So too was the popular show Live PD, which filmed police patrols in smaller American towns. Cops, a television staple on several networks since 1989, was canceled. Or rather, what people no longer had the stomach to read, listen to, or watch. The ongoing protests prompted a broader reckoning about racism in America, filtering down to what people read, listen to, and watch. The police have always had an antagonistic relationship with Black and brown people, but the number of white protesters who were also targeted by officers drove media coverage for weeks. Night after night protesters came in peace, masks on, while police officers in military gear, largely unmasked, used brute force against them - all documented by phone footage that made the social media rounds.
Thank the weeks of protests sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and Ahmaud Arbery (among so, so many) and the ensuing calls to defund the police: The greater abolition movement, ignored for years, has taken on greater urgency - and yielded tangible results.
True crime, as a genre, has never been more under the cultural microscope, its perennial ability to transform murder into mass entertainment now the cause for greater scrutiny.
