Law & Chaos: it’s what’s for dinner

When I hear the catchphrase, “Law and Order,” I can’t help but think of the news stories of 2020, including:

• Extrajudicial Executions by police (George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, etc., etc., etc.)
• Police Violence against Protestors (tear gas, batons, rubber bullets)
• Federal Agents in Unmarked Vans Abduct Arrest Protestors (while wearing military-style camouflage)
• Black Teens Sent to Prison for trivial offenses (and ongoing race-based mass incarceration)

“Law and Order” is a nonsense term, not only in chaotic 2020, but for decades, we’ve had an overly aggressive criminal system with very limited accountability, and where most forms of discrimination are perfectly legal.

This system has enabled virtually unlimited discretion by police officers and prosecutors, sweeping up huge numbers of people in a racialized (yet defensible as “colorblind”) way and bullying many of them into pleading guilty.

While most of us weren’t paying attention, the Fourth Amendment (protection against unreasonable search & seizure) has been eviscerated by the courts and anyone arrested is powerless, regardless of the triviality of the “crime” (and even sometimes innocent people).

I’ll delve into the racial injustices of our criminal system more in a future post, but for now, I wanted to point out how “Law & Chaos” reflects current state of affairs and anyone who sincerely wants order needs to help transform our current system into one that has fairness and equality at its core.

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