On Portland's streets: Anger, fear, and a fence that divides
apnews.com
apnews.com
This sentence hits at the heart of the issue, but not in the way the author intended.
Our politics is no longer about persuasion, but is entirely about division. The author here is a participant, unwitting or otherwise, in this division. He writes "The nation is seething with anxiety and deeply divided about... the value of Black lives". There is no division about the value of black lives. The division is about specific policies and their affect on black lives.
Do we need less policing in black neighborhoods, or more? Do we need to change the rules of engagement for police officers? Do we need laws about the use of body cameras? Do we need more community outreach?
But these aren't the questions that are pervading the public discourse. Why? Because politicians and journalists are intent on obfuscating the real issues. Because the goal isn't to solve the problems, the goal is to harness the outrage that these problems generate, and channel that outrage into clicks and/or votes.
For example, consider a policy that you haven't mentioned: Should police be required to live in their precincts? The answer, from Peelian principles, is an easy yes.
If you'd like to know what people are actually asking for in terms of change, the "Eight [changes which] Can't Wait" [0]; this includes changing the rules of engagement and also giving police training which will help them de-escalate. For laws about body cameras, there are several national trends in state law which tend towards mandating their usage and ensuring that footage is released to the public [1].
However, that was all before this spring. The current situation in my metro area is that thousands of local folks have come out of the suburbs to occupy downtown in a continuous months-long protest against police brutality, and the police have responded by summoning federal agents for backup and conducting a counter-siege against said local folks. We just had the city council vote 4-1 to defund the police, and the only no-voter said she wanted more defunding. More defunding is coming.
We are so far past "less policing in black neighborhoods". No, the time has come to stop supporting the police as a nexus of hate and corruption, and to take away their guns, toys, and cash.