Why Policing Is Broken

Years ago, while working on a story for Rolling Stone about why so few white-collar offenders went to jail, I realized I needed to better understand why the criminal-justice system worked with such monstrous efficiency to put poorer people in prison.

What I thought would be a short detour to tackle that question ended up consuming five years, ending in two books about structural inequities in modern policing: The Divide, and I Can’t Breathe, the story of the brutal killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island.

There are obvious similarities between the Garner case and that of George Floyd. Both victims were African American men in their forties, grandfathers trying to put troubled pasts behind them. Both were approached over minor offenses.

In Floyd’s case, the issue was the alleged use of a counterfeit $20 bill. Garner was not even accused of that much. He was spotted standing on a corner the morning of July 17th, 2014, by a senior police official who sent two detectives back to the spot to, as police later phrased it, “address specific conditions … concerning the sale of illegal cigarettes.” I would later find out through my own reporting that Garner had not been selling cigarettes that morning, among other things, because he was ill.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/why-policing-is-broken-taibbi-1014652/