LOS ANGELES – Anger, fear, and frustration have erupted on the streets of downtown Los Angeles and beyond, as thousands of people continue to protest what some might call "‘the other" epidemic in America, the death of African American men at the hands of police.
Jasmyne Cannick has been at the forefront of many protests. This time, she has been watching the tension unfold from home.
“We’ve been through this situation dozens of times. It’s like wash, rinse, and repeat,” Cannick said.
She’s a community advocate who has been calling for change for a long time.
“I can think back to 2014 when we had three nights of consistent protesting in Los Angeles over the death of Ezell Ford, which happened here in L.A., and the death of Mike Brown, which happened in Ferguson," she said. "I was out as a journalist covering that, and I remember because I got arrested. I was one of the people arrested with the other 300 people when the police got tired of folks protesting on the streets of downtown Los Angeles.”
But this time Cannick says, there is a wrinkle in the storyline.
“This has been going on longer than I’ve been alive, the difference today in 2020 is the cell phone video," she said. "What is happening is the level of frustration is a lot higher because it’s no longer someone telling someone what happened, it’s people physically being able to see it for themselves.”
Someone else who was watching the protests from home, was retired LAPD sergeant and author of the book Black and Blue, Cheryl Dorsey.
“So as the protests were occurring and I was looking at it on television, what I immediately thought was here we go again,” Dorsey said.
Dorsey, a mother of four, spent 20 years on the force. She says until something fundamentally changes, these incidents will keep happening.
“There is a failure to hold officers accountable when they engage in police misconduct, and so because of this we have reoccurrences and it’s not until it makes national news that everyone begins to clutch their pearls and act like they’re surprised,” she said.
But according to Dorsey, protesting is not the most constructive way to voice dissent. She says the change needs to take place at the ballot box.
“To make sure that we have elected officials like district attorneys who are ultimately responsible for bringing criminal charges in cases like this," she said. "For mayors who the police chief serves at the pleasure of.”
Cannick insists we need to take it a step further than that.
“How do we take the money out of politics in terms of police unions donating to the races for sheriffs and district attorneys? Because you can’t have Bonnie investigate Clyde," she said. "That’s why we always have the same outcome; officers not facing criminal charges in these situations.”
Until those things happen and this "other epidemic" comes to an end, Cannick says, expect the protests to be another part of our new normal.