By Abdul Tejan-Cole
Gut-wrenching! The first word that came to mind immediately after I saw the video of Minneapolis Police Department officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man.
Even though George Floyd was handcuffed and was on the ground repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe!’ for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, Derek Chauvin kept his knee on his neck in the middle of a Minneapolis street. Facedown and posing no physical threat, three other officers held his torso and his legs.
At least one passerby shouted, “Get off his neck”. It fell on deaf ears. Twenty minutes following his arrest, an ambulance arrived. The Fire Department was also called to assist. According to both the paramedics and firefighters, George Floyd was unresponsive and had no pulse when he was in the ambulance.
Floyd’s crime: the owner of a local store, Cup Foods, accused him of using a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase a pack of cigarettes. The four officers involved in the arrest - Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kue, Tou Thao and Derek Chauvin – have been dismissed from the Minneapolis Police Department. Derek Chauvin has been charged with second-degree murder, in addition to the original charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter with culpable negligence. The three other former officers at the scene are each charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder while committing a felony, and with aiding and abetting second-degree murder manslaughter with culpable negligence.\
Although the official autopsy issued by the Hennepin County medical examiner concluded that the manner of George Floyd’s death was a homicide. It attributed the cause of death to “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” It claimed that Mr. Floyd’s heart stopped beating and his lungs stopped taking in air while he was being restrained by law enforcement and “revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”
This autopsy has been contradicted by another one conducted on behalf of the Floyd family. The latter concluded that he died not just because of the knee on his neck but also because of the two other officers who helped pin him down by applying pressure on his back. According to the private autopsy, the cause of death was mechanical asphyxia and the manner of death was homicide.
The murder of George Floyd on May 25 sent a wave of grief and anger across the US and beyond. More than eight days later, protestors are still on the streets of cities as far apart as San Francisco and Bangor and Spokane and Miami. Twenty-three states have called in the National Guard to quell unrest. A dozen major cities imposed curfews. Neither that nor the current COVID19 pandemic stopped the crowds. They turned out in large numbers and they were tremendously diverse. Over 9,300 people have so far been arrested.
The vast majority of the protests were peaceful though some individuals sought to hijack the movement. As President Barack Obama noted, “the waves of protests across the country represent a genuine and legitimate frustration over a decades-long failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system in the United States. The overwhelming majority of participants have been peaceful, courageous, responsible, and inspiring. They deserve our respect and support, not condemnation — something that police in cities like Camden and Flint have commendably understood. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities.”
President Trump’s reaction to the murder and the protest was, simply put, appalling. Safe in the White House bunker where he sought refuge, he tweeted, “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
By using the phrase "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" – the same phrase used in 1967 by the Miami police Chief Walter Headley, who had a long history of bigotry against the black community, Trump incurred the wrath of many Americans. His reaction so far has been consistent with his show of solidarity for white supremacists and far-right fascists and has continued to exacerbate racial divisions.
Floyd’s killing was not an aberration. In recent years, many African Americans have been brutalized and murdered by law enforcement officers. In most instances, they were unarmed. They include Atatiana Koquice Jefferson, 28, Botham Shem Jean, 26, Tamir Rice, 12, Philando Castile, 32, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr, 25, Sandra Bland, 28, Ahmaud Arbery, 25 and Guinean immigrant, Amadou Diallo, 23. There are many others. Police brutality is a fact of life for many African Americans. It is an offshoot of racism that is deep-rooted, pervasive, and affects every facet of American lives. Many have pointed out that “the roots of modern public police forces are in slave patrols used to capture or kill enslaved Africans attempting to escape from bondage or resist their owners.”
Sadly, with Trump in the White House and Mitchell McConnell leading the Senate, there is unlikely to be any meaningful reform to appease the protestors. In about 150 days, Americans will have an opportunity at the ballot box to vote out the “white supremacists” and elect a President, members of Congress and several statewide offices who may begin the process of dealing with America’s deep-seated racial inequality. As President Obama noted, “the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels. It’s mayors and county executives that appoint most police chiefs and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with police unions. It’s district attorneys and state attorneys that decide whether or not to investigate and ultimately charge those involved in police misconduct. Those are all elected positions.”
Most people had erroneously assumed that because America has had a black president its racial problems were over. This is far from the truth. Obama’s victory was historic and helped change perceptions, but it did not eradicate the age-long problems. In fact, some including Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University, have argued that Obama “conjured much hope, especially among African Americans – but with great expectations came even greater disappointments.” Many African Americans did not see the transformative changes they had expected.
A lot more needs to be done to address the decades of injustice. Top of the agenda is the urgent need for criminal justice reform. There are many proposals on the table. Many Commissions have proposed many recommendations. There is a need to limit when, where, and how police officers may use deadly force. American police are heavily militarized. As Jeremiah Mosteller noted in an article entitled Militarization of Police, “Since the early 1990s, the Department of Defense’s 1033 program has provided local law enforcement agencies access to military-grade equipment. This program, now expanded by President Trump after President Obama attempted to limit its use, allows local law enforcement agencies to receive excess Department of Defense equipment that would otherwise be destroyed because it was no longer useful to the military. Over 8,000 law enforcement agencies have utilized the 1033 program to access more than $6 billion worth of military equipment such as night-vision goggles, machine guns, armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, and military aircraft.” With access to such weapons, it is tough to think about de-escalating the situation. The police unions must end their resistance to efforts to restrict officers' use of deadly force. They should also support the Eric Garner Excessive Use of Force Prevention Act to forbid the use of chokeholds.
In addition, other officers must be under an obligation to stop their colleagues from using excessive force. A key reason I was keen to see the other officers, and not just Derek Chauvin, charged was to send a message to all police officers that they have a duty to ensure that their fellow officers do not commit crimes. The “blue wall” culture of silence amongst law enforcement must also be brought to an end. Police officers tend to collude with and support one another in their accounts. Before the release of the video, they had claimed that George Floyd was resisting arrest. The video showed otherwise. In addition, there must be greater transparency and willingness to release police disciplinary records. Evidence that emerged after the Floyd killing indicates that Chauvin was the subject of 18 prior complaints filed against him. Former officer, Tou Thao, had six complaints filed with internal affairs, one of which is still open.
Police officers in the United States kill about 1,000 people in the line of duty each year. Very few have been successfully prosecuted. A key reason for this is that they enjoy qualified immunity, this often shields public officials, including police officers, and from being sued by victims and their families, even if the officers violated their civil rights. The End Qualified Immunity Act must be enacted.
These are but limited steps to address injustices in the criminal justice system. There is also a need to work on police-community relations and address the problem of over-criminalization. More broadly and equally important, the historical and the structural, systemic and institutionalized racism and the stark and persistent inequities in economic and social well-being need to be addressed. As Dr Martin Luther King stated, “But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met… And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”
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