Being from Chicago I'm sure you're aware of the 1919 race riot that supposedly started when a black teenage swam into white only waters and was killed which set off a riot.
Per your other points my understanding is the country didn't really have a common, organized and logistical police force like what came about after the slave patrols were banished. Rural particularly southern cities turned them into the start of the modern concept of local police organizations. The concept of Slave patrols grew in the share cropper movement and was basically hired white dudes who would bounty hunt and chase down run away slaves. Those Slave Patrols were given badges with stars on them that look awfully familiar.
Also historically police want to be treated with the same respect as military. The big difference is to go through military training is a big accomplishment and requires a large number of hours. For most cops, their training is around 600 hours which is less than what a hair stylish has to go through. Also there is no education requirement to be a cop. Not saying that's an issue, just saying that uneducated and untrained hours is a good predictor for mistakes to happen.
Anyway, you can't force a community to believe what you want them to, you have to prove and show. I've joked that police forces should be 100% African American made up and that got a really fired up and scared reaction which is another beef that comes up, particularly from the black Panthers in the 60's.
That is a black community wants to be policed by community residents....not some suburban white dude. They also asked for a legit jury of their peers in courts vs a predominantly white justice of the peace and white jury in the 60's.
So yeah, these grievances have been made many times over the years so when I saw a white buzcutted cop pressing his knee on a captive black dude long enough that the black dude died....I wasn't and no one should have been surprised at the reaction from that community.
Which leads to the second part, as a political leader do you bring the hammers and kill more from the community that's reacting to a known and believed trope or do you handle with kid gloves?
It also didn't help that the police release was a total cover our ass. It wasn't until a video was released that showed just how dishonest the police report was which again, fueled the anger.
Anyway chances are they'll be another situation involving a cop killed a black dude.
One push being raised is to have cops keep their body cameras on at all times but they don't like that. For example there was a case in South Bend of a cop killed a black dude and the cop turned his body cam off so there was no recording. The cop (who was white) said he was attacked by the black dude. I only know of this cuz this was one of the big Buttigieg news stories and how he struggled with the black community because to them, he had a racist cop force and didn't fix it which led to Eric Logan's murder.
So yeah, there's a history in this story that the next time it happens we'll likely see another riot unless we are able to remedy that historical grievance.
