On Hannity Paul was interviewed at far greater length about the topic than he was on Hardball. It's even more clear there that the point he was making was the the police shouldn't be out trying to arrest people for minor silly crimes with the same sort of vigilance they would if they were arresting a violent criminal. He also mentioned a case in which someone died for spray painting graffiti when they were put in a chokehold, and compared it to arresting a granny for jaywalking. Paul also called for the cop to be fired. This all sounds reasonable.
These cases have exposed the hypocrisy of the two dominant modes of thinking within the party bases. Liberals want to give every power possible to the government by legislating against every little thing they dislike and forcing people to do everything they want, and then cry foul when that government acts in a way in which all governments with too much power behave: brutally. Conservatives pay lip service to wanting a smaller government and freedom, but then defend every action taken by the out of control and reckless officers who largely constitute the police forces in this country, and want to see selective brutality against those they dislike (ie young blacks, illegal immigrants, etc).
I'm disgusted by the whole thing, particularly because the Democrats have dropped the ball on this in a massive way by turning this into a racial thing (marginalizing the issue) rather than making it clear that police brutality and unchecked power are a bad thing for everyone.
Democrats haven't "turned this into a racial thing". Those who are victimized by police brutality and constant police surveillance "turned this into a racial thing". The Democratic establishment's policy response has largely focused on the granular details of the justice system and policing rather than an all-encompassing racial critique of American society.
For what it's worth, I'm increasingly convinced that this isn't only a racial issue. The reality of pervasive racial inequality necessarily dictates that those penalized by a criminal justice system that has overstepped its bonds will be largely Black and Latino. That doesn't change the fact that white Americans are at risk in this society. Hundreds of white Americans have been killed by police officers under questionable circumstances and tens of thousands of white Americans are locked behind bars for dubious reasons. This situation is a travesty for all Americans. That being said, you'd have to be blind to reality to not see this as a kind of new Jim Crow.
I've had my civil liberties violated by police officers on a number of occasions and I'm a white-passing Latino. A police officer asked me "if I have ever smoked marijuana" and threatened to bring out a dog to sniff my car because at a routine headlight stop. The American citizenry is besieged by the boys in blue. As angry as I am about racial profiling, the baffling racist logic of "broken windows" policing and the asymmetry between Whites and Latino/Black experiences with America's enforcement bureaucracy, I'd prefer effective police reform to re-litigating battles over race relations that are sadly unwinnable.
