How to fix American policing

AMERICA IS engulfed in its most widespread, sustained unrest since the late 1960s. It was sparked by an act of police brutality caught on camera. George Floyd, an African-American, allegedly used a counterfeit $20 at a convenience store on May 25th. Derek Chauvin, who has since been fired by the Minneapolis police force and charged with murder, handcuffed Mr Floyd, who, citing claustrophobia, refused to get into a police car. Mr Chauvin, who is white, shoved him to the ground and pressed his knee into Mr Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes—nearly three of them after Mr Chauvin’s fellow officers failed to detect Mr Floyd’s pulse.

In the days since, Americans have seen their police forces look and act less like public servants sworn to protect their fellow citizens than like an invading army. A policeman in Brooklyn yanked off a protester’s mask to pepper-spray him in the face. One day earlier, also in New York, a police officer reportedly called a young protesting woman a “stupid fucking bitch”, before hurling her onto the pavement hard enough to leave her concussed, with a seizure. A phalanx of police storming down a residential street in Minneapolis paused to shoot paint canisters at a woman on her own front porch. Police across America have tear-gassed peaceful protesters and, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, there have been around 250 incidents of reporters being punched, attacked with tear-gas canisters and shot with pepper balls.