"Innocent people don't run from cops" is a naive cliche offered to justify police brutality ("Injuries in van ride focus of city probe," April 21).
Another troubling defense of police brutality against blacks is to raise the issue of black-on-black violence — as if that somehow excuses police excesses. Rather than justify police brutality, black-on-black violence should make us ask what is wrong with our society that fosters that violence? The answer has to do with lingering systemic racism.
Is it any wonder many black kids get involved in crime when they grow up in widespread poverty, have parents who cannot find a job with a living wage, attend underfunded schools that don't engage them or prepare them to succeed and live in neighborhoods plagued by gangs and drugs?
The war on poverty failed because it didn't deal with the underlying racism that kept businesses out of black neighborhoods, racism that kept blacks from good paying jobs, racism that kept local and state government budgets from adequately funding schools and community services in black neighborhoods, racism that kept blacks from moving into white neighborhoods, racism that focused police efforts on arresting blacks for minor offenses which introduced them to prison, real criminals and a life of crime. That crime takes place mostly in the black neighborhoods, thus black-on-black violence.
Many whites find it easy to dismiss allegations of police brutality with an assumption that excess force was likely an exaggeration but in any event the black victim brought it on himself. Videos and social media are revealing the truth of police harassment and brutality of blacks, and that truth leads to other questions about the underlying racism that still persists throughout our society.
Austin Barry, Eldersburg