Discussing the Tyre Nichols incident

 So...as you might know, we had another one in America. Another what, you might ask? Another incident in which cops went overkill on arresting a guy and the guy died from it. This one is just so WTF I have to comment. I won't post any videos, if you wanna look into it, you can look it up, it's very graphic, but yeah. They pulled this dude over, dragged him out of the car, and beat the everloving crap out of him, and then neglected to get him the medical aid he required. He died. I mean, it sounds so much worse than I even described it, the amount of violence here was just grotesque and uncalled for. If a gang banger did this due a rival gang member, that would sound about right. Ya know, crips, and bloods, blah blah blah. But POLICE doing this to this random freaking guy? It's crazy. This is the most gratuitous example of police violence I've seen since George Floyd, and this actually makes that look relatively civil. That's how bad this was. Anyway, all five cops are being charged with murder, and I say, good. Ya know, as I always say, I'm very enlightened centrist on these issues. Is the conflict perspective on police correct? Yes. Is the functionalist one also correct? Yes. Which one is more correct? Neither, both are lenses through which to view the institution of police. A government needs police, but at the same time police can abuse their powers, and this was flagrant abuse. How I feel about various incidents tends to vary depending on context. I know the BLM crowd loves to criticize police in any and all incidents. Oh, some crazy guy with a knife charges at a police officer causing him to run for his life and shoot the dude?" Oh, well he should have used a taser." I'm serious, I see people say stuff like that, it's like, "what?" I mean, if you're gonna do something stupid like suicide by cop, you get what you get. Even in incidents where the incident is POTENTIALLY dangerous and they get a little too twitchy, i kind of understand. I mean, maybe it's being autistic, but I can understand misreading a person's movements in the heat of the moment, these guys are trained to protect themselves and if they even think you're gonna pull a gun on them, and they get a little trigger happy, I can kind of understand. Ya know? But this....this is just...wtf. Like they're not even trying. I don't know how anyone can look at this and think it's okay. 

So yeah, RIP Tyre Nichols, and I hope those cops who beat him to death are brought to justice. This is pretty straightforward, there's little nuance to this, and it seems obvious that the answer here is that this is wrong and the police did not act properly.