When Killer Cops Get a Pass, There are Consequences

"That 400-year-old system, the Westphalian nation-state, is disintegrating around us even now. Its 200-year-old progeny, the "police" system as we know it, will almost certainly slide into the dustbin of history with it."

When the United States dissolves, as is it inevitably shall, the range of possibilities looks something like this:

At one end of the continuum, former police officers move on. The worst of them may find themselves shunned by right-thinking people, but most of them get real jobs, become productive members of society and spend the rest of their lives trying to live down their sordid pasts … and maybe even succeeding.

At the other end of the continuum, former cops are hunted down like vermin and exterminated without mercy by their victims, their victims’ families and their victims’ friends, with onlookers cheering the executions on, or at least declining to intervene.

The jury’s acquittal of Ramos and Cicinelli was a vote for the latter outcome. It was also a vote for continuing and escalating police lawlessness. The less the specifically guilty individuals pay for their crimes now, the more such crimes we will have, the more the generally guilty class will pay later … and the sooner that later will come.-When Killer Cops Get a Pass, There Are Consequences