If you were strangled on the subway how long would it be until they arrest your killer? Or would they arrest him at all? give him a medal?
Maybe you have no criminal record, maybe you have been paying rent. Maybe you are a pillar of your community and help at the local community garden. But maybe you aren’t white, aren’t Christian, or have “radical antifa” ties online. Maybe you live in a “bad” neighborhood (or like me in a good neighborhood that outsiders assume to be bad)
I find it prudent to weigh such thoughts before I get on the subway. Would it matter that I’m a teacher? that I like to study ants? The focus could as easily be how I had depression once.
Deborah Danner was 66 years old when NYPD shot her in her home. She lived in my neighborhood, studied Computer Science, had schizophrenia— but also an awareness of her disease she wrote essays about it. A bright interesting person. Gone forever. Her death excused. Her killer acquitted.
I reject the comforting fiction that this could not happen to me, or to you.
That is part of what allows it to persist, to escalate.
This most recent murder is an escalation. No excuse of the killer being a cop. Just “a marine” who cares if he was a marine? Why is that little nugget always repeated as if it has any meaning?
Brownshirts self appointed violence spigots. Are we to treat every ex-cop and “military man” as exceptions to the rule of law? It is disgusting that the police hesitated
myrmepropagandist
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