strong, the violent, the aggressive, triumph over the vulnerable
At their worst, the police can do this.
Police following the Peel principles are a great improvement to society. Many of the US's fragmented matrix of police forces have forgotten them and succumbed to lazy racism and target-driven enforcement.
The sad thing is that the deterioration of professionalism among police forces has led to the world that paublyrne described. I mean... in practice... for a large number of Americans... it already IS a world where "strong, the violent, the aggressive, triumph over the vulnerable". It's just that the "strong, violent and aggressive" are police, or gangs, or your occasional supremacist.
I feel bad for certain demographics in the US... but don't really have any sort of realistic solution for their issues. I just wish it wasn't this way.
It is fixable, once people want to fix it. But that generally only happens once the status quo is seen as really unacceptable. Whenever police violence is brought up, at the moment there are plenty of people willing to say "well she deserved it" or "it didn't happen that way". Enough of them need to be brought round or embarrased into silence.
The UK equivalent would be the rebuilding of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to stop it being explicitly sectarian.
The solution is to aggressively and systematically break the blue code of silence by offering massive incentives for cops to rat out their fellow officers for misbehavior.
Science thrives on peer review and making sure members of the community keep each other in check; let's give the police incentives to do that.
Also, break the police unions. Make it a felony for police officers to unionize.
At their worst, the police can do this.
Police following the Peel principles are a great improvement to society. Many of the US's fragmented matrix of police forces have forgotten them and succumbed to lazy racism and target-driven enforcement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_Principles