I can't comment on what the police do in specific situations.

[MineralMan]

I wasn't there. I didn't see the events take place. I have to leave that to investigators and maybe a jury.

However, I can comment on trends. For example, a recent case where a cop was dragged by a car, then struck in the head with a hammer resulted only in the arrest of the white man who dragged him and hit him with that hammer.

In another recent case, three cops held a black man down and killed him by asphyxiation, after he may have handed a counterfeit $20 bill to a cashier in a store. He needn't have died. Nope.

In another case, in Wisconsin, a white teenager shot one man to death and permanently crippled another. He is out on bail. He was arrested, not shot.

This has been repeated again and again and again. Black people are killed by police for doing little or nothing. White people are somehow arrested, even when they do something heinous. Even children who happen to be black are killed by the police. Even unarmed black children.

That, I can comment on. That I can see occur over and over again.

I think we can all see that, and comment on it.

Every case is unique. Every situation is different. However, the trend exists and has existed for as long as I have been alive.

[The Magistrate]

1. To Put It Bluntly, Sir

We have reached a point where the rights and wrongs of individual instances lack importance. Taken all together, there are simply too many instances. A system which produces so many instances of deadly force either needs serious repair, or it must be accepted that the production of so many instances of deadly force is at best something of no concern to the people who are part of the system.

German police kill about a dozen people each year, and this is considered a problem there, because about half of the dead were mentally unbalanced when confronted by police. Germany has about a quarter the population of the United States, so police here kill at twenty times the rate police kill in Germany.

That's a problem.

[MineralMan]

2. Indeed. Systemic Changes Are the Only Way to End Systemic Racism.

I am hoping for those changes, but am less than optimistic that they will occur.