Police brutality is legal in this country. It is. It is functionally legal in the United States for the police to be brutal.

Yes, we need good district attorneys. Yes, we need good juries. Yes, police departments need to change

a hundred different features of how they police. But until we address this

deeper core issue of the legality of their brutality. It's my belief that much of our fight

against it will be in vain. Some problems take more than one episode for us to

unpack. This is the first of a three-part series on why police brutality is legal in the United

States. This is Sean King and you are listening to The Breakdown. the breakdown. The breakdown.

The breakdown.

The breakdown.

The breakdown.

The breakdown. The breakdown.

Over the past five years I've written over 1,500 articles about injustice in America.

I've studied thousands of cases of police violence and I've worked directly with hundreds and hundreds of

families that have experienced it firsthand and even though most media outlets

have stopped telling these stories police brutality is as deadly as it's ever been in the entire history of the country.

Do you know why?

For all intents and purposes, police brutality is legal in America.

Police policy manuals may discourage it and

communities across the country may absolutely despise it. But the bottom line

is that our courts are condoning it and they do so each and every time officers who brutalized people are set free.

And the list of people unjustly killed by American police is long.

It doesn't have dozens of names. It has thousands and thousands of names.

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