas City alone. 

     2020 was seen as an attack on police, when in reality it was more of a war than a massacre. Just as many police officers assaulted protestors as rioters exploiting peaceful protestors to steal and damage property assaulted police, and it was the police who brought the civil unrest upon themselves in the first place. This is especially worth noting as the only real moments that went viral were "touching" moments between police and protestors, when in reality the men and women who arrested a CNN reporter, who assaulted dozens of peaceful protestors, and who told a five-year-old girl they wouldn't kill her as long as she didn't damage any property were not interested in serving their communities. The social and legal implications of 2020 continue, as they should, to this day.

     The police departments in Louisville, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Mount Vernon have been the subject of pattern-or-practice investigations. President Biden has restored funding to the Community Oriented Policing Services Office and signed a historic executive order reforming policing. Dozens of states have passed prudent police reform laws. Now, it is time to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to ensure we meet this moment. Congressional Republicans have claimed that negotiations failed in August because Democrats wanted to defund the police, when the Fraternal Order of Police and National Association of Police Organizations admitted that wasn't the case and were involved in writing the executive order President Biden signed. It's time to put the political games aside and meet the moment.

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