A FORMER COP REVIEWS HEATHER MAC DONALD’S NEW BOOK, THE WAR ON COPS:

The unavoidable reality is this: The police are the only part of the government that is authorized to kill Americans on the spot, and make the decision to kill in an instant. This is not true of Special Forces, the CIA, the NSA, NASA, Congress, the president, the IRS, the Department of the Interior, Exterior, or somewhere in between.

They are also the people called to respond to every single problem in poor, mostly minority communities. Noise complaint? Cops. Kids hanging out on the corner? Cops. Someone is hungry or drunk? Cops. Your kids won’t obey you? Cops. Your cousin is suicidal? Cops. Your neighbor is schizophrenic? Cops. Your landlord is a jerk? Cops. After all the rhetoric and nonsense, poor, urban neighborhoods call for police services more than anywhere else.

I don’t know if this is evidence that the Black Lives Matter movement is totally disconnected from normal urban culture, or if this is evidence of an astounding lack of self-awareness. Remember that the defining quality of the role of police, versus all other social and governmental support, is that they are expected to be obeyed or they can, will, and often are required to use force. Police are government power in its plainest form.

This is a concept called “The law of the instrument,” coined by Abraham Maslow to describe the over-reliance on familiar tools. “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Maslow said. For our social decline in the inner city, all we have is police, and we are amazed that everyone has started to look like a criminal to them.

Read the whole thing.