Dear Friend,

According to the Mapping Police Violence database, police have killed 751 people in America this year. And as The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant wrote, “Going by years past, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that very few of the officers who have killed people in 2020 will be charged with a crime, and even fewer will be convicted.… It is not an exaggeration to say that almost every day in this country, police get away with murder.”

To make matters worse, Grant adds: “We know the police take the side of white vigilantes, as my colleague Alex Pareene wrote earlier this summer.” By now most of us are aware that, on August 25 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly fired shots, killed two people, wandered past police still armed, and was allowed to flee the state. 

Over on Trump-supporting Fox News, the story plays out differently. As Grant notes: “Even if the criminal legal system catches up with the militia members and vigilantes, they can expect an outpouring of right-wing approval, with Tucker Carlson mounting their defense, and with the six-figure online fundraising hauls that come with all of it.”

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Melissa Gira Grant warns us all: “When these people kill, like police have, they can rest easy in the knowledge that it will take the same criminal legal system that supports them to convict them. They know that for everyone who condemns such a killing as murder, there will be some—maybe more—who welcome it as justice.”

Please consider joining Melissa Gira Grant, Alex Pareene, and more of the best investigative reporters, opinion writers, and cultural critics in America. 

Subscribe to The New Republic today.

Sincerely,

Kerrie Gillis, publisher

Read Melissa Gira Grant’s Far-Right Militias Are Learning Impunity from the Cops

Read Alex Pareene’s The Police Take the Side of White Vigilantes