When Police View Citizens as Enemies
This is what escalation looks like. “The situation on the ground in Minneapolis & St. Paul has shifted & the response tonight will be different as a result,” the Minnesota Department of Public Safety tweeted as businesses boarded up their windows and the Saturday sun sank low over the Twin Cities. The National Guard and law-enforcement presence would “triple in size,” the state agency warned, “to address a sophisticated network of urban warfare.”
“Urban warfare” is a striking choice of words for a state agency, and one that cable-news anchors seized on and repeated in the fiery for eight minutes and 46 seconds. Prosecutors charged Chauvin with manslaughter and third-degree murder on Friday, but three other police officers involved in the incident remain free. And the current protests are about not one black man’s death, , and centuries of discrimination, dehumanization, and denial of basic civil rights.
