I try to avoid watching television news, especially the news shows that are more about opinion and analysis than facts.
Of course I’ve read about George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, and I’ve seen many of the details of the killing. But yesterday my wife and I were in the car for a couple of hours and we were listening to CNN on the satellite radio.
It was live testimony from a firefighter/EMT who had seen the incident while on an off-duty walk. She had practically begged the officers to let her check Floyd’s pulse to make sure he wasn’t dying. Police officer Derek Chauvin was leaning on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, and according to witnesses, when people asked Chauvin to ease up, he pushed down harder.
Floyd said many times that he couldn’t breathe, and at the end, he was calling out for his mother. A police apologist said he must have been OK or he wouldn’t have been able to talk.
The second photo shows exactly what Chauvin was doing. The former officer clearly isn’t a small man and he is obviously leaning forward and into the pressure. The most outrageous thing about it is that there was a small crowd of civilians at the scene and Chauvin and his fellow murderers didn’t even care that they were being watched, heard, photographed and videotaped.
You might have expected something like this in ’60s Mississippi or Alabama, but Minneapolis? Some of the bigger supporters of civil rights came from Minneapolis.
It will be a major test of our justice system to see if Chauvin is convicted. His charges are a mix of second-degree this and third-degree that, and the most prison time he can get is 15 years. Some will say that doesn’t matter, that as long as he is in the general population, he will not survive prison.
I don’t want him to be murdered in prison. However … I wouldn’t mind seeing him terrified every day and night that this might be the day someone will kill him. I wouldn’t mind seeing him get regular beatings, and crying for help only to receive none. I wouldn’t mind him realizing that his survival might well depend on his sexual performance, or that it isn’t only women who have uses for Tampons.
And if he survives prison, I wouldn’t mind seeing him struggle to find employment just like other ex-cons.
But vengeance is so meaningless to those who actually suffered. No matter what happens to Chauvin and the other guys, it won’t make anything better for George Floyd or his family. The civil settlement of $27 million from the city of Minneapolis is poor compensation for the loss of a family member, but as poor compensation goes, it at least has some value.
In the end, though, the only way around this is to stop tolerating racist behavior and to stop hiring police officers without compassion.
Neither is all that likely to happen.
