How White People Use the Police as a Weapon

FEATURING JODY ARMOUR – Since the police arrest of two innocent black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks several weeks ago, the internet seems to be flooded with a new story seemingly every other day of white people calling the police on black people for no good reason:

A white golf player calling police on five black women golfers, a white woman calling the cops on two black men in Oakland for barbequing, a white Yale student calling police on a black Yale student who was simply napping, a white neighbor calling police on the black guests of an AirBnB as they were getting ready to leave, and on and on.

It is common knowledge that when police encounter black people there is a very real possibility of it turning into a fatal interaction. Should we view the police as a weapon in the hands of whites against blacks?

Jody Armour, is the Race and Criminal Justice Correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali; he is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America. He is also a Soros Justice Senior Fellow of The Open Society Institute’s Center on Crime, Communities and Culture.