You're right, but it goes far beyond how the police treat "innocent" people, because once the police suspect a person of something they aren't "innocent" anymore. If a police officer has his knee on someones neck, that person is most likely now "guilty" of something - resisting, whatever the bullshit is. American law enforcement have so much fucking impunity and they *use* it. We give it to them. We vote for the assholes that give it to them! Then we cry when they kill people, and we rage when the legal system wont/can't hold them accountable. This is where decades of police "reform" has taken us - Little kids dressing up like police officers on Ellen and cops going viral for playing pickup basketball. I think Neil Young described this very succinctly as "a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand".
For as many riots and fires as they'll be, it's still authoritarian, conservative white people making and upholding the legal standards of conduct for police officers. Who is holding these people to account for the systemic racist problems they are encouraging? I'm sure there's a handful of board lawyers frothing at the mouth to let us know exactly why Officer Chauvin hasn't been charged with murder and eventually his legal defense team will use every angle to convince a jury believe that he was within his legal rights to choke George Floyd to death. Chauven will get off because our justice system is fucked. The response will be more bullshit police community outreach and Chauven will get quietly rehired in some other bumfuck Police Department in Oklahoma, and on and on it goes.
