Quentin Lucas wants to thank the police.
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In a previous Good Men Project article, I wrote what I had hoped would be my final word on police brutality. To this point, I think I’ve kept that promise to myself and benefited from it. The wear and tear these stories have on a person is very real. The damage sustained becomes augmented when you understand that you’re a member of a group that is disproportionately targeted for police brutality.
Incidentally, I also refuse to discuss the reality that minorities, especially African-Americans and Native Americans, are wildly more prone to be abused than a white man or woman in America by the police. The evidence is prevalent and simple enough to understand, and to deny it is akin to choosing delusion. There are, by far, fewer African-Americans and Natives in America than there are white Americans, so, yes, white America will suffer at the hands of police brutality more frequently than any other demographic by the sheer fact of comprising 77.7% of the population — compared to the 13.2% of African-Americans.
Some people will just never believe that black teens are 21 times more likely to be killed by the police than their white counterparts
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Nevertheless, trying to convince a person that minorities are more aggressively, and unjustly, targeted by the police is like trying to convince a drunk that he or she shouldn’t drive. After a while, you just learn to take the keys because conversation is not the answer. Some people are just going to want to drive drunk, so to speak. Some people will just never believe that black teens are 21 times more likely to be killed by the police than their white counterparts, and that black Americans killed by the police are twice as likely to be unarmed — even though it’s not actually me but mathematics that says so.
However, a story that is maybe two weeks old — which essentially means that it’s dead in the minds of the general public — discusses Officer Dustin Alex Stone of Oregon and a colleague exposing their chief for his horrifically racist commentary. I was moved enough by Officer Stone’s bravery and honesty to discuss it, and how it relates to police brutality, with a Facebook post:
For some reason, I then felt strongly enough to make a video thanking Officer Stone for his bravery. Two realities inspired this: 1) I had an inkling that none of the major news outlets would do something similar and 2) what Officer Stone did is exactly the kind of police work that I want the police to do. I posted the video, hoping that maybe it would go viral and people would thank the police more frequently for standing up against racism — and its horrific end results — which would encourage more police to actually stand up against racism.
I posted the video, hoping that maybe it would go viral and people would thank the police more frequently for standing up against racism
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The video didn’t go viral. It only received 137 views and three comments. But, honestly, that’s more views than I’ve ever received for any single video, which encouraged me to keep believing in the idea of thanking police officers for doing good work, and even talking about it. This is the first article I’ve written about police brutality in months when I didn’t once want to throw my laptop out of a window and just scream during its creation.
Here is the aforementioned video:
Photo Credit: Getty Images
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