Primula Baggins wrote:
But criminal police violence (note that I said "criminal") can't always be attributed to endemic racism. There's something else going on. A power thing—a fear of losing respect, or control? A need by some police officers to demonstrate that they still have it—that they should be able to demand instant, unquestioning obedience from civilians, and must and will punish any failure to offer it with violence to avert social chaos?
That's all vague and partial, but it's not a snap judgment.
Edited to clarify several points
There is certainly a feedback loop with police violence, in that violence directed at police leads to more police violence, just as police violence leads to more violence directed at police. Historically the police in my state of Victoria had a reputation for be too willing to shoot people - they used lethal force about twice as frequently as police in other states. But conversely, during this time they were also twice as likely to be shot in the line of duty as their interstate counterparts. Which was the cause and which was the effect? I don't know. I don't believe that either of these things is still the case today.
And, of course, there are inevitably problems where the police are demographically different to the population that they are policing, even significant historical factors aside. IIRC, one of the issues with the LAPD around the time of the Rodney King riots was that the average LAPD officer was white and lived in the suburbs dealing with a heavily black and Hispanic population in the downtown area. Had the situation been reversed and a mostly black and Hispanic police force was policing a very white area I suspect there would have been similar problems.