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The death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 triggered massive protests across the country. Though the protests are unified in calling for widespread changes in how policing works in America, there is disagreement on what those changes should be. Some protestors are calling for aggressive police reforms. Others, like Black Lives Matter as an
organization, demand complete defunding and disbanding of police departments.
Among conservatives, this disagreement manifests differently. The question plaguing conservatives is whether the whole policing system is broken or whether there are a few "bad apples" among police departments who are exploiting a basically functional system.
In the wake of Floyd's death, this distinction is pointless. It no longer matters if statistics or studies parse out to reveal racism in policing, because society is more than statistics. The nationwide agony and anger of millions of black Americans — agony that knows no class or geographic barriers — is evidence enough.
The fact that millions of American citizens do not trust their law enforcement system to represent them, to respect them, to protect them, and to grant them the assumption of innocence is, in itself, a systemic problem. Conservatives must do better at acknowledging this as a prerequisite to proposals for police reform. In fact, one of the basic principles of conservatism — skepticism about the perfectibility of human society — requires us to be open to the possibility of systemic injustice and creative about addressing it.
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