No, I'm not blaming BLM for the uptick. I'm saying that the uptick suggests BLM have been ineffective at reducing police brutality.

And while I'm not linking the uptick in police killings to the discourse around abolishing the police, the rhetoric around abolishing the police has led to an increase in black people dead from homicide in cities where its been attempted (Minneapolis is a clear example).

I understand the point you're making about policing. In your example of a homeless person wandering the streets, it would obviously great to have somebody well trained in mental health issues to attend. But it's naive to imagine that a softly spoken social worker is always going to be able to diffuse situations like that.

I think a better solution would be police officers who are properly trained in deescalation and mental health issues than sending somebody to a situation like that who can't handle escalation should the need arise.

And the wider issue, as I've raised many times, is that lack of proper, external systems of accountability for the police. The fact that the police are mostly left to deal with their own investigations is an obvious recipe for disaster.

BLM generating more conversation, when that conversation hasn't led to any measurable improvement in outcomes, doesn't feel like a win to me. Especially as a lot of that conversation has been negative and divisive and focused don whether White or Blue or All lives matter. Even Ahmaud Arbery's dad said that all lives matter as the verdict of his son's killers was announce.

The people most affected by these issues just want them solved. They don't want to argue about skin colour. And, in fact, ion we're going to argue about skin colour, the people who are killed most often per capita by the police, by quite a wide margin, are Native Americans.