Derek Chauvin will be sentenced today, but his fellow police are still Free to Murder
Police reform never actually happened
In a few hours, Judge Peter Cahill will determine whether Derek Chauvin gets prison or probation. His lawyers have come full circle with a show of absurdity that began during trial with their justification of his actions, and ends with a call for probation of all things to be the cumulation of this tragedy that killed one person but was an affront to millions.
Even if George Floyd had survived his arrest and been found guilty of intentionally trying to use a counterfeit $20 bill, he would have gotten the most heavy handed prison sentence possible, according to the documented pattern of outcomes for black defendants of any crime. To think that a representative of authority and power could callously murder someone on video and receive less than that should be appalling to any human being with a brain.
Whatever the sentence is for Chauvin, the rest of the police system; officers, chiefs, police unions, trainers, have all emerged unscathed.
Chauvin was above all else, the ultimate product of the police system. The mindset that is cultivated about black civilians, and how they can be treated with less respect and care, is what allowed him to find sick pleasure in the cries of the dying man beneath his knee. It is what allowed his 3 armed officers to keep the crowd at bay while he did it, implicating them all. The racism that is written into the fabric of their profession also attracts white supremacists to the field in droves, and the result is the genocide and torture of Black Americans that we have been witnessing for decades.
If the only outcome of this situation is that Derek Chauvin goes to prison, the concept of justice would be disrespected. Police reform bills were drafted, whittled down to meaningless solutions, and passed by disingenuous politicians who have the nerve to tout an empty, fruitless reform project as the progress we all protested for. Of 303 complaints of police misconduct during the protests of 2020 in New York City, a measly 25 were determined by the independent, objective review board to be substantiated claims. All the penalties for these substantiated complaints amount to a slap on the wrist, falling within the norm of cops enjoying little to no accountability at every turn, no matter what they do. Police unions are still strongly opposing ending qualified immunity, as are a number of government officials with the power to implement it.
Countless evidence shows that for all the flimsy attempts at reform that came in the form of anti-bias training, DEI initiatives, and bills, police are still free to bully, torment and manipulate black communities as they see fit with zero repercussions.
How many of us have walked past as a gang of cops violently accost a young black man? How many of us have been harassed and intimidated by them ourselves? How many of us notice that they are overly present in black neighborhoods and barely existent in white neighborhoods? How many of us have friends or acquaintances who have been mistreated, lied on, given a false charge by police?
“I can’t breathe” fell on ears that didn’t believe him or care enough to let up and allow him to breathe. The same spirit is in every police man or woman that maintains that stupid poker face while chewing gum and holding the arm of a person who is pleading with them to believe something or other. They scoff at them in disbelief as though they are definitively too smart to fall for that, and keep applying pressure or grilling the person. Their colleagues approve and assist, just like Chauvin’s did, because of course they are bound together in a blue brotherhood against black people.
Police are either committed white supremacists or too foolish to see how social inequalities and systemic racism pits them as a collective against impoverished black communities in particular. With minimal educational requirements to become an officer, there are a bunch of brawny, blue collar types who buy the binary of white is good and black is criminal wholesale, and are drawn to the appeal of being in the most powerful, legalized gang possible and getting to use brute force to decimate the entire population of criminals for the betterment of society. They lack a nuanced perspective of crime, justice, poverty and race relations, and are encouraged to keep it that way so they can be used as mindless foot soldiers to funnel black men into cells as their noble contribution to “law and order.”
Derek Chauvin is not an anomaly. He is the epitome of a North American police officer.
If he were not, the police system, unions and officers themselves would have been outraged and embarrassed by him and his 3 partners. They would have been speaking out, unveiling the so-called bad apples, sharing stories of the brutality they have witnessed or participated in, demanding an equity-based overhaul of every layer of their system. Instead, there was radio silence for over a year, magnified by “business as usual” as more murders and more brutality occurred nationwide.
We must never let up on calling out the police for what they are, and fighting for the extreme change that we wish to see. It is what George Floyd and every other victim of police brutality deserves.
May his soul abide in eternal peace.
