‘Overkill’: 21st century term for inexcusable policing

When fire hoses sent black bodies skidding and writhing along the sidewalks of Birmingham in 1963, a lot of white people, high and dry, nodded, “Well, if that’s what it takes to keep the peace . . . ”

And so it goes, 51 years later: different police-tactic horrors, but the same nodding of the self-satisfied and oblivious.

Here’s what also remains the same: the construction of straw men to allow the unaffected to dismiss the grievances of the affected.