This archive report was first published on 14 June 2020.
US Police Torn Between Shame and Pride for Their Badge ¶
June 14, 2020 - The killing of George Floyd while in police custody has sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and racism in the United States.
Several police officers interviewed by AFP expressed horror over Floyd's death, but also pushed back against accusations that the actions of the officers involved reflected the values of law enforcement across the country.
Michael O'Meara, head of New York state's Police Benevolent Association, said, 'I am not Derek Chauvin… He killed someone. We didn't. We are restrained.'
However, experts say Floyd's death was not an isolated incident, but added to long-running anger and distrust of police officers among America's black communities.
According to Louisa Aviles, director of group violence intervention at the National Network for Safe Communities, 'There is a long American history of harm and violence imposed on black Americans under color of law that policing as an institution has to acknowledge.'
Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that officers in the US on average kill three people a day, with at least half of those killings being unnecessary.
African Americans represent the majority of those killed, with studies showing that one in every 1,000 black men in the US will die at the hands of police.
Ben Kelso, president of the San Diego chapter of the National Black Police Association, said, 'We spend a lot of hours on what they call 'perishable skills,' which is driving and shooting and arresting people and things like that. But we don't spend as much time on just learning to talk to people.'
A growing list of police departments across the United States have already imposed a ban on neck restraints similar to the one that killed Floyd and reinforced disciplinary measures.
Steps are also being taken at the federal level to carry out reforms, with some in law enforcement saying they are being used as scapegoats for larger problems in society and rejecting growing calls to defund the police.
