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The
three guilty verdicts for former Minneapolis, Minnesota police
officer, Derek Chauvin, for his public, nine-minute and
twenty-nine-second murder of Mr. George Perry Floyd are in, and
almost nothing has changed. Minutes before the judge could announce
them, 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, a Black female, was killed by
a White Columbus, Ohio police officer in her front yard.
Allegedly,
she had called the police for protection as she was being assaulted
by a group of Black girls. The officer shot her four times within
minutes of arriving at the scene, reminiscent of the erringly similar
2014 killing of 12-
year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio as he played with
a toy gun in a local park.
The
prevailing view is that the solution to this epidemic of preventable
fatalities is better training of police in how to do their jobs. Many
believe that instruction in implicit bias, use of force, and cultural
awareness are solutions to a reversal of these ongoing disasters. But
race emerges as the key factor.
When
White cops encounter White citizens, no matter their level of mental
illness, their possession of deadly firearms, and menacing demeanors,
they are likely to be apprehended with a minimum of violence or
physical struggle. Somehow, police officers’ past preparation
appears to be sufficient in those instances.
It
is only when White officers come upon people of color, irrespective
of their observed behavior, education, personal comportment, and
compliant attitudes, that their propensity to respond in an
unnecessarily intimidating and violent manner emerges. Race seems to
trigger their behavior.
But
we must be mindful of the fact that had it not been for the quick
thinking and steely tenacity of 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, who
filmed the street lynching of George Floyd and posted it on the
Internet, there would have been no guilty verdicts and no punishment
for Derek Chauvin, who displayed his depraved indifference to the
suffering of Mr. Floyd and his power over a Black man, while he
kneeled on his neck, with a smirk on his face.
The
Minneapolis Police Department had already submitted an internal
report that stated that George Floyd died from a medical emergency
after they transported him to the hospital. This ‘Big Lie’
was the core of the defense used by Chauvin’s attorney to sow
reasonable doubt.
Also,
the killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black male, 10 miles away
in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, at a traffic stop during the trial,
likely impacted the guilty verdicts for Derek Chauvin. Officer Kim
Potter shot Daunte in the chest - supposedly accidentally - while
believing she was reaching for her Taser. A 26-year veteran on the
Brooklyn Center police force, it is interesting that she was teaching
younger officers how to be good cops during this incident.
Thus,
a confluence of external factors, of which the Chauvin jury was
aware, probably contributed to their decision-making. These unique
realities did not occur in the other cases of White cops killing
Blacks and other citizens of color. Therefore, the Chauvin
convictions may be isolated outliers in a sea of police impunity from
prosecution.
As
a nation, Congress needs to pass The
George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which
would:
“Work
to End Racial & Religious Profiling,
Save
Lives by Banning Chokeholds & No-Knock Warrants,
Hold
Police Accountable in Court,
Empower
the Department of Justice to Investigate Police Misconduct,
Change
the Culture of Law Enforcement with Training to Build Integrity and
Trust, and
Improve
Transparency by Collecting Data on Police Misconduct and
Use-of-Force.”
The
possibility of this legislation reaching the desk of President Biden,
who has committed to signing it, appears narrow at this time, and
there is still much work to do in bringing a deeply polarized nation
together.
The
impact of the Chauvin guilty verdicts in lessening White police
officers’ widespread killing of ethnic minority citizens will
continue to be inadequate until we as a nation accept the fact that
the lives of Blacks, Asians, Latinx, and Native Americans matter in a
racially changing America. It is not clear that they do, however, as
their numbers continue to increase.
Police
and ethnic minority community tensions are just a symptom of the
difficulty that our nation is facing as it transitions from a
majority White to a multi-racial, multi-cultural country.
Acknowledging this coming demographic change, the Republicans are
laser-focused on suppressing the votes of these groups as they are
unwilling to modify their Anglo Saxon-focused political agenda to
maintain White power.
This
is the conversation that we need to have. Donald Trump recognized
White xenophobia and advanced and exploited it, beginning in 2011,
and rode it to the White House in 2016. Launching racist screeds
against the first African American U.S. President, he stoked the
social and economic fears of a segment of White voters who back him.
During the last year of his presidency, he repeatedly called for
their help and boosted them at his political rallies.
The
Chauvin verdicts could unite and energize these groups as they view
ethnic minorities and women as “the other.” In the
interim, people of color may be in greater danger of being killed by
the police as they strike back against those whom they view as
overrunning their positions of racial and positional advantage.
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