I was going to school in Los Angeles when George Holliday's amateur video of the late Rodney King's 1991 beating at the hands of LA police officers sparked an era-defining battle over the role of law enforcement in urban communities. It took just a few short minutes of grainy, shaky footage to validate the long-ignored complaints of many African-Americans that they lived in constant fear of being victimized by mostly white police officers, just as King had been.

If you'd asked me back then if I thought that more than two decades after the Rodney King video that police around the United States would still be all-too-frequently getting caught using excessive force on unarmed citizens—an ongoing rampage that disproportionately targets minorities and especially African-Americans—I would have probably said no.

I would have been very, very wrong. But it's not difficult to guess why.

For starters, I was more young and optimistic back then. Plus, I'm a white dude. It's no doubt easier to be Pollyannaish about fixing law enforcement when systematic violence against one's community isn't actually your lived experience.