A quick note, I have seen lots of memes and posts lately about individual police officers being upstanding people on the job. I agree, I know some fantastic officers. That does not mean, however, that policing in the US is not racist, bad, and leads to very negative outcomes for primarily BIPOC. It is the system of policing, not police officers as a whole. We hear all the time that the problem is a few bad apples. No, the problem is a system that allows and encourages the behavior of a few bad apples and the rest of the system that oppresses BIPOC. When someone tampered with Tylenol in Chicago in 1982, we did not say oh it was just a few bad bottles. No, we re-manufactured the dang bottles and passed federal anti-tampering laws. Every time you struggle to take off a safety cap and safety seal on a new bottle, that is because “A total of seven people died in the original poisonings, with several more deaths in subsequent copycat crimes.” Around a dozen people died and we redid the entire system. All that because of a few bad apples. One attempted shoe boomer, and we end up taking all our shoes off to get on a plane. Billions of shoes on and off. Think of how many BIPOC have died at the hands of police, been incorrectly killed by the States, and spent years and decades behind bars. It is the system, NOT the officers. They just work the way the system designed their jobs to work. If you care about police officers, CHANGE THE D*(& SYSTEM!!! If you care about the blue line then change the D&^% system.

©words by Dan DeMarle 5/8/21