The horrifying pervasiveness of police brutality

It's not just Baltimore...

Boys watch from a seat in a charter bus as demonstrators march in protest of police abuse in Chicago.
(Image credit: (Scott Olson/Getty Images))

News consumption is driven by the moment. Whatever's going on today (or, in an increasingly Twitter-led news cycle, whatever's going on right now) will inevitably loom larger than the events of last week or last year. There's a kind of mono-vision to it, a sense that today is somehow entirely new, the spotlight putting everything that came before, and anything happening elsewhere, into shadow.

And thus, in the aftermath of the Baltimore riots, it's easy to focus on the protests surrounding the death of Freddie Gray, forgetting the context of police misconduct in which Gray was killed. It can be easy to forget that it was only nine months ago that we saw similar scenes spill out of Ferguson, Missouri. And it can be tempting to forget just how deeply American the problem of police brutality is, from sea to shining sea. Just pull out a map:

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Emily L. Hauser

Emily L. Hauser is a long-time commentary writer. Her work has appeared in a variety of outlets, including The Daily Beast, Haaretz, The Forward, Chicago Tribune, and The Dallas Morning News, where she has looked at a wide range of topics, from helmet laws to forgetfulness to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.