Last Thursday, a former St. Louis police officer published an article on police officers and racism that went viral. As a Black police officer in an area with one of the poorest relationships between law enforcement and citizens, Redditt Hudson, the author of the article, provides a unique and necessary point of view on the issue. He stresses that we are too focused on correcting the behavior of one individual when the damage is more systematic. He also reminds us that good people who enter into this system can just as easily become susceptible to the natural order and fall in line, even if that line is corrupt.

Below are the top five things Hudson addressed:

1) There are officers who willfully violate the human rights of the people in the communities they serve

2) The bad officers corrupt the departments they work for

3) The mainstream media helps sustain the narrative of heroism that even corrupt officers take refuge in

4) Cameras provide the most objective record of police-citizen encounters available

5) There are officers around the country who want to address institutional racism

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