Stop. Police.

The past few days I have spent what feels like far too many hours staring down into the abyss. Millions of Americans, equipped with high definition video cameras are posting ugly encounters with police. Some of them are given the tag "viral."
Which is funny, since we're still in the midst of a global pandemic. A hundred thousand plus Americans have died from a virus.
Okay. Maybe it's not funny.
Maybe it's tragic.
The image of a seventy-five year old man being shoved to the ground by Buffalo police in riot gear is one that won't go away. The officer who pushed him just kept walking. Just. Kept. Walking. Another officer paused as if to check on the fallen man was urged to keep moving. Two medics walking with the group of officers stopped to attend to the man who made the mistake of being in front of this unstoppable blue wave.
All of this was captured, not by cell phones or security cameras, but by a local news crew who was on the scene.
Now it's time to get to the ugliest part: This old man was white. He wasn't carrying a sign, or screaming epithets. This old man was standing directly in front of a local news camera crew. Additional footage was taken by others across the street. Not in Selma, Los Angeles, or Minneapolis. This happened on the mean streets of Buffalo, New York. So if the police will do this in Buffalo in front of TV cameras, what makes anyone believe that their behavior is any better in any other city when the cameras are not present? How many black men, women and children have been pushed to the ground and left behind by police who just kept walking? How many black men, women and children have been killed by police who just kept walking?
The answer to the question about what about all those cops taking a knee and fist bumping protesters would be this: The exception that proves the rule. This realization comes as a great shock to me, as I have known a great many law enforcement officers and I have never considered any of them to be bad people. Exceptions do not make a rule untrue. Which shakes the foundations of my life. Visions of cops and robbers as distinct groups and how we used to know who the good guys were fade away. How could this have happened? When and where did it all begin?
I do not know.
But I do know it's time for it to end. Now.