It made more sense to me once I understood that innocent people had died, that homes were broken into with scant evidence for searching them, that teenagers and young adults were frisked in a ritual of humiliation. It makes sense to me now how animosity could brew in that environment, and why some insisted that the police were the biggest gang on the streets.
There's never a point in British or American history where the police were set up to help black people. They've only ever been used to harrass, criminilize, and harm. Even the history of their founding points to this, to deny the abject harm police cause to people, especially black people, is to deny the racism built into the founding of both countries. When a country routinely called humans "cattle" there's no redemption to be found. They need to be torn to the ground and rebuilt, abolition is the only way forward. People want to deny the racism though, they look the other way, call history biased, and choose to ignore the countless harms caused. Rather than work to something better for everyone, because that's the issue. They don't want to put in the work to build something better when the current system already works in their favor. The age old, "why fix what isn't broke," when it's broken for everyone else since it's existence.
