New York Post: ‘Forget the National Guard, send in the moms’: http://t.co/WUZBsrtwi9 pic.twitter.com/jsg9AMJ5QE

— BI Politics (@bi_politics) April 29, 2015

So, we’re supposed to consider the mom assaulting this person, who turns out to be her son, a hero and that her actions should be lauded? In one sense, yes - because she’s taking it upon herself to get her son out of harms’ way and to try and instill a sense of right and wrong. She wasn’t going to let her son get arrested or treated the way Freddie Gray was and end up as yet another statistics.

But in another sense, no - because she should have been doing that parenting well before the protests turned into riots the other day, and her assaulting her son could just have easily turned into yet more arrests by the BPD for criminal activity. She should have instilled that sense of right and wrong and the sense to understand the distinction between the two well before the protests, and that to take up force against the police would mean and excuse law enforcement force against him at a time when it is clearly established that the BPD has a reckless disregard for public safety with these nickel rides and doesn’t care about the lives of those living in the communities it polices.

I’ve been saying this for a while, but Ferguson wasn’t an isolated event. Communities across the nation face the same problems with racial profiling and excessive force by police, but there isn’t enough political pressure to reform the system - both on the policing end (to end racial profiling and limit excessive force incidents, especially deadly force) and on the justice system end (requiring political action to reform the laws on justified use of force, prosecuting cops who engage in excessive force, etc.)