Though I am white, I've had a somewhat similar experience, in which I came to a sudden realization that the police were not a force there to protect me and could care less about my rights. I bring up this personal anecdote, by the way, not to suggest that race doesn't matter. I bring this up to bring in the notion that police tend to protect entrenched economic interests—a reality compounded by racism and segregation.
I attended UCLA from 1997 - 2001. I lived in an area known as Westwood, which though expensive enough on its own, borders the much more expensive residential area of Bel Air. During finals week, UCLA students had a method of blowing off steam known as "midnight yell," in which we'd come out on our balconies and scream for a few minutes at midnight. Well, starting around 1999, I think, our midnight yells started to get a bit more lively then was really warranted. This started, by the way, for those of you who may know the area, on Glenrock Ave, which is where I lived. I think it began with someone throwing some old furniture off their balcony. Then someone lit an old sofa chair on fire in the middle of the street. Then the police started coming out and lining up along the sides of the road, pointing their guns up at us on our balconies. Which, of course, just made us want to get wilder. But that's about as far as it got that year.
Each midnight yell seemed to escalate, though. By 2000, the riot police were out, cordoning off Glenrock. It had somehow turned from misdirected youth blowing off steam to misdirected youth getting angry and riled up about being threatened with brute force. It had started as bored and frustrated students getting entertainment, to bored and frustrated students feeling unsafe. Some students had signs saying things like "Riot Police Cause Riots." It was weird seeing youth in riot gear standing there with stone faces, roughly our ages, bearing arms stocked with rubber bullets. And finally, one night they started closing in. I remember standing there watching them bear down on us, telling my roommate, "They won't actually do anything to us! We're UCLA students!" He pulled on my shirt and made me follow him running down the street.
I was wrong. They shot kids that night with rubber bullets, knocked some down aggressively, and arrested others. So I can thank my roommate for keeping me from getting arrested, or worse.
I couldn't believe it. And there was nothing in the campus newspaper about it. Nothing about the needlessly brutal actions taken by the LAPD. Was it really necessary to shoot and beat down UCLA students?
I had been somewhat politically aware of injustice at that point—it's hard not to be in a place like L.A., in which the glaring socio-economic differences between neighborhoods immediately adjoining one another are front and center. But that moment was when I realized that the police were not there to protect me. They were there to protect the interests of rich Bel Air residents. God forbid students should be setting sofas on fire in the streets of Westwood! And that's when I began to better understand why the police are often perceived as a threat in poor neighborhoods across America. Because they will use aggressive force not to protect the residents of those neighborhoods, but rather to make a show of protecting the wealthier inhabitants of other neighborhoods.
I don't want to sound like I disdain all police. I don't. I was pretty radical in my thinking at that time, and I really did hate them and what they stood for. But as an adult, I've come to appreciate that force is necessary to maintain law and order. The key is in how that force is applied. Is it respectful of the rights of citizens? Or is it