Police brutality in Seattle

A Seattle-area police officer was caught on camera in an altercation with two teen girls. Apparently the offense was jay walking. Warning: the video is disturbing.

It makes me sick.
It makes me sick that we live in a world where police officers apparently aren’t trained, and/or aren’t selected with enough rigor, to know how to handle something as routine and nonviolent as a jay walking incident without ending up in a shit show like this. Police officers are paid with our tax money to, in a better world, both protect and empower us to feel safe in our own public spaces. This is the opposite of that in all ways. How the hell did things escalate like this? Why didn’t this guy wait for back-up if he felt like things were getting rowdy? Is there no protocol that he could have fallen back on that didn’t involve punching a teenage girl in the face?
It makes me sick that we still live in such a racist society (despite all the Obama era, post-racial rhetoric)–a place where an incident like this can go down, period, but then when it hits the news, some commentators can wonder if these were “bad girls.”
It makes me sick that we are confronted with the issue of police brutality over and over again, and somehow it still seems to surprise the public when it goes down. It’s time to see the connection between all these seemingly disparate incidents and actually do something about it. It’s time to confront the racism–both institutional and individual–that keeps this country from living up to its proclaimed but unrealized values.

Thanks to Heather for the heads up.