Today's Police Video

Today's police video shows a frantic police sergeant charging this way and that into some kind of fracas at a fancy pool party, then drawing his gun on some teenagers. Other officers attempt to calm him down. He ends up throwing a 15-year-old African-American girl in a bikini face-first to the grass and kind of sitting on her as if she is a trophy he's won by doing good works. Something obvious finally occurred to me. Many of us have been talking about how the police have been militarized and so on, about how things have changed. But has policing changed? Maybe it's always been like this, only now people have cameras. Are black and Latino Americans surprised by these videos?

Here's a weird thought. The sergeant pulled his gun but did not kill any unarmed young black people. He had just enough self control not to shoot. In the society in which we live, that's a happy ending.