The horrifying video showing the last anguished moments of George Floyd featured a detail only now drawing outraged attention: the cop car parked near the incident was a Police Interceptor, manufactured by Ford. In a petition signed by more than 100 employees, the automotive giant faces demands that they stop making such vehicles.  The petition charges: “Throughout our history, the vehicles that Ford employees design and build have been used as accessories to police brutality and oppression.”

This offensive statement suggests that all police forces brutalize and oppress, rather than protect and serve. The petitioners smear police as an invading army, condemning their own company for trading with the enemy. The poisonous notion that police are the implacable foe of all people of color, worthy of scorn and resistance, and unworthy of decent equipment, could cost innocent lives among officers of the law as well as civilians.