Stepping outside of the whole racial issue for a moment, there does certainly seem to be a tread of police reaching for their firearms and using them in a situation that does not call for it. We quite possibly have a similar situation in the UK but with tasers, and our old justice secretary who pushed for their introduction is now calling for a review into their use.
Now obviously there are going to be accidental shootings, but the attitude of the police seems to be regarding the public as less of an entity to be protected and more an entity to be combatted.
This is not a good way to go.
Now, coming back to the story at hand...well, first off, these are university students, I don't think anyone would be surprised that they are protesting. That's what they do.
That's usually the point in peoples lives when they become politicised, and they will rebel against anything, especially if it seems to be authoritarian, and you don't get a bigger representation of authority than the police...except perhaps the IRS.
Honestly, uni students protesting against the police is no surprise at all.
I couldn't honestly comment on the whole white/black privelege situation in the US since the only stories that come out of the US are so hideously skewed one way or the other that it's impossible to be certain about anything regarding race. Clearly there are those who will always be convinced that there is a problem, who have built their careers on there being a problem, and there are those who are vehemently opposed to there being a problem even if there is one that they are willing to label their opposition in all forms of fanciful names.
However, there is a problem somewhere in the system, although it's hard to tell whether it's a social, economic or political one, but clearly there is a growing trend of people who feel that there is a disconnect between them and the country they live in. Whether this is a problem of their own making, or whether this is a situation they have found themselves in, well that depends on who you ask.
And it's not just an American thing, it's a western world thing, and I think that with the coming of the internet people are joining together in a way they could not before to protest about it. Just as people are coming together in conspiracy theories about 9/11, and about how the US government is going to take everyones guns away, so people are coming together to complain about injustices in the system of the nation they live in, or what they perceive to be so.
In short, this is a thing and it will continue until people work together to stop making it a thing.