[Racial American Policing\George Floyd]
We now need swift justice. No mitigating extenuating circumstance can excuse what we see on the George Floyd snuff video. Nothing.
Photo: YouTube
The snuff video showing the brutal murder of George Floyd by Minnesota Police Officer Derek Chauvin.
Monday night, on the streets of Minnesota, an act of cold-blooded murder was committed.
That murder brings to mind the legal definition of “depraved indifference to human life.”
The murder was perpetrated by a criminal thug. But this thug doesn’t fit the profile picture the mainstream media usually plasters across their headline news broadcast screens.
The “perp” isn’t the young, Black, street-corner, “gangbanger,” drug-dealer, America’s white political establishment often portrays as the prototype criminal “menace to society.” In fact, the murderer’s description is the exact opposite of what most of America, white America, visualizes when they think of violent killers.
The murderer is a white male—a so-called “law enforcement” officer with hate in his heart. Instead of enforcing the “law,” Officer Derek Chauvin enforced malicious murder on Greg Floyd.
We should all be haunted by Floyd’s dying words. We’ve heard them before: “I can’t breathe.”
For eight minutes, “peace officer” Chauvin buried his knee in the neck of the soon to be deceased Floyd.
Bystanders pleaded with him to stop. Floyd told him he was killing him.
How many times will we see this same police pattern of racial murder before “responsible” leaders speak uncomfortable inconvenient truths and usher in fundamental change?
Many Democrats, rightly, question the leadership of a president who is asleep at the wheel while the worst health pandemic of our time causes death and destruction. A president whose utterances often promote hate and division. Why won’t these Democrats, in large numbers, denounce the police pandemic of brutality and murder against Black people?
Why won’t more white “progressives” forcefully stand up against racist police violence and say stop? Where are the Democratic politicians who are now busy courting Black America for votes? Where are our Black elected officials? The continued silence of Democratic politicians on racial police murders can no longer be tolerated.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison spoke in the way we need to hear more public officials speak—especially, those who have oversight over police. Ellison pointed out that “Whenever someone dies at the hand of law enforcement or state power, we owe it to everyone affected to investigate thoroughly.” Ellison said he would be a force for “the values of accountability, transparency, and justice.”
Ellison’s statement is unusual for a prosecutorial official, in a case like this where a Black person was criminally victimized by police. Usually, what we get is prosecutors, like Dan Donovan, Bob McCulloch, or Tim McGinty aiding-and-abetting the killer-cops who snuffed out the Black lives of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice, respectively.
Another anomaly here is the swiftness with which four officers were fired. We now need swift justice. No mitigating extenuating circumstance can excuse what we see on the George Floyd snuff video. Nothing.
They must be brought up on murder charges. Chauvin, while he had his knees pressing on Floyd’s neck and squeezing out the life, can be heard telling him to “get up” and to “get in the car”–he must have been recording the audio to manufacture an alibi.
The Minnesota Police Department’s (MPD) statement of Floyd’s murder is another example of the routine lying police do.
The MPD statement reads: “Two officers arrived and located the suspect, a male believed to be in his 40s, in his car. He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later. At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident.”
A Stalinist era statement where the words are dispassionate, formal, and credible, when the victims are dispatched to their deaths. Except this is the digital age and it makes the work of ghoulish spin-masters obsolete.
First, the notion that Floyd resisted has been thoroughly disproven by a new video that was obtained from a local business. That video proves he never resisted. The video also shows another important fact: Floyd was handcuffed even before he was thrown on the ground. Therefore, if he was already handcuffed, why wasn’t he placed in the police car?
While Officer Chauvin is seen squeezing the life out of Floyd, with one hand in his pocket, we see another officer casually standing around. Yet, the police say this was a case of resisting arrest.
Another obscenity is the police phraseology stating, “he appeared to be suffering medical distress.” Wasn’t the “medical distress” when he was telling officers “I can’t breathe” with the depraved Chauvin’s knee on his neck? They also tell us no weapons were used. Are we supposed to praise police because this officer murdered Floyd with his knee instead of a gun?
In the wake of this murder, we need to call for a radical restructuring of American policing, not reform. The truth is George Floyd was murdered not just by Officer Derek Chauvin—but by American policing. The police criminally profile Blacks and operate as an occupying force in Black America.
They are not there “To Protect and Serve” us.
We must reject the tired excuse of a “few bad apples.” If the “good apples” are the majority, why don’t these cops, white and Black, speak up? How can we be fighting the same “bad apples” since the early 20th century when police brutality against African Americans was already prevalent? Those who enable the actions of these “bad apples,” like the police unions, and fork-tongued politicians, must also be condemned.
Police officers are given a fearsome power: a “license to kill.” It’s clear far too many officers join the police because of this power, that they can use especially against Black people. That power to kill is being used in a disparate manner against Blacks.
The criminalization of Black people continually leads to these murderous outrages by police. White America has been taught to see us as criminals. George Zimmerman got away with murdering Trayvon Martin because he invoked the fear of the Black predator. Florida cops had initially decided not to arrest Zimmerman—just as the Glynn County Police Department, in Georgia, decided not to arrest Travis McMichael and Gregory McMichael for murdering Ahmaud Arbery.
It took public outcry and protests in both cases before the killers were arrested. How pervasive is racism and white entitlement?
Just before the George Floyd murder went fully viral, a white woman, Amy Cooper, decided to hysterically call the NYPD on Christian Cooper, an African-American man, obviously, not related to Ms. Cooper after he’d asked her to leash her dog, in Central Park.
Before calling NYPD, Ms. Cooper even warned Christian Cooper that she was going to set him up: “I’m taking a picture and calling the cops. I’m going to tell them there’s an African-American man threatening my life.”
In other words, she was saying even though you and I know I’m lying on you, the cops will believe the words of a white woman over yours. The only reason Mr. Cooper wasn’t arrested, or killed like Floyd, is because he had the good sense to film Ms. Cooper’s racist rants.
In Minnesota, the killer cops would still be on the police force were in not for the videos. The department was already manufacturing their evidence as the police statement shows.
America desperately needs a serious national conversation and action on racism; particularly in policing. It should go without saying that racism should have no place in policing. Unfortunately, American policing is rooted in racism, like other national institutions, and that history must finally be addressed.
Racism must not be tolerated in American policing. Unfortunately, nothing is being done to check racism in American policing by politicians. That sobering reality leads to killer-cops committing murders like that of George Floyd.
Racist officers like Chauvin are undeterred even as society denounces killer cops who precede them. They must be warned that any people can only take so much abuse.
They risk sparking a conflagration if these routine killings go unchecked and unpunished.
