What's going on, everybody?
I've been watching these police encounters
that have been all over the news over the past few days.
The question I kept finding myself asking
when I was watching the video
of the lieutenant who get pulled over by the cops.
He's in military fatigues, right?
One of the troops.
He's being treated trash by the cops,
and not like just as a troop.
As a human being, he's being treated like trash.
They claim they were afraid,
but there's only one person exhibiting fear in that video,
and it's him.
And I found myself watching that video over and over again,
and I realized it's because I had one question
that kept on nagging in my brain,
and the question was,
where are the good apples?
Because we're told time and time again that these incidents
that Black Americans are experiencing
are because of bad apples, right?
There are bad apples in these police departments
who are doing these things.
They use choke holds that are not allowed.
They use excessive force.
They're violent in their words and their actions
to the people they're meant to be protecting and serving.
These are bad apples.
We've got to root them out of the force.
My question, though, is where are the good apples?
If we're meant to believe that the police system in America,
the system of policing itself is not fundamentally broken,
then we would need to see good apples.
And by the way,
I'm not saying that there are no good policemen.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm asking where the good apples are,
and what I mean by that is
where are the cops who are stopping the cop
from putting their knee on George Floyd's neck?
Because there's not one cop at that scene.
There's one cop who's on trial,
but there's not one cop at that scene, you know?
Where are the other cops
when Philando Castile is losing his life?
Like, where are the cops, you know?
Where are the good apples?
Because it's funny how we live in a society where
people who defend these cops at all costs will say,
"Oh, Black on Black crime,
and you see these people in their communities.
They don't care."
But go to any Black community,
any disenfranchised community in America,
and you will find people marching against that same crime.
You'll find communities, you'll find parents,
you'll find you find siblings.
You find people constantly saying,
"Please, we need to stop this crime.
We need to stop the gangs."
You see the community doing something, right?
I mean, the fact they call 911 when something happens,
so that tells you something.
But I don't seem to see that with the cops.
We don't see a mass uprising of police saying,
"Let's root out these people."
We don't see videos of police officers
stopping the other cop
from pushing an old man at a Black Lives Matter protest
or from beating up a kid in the street with a baton.
We don't see that.
So my question is: where are the good apples?
And honestly, I believe we don't see them
not because there are no good people on the police force.
I think there are many people
who are good on the police force.
That's why they joined, because they want to do good,
but I think it's because they themselves know
that if they do something, they're going against the system.
The system is more powerful than any individual.
The system in policing
is doing exactly what it's meant to do in America,
and that is to keep poor people in their place.
Who happens to be the most poor in America?
Black people.
You monetize them, you imprison them,
which monetizes them again.
It's a system.
It's not broken.
It's working the way it's designed to work.
And once you realize that,
I feel like you get to a place where you go,
oh, we're not dealing with bad apples.
We're dealing with a rotten tree
that happens to grow good apples.
But for the most part,
the tree that was planted is bearing the fruits
that it was intended to.