One small step for US Humans is achieved

There's a long, long road ahead to reach Justice

This was the original police report about George Floyd’s murder.

With body cameras in play, the police chief, presumably, saw much of what actually occurred.

A 17 year old bystander videoed it. as we’ve seen all this past year, videoing police officers can get you harrassed, pepper-sprayed and arrested, but in this case, that didn’t happen. That video was what got Officer Chauvin convicted of murder. Nothing else would have done it.

In the wake of the verdict, online or off, some of the comments I heard or saw included these.

”The jury was influenced by a riot there that occurred a week ago.”

”If Floyd was talking, he clearly could breathe.”

”It doesn’t take 9 minutes to suffocate someone so suffocation was not the cause.”

Not only did these people see the video, one watched a lot of testimony of the trial. “The EMT said she was harrassing the police, that everyone there was harassing the police.”

Trying to intervene to stop a murder by pleading with the police is NOT harassing. It’s a natural human impulse for many.

Some can only see and hear what they want to. I told one that this police officer had his chief and fellow officers testifying against him, that numerous police officers across the nation had spoken out in opposition to what they saw on that original video and that maybe 99% of the country would dispute his descriptions.

He replied: “the majority can be wrong.”

The majority was naturally horrified by what they saw. Without that video, Officer Chauvin would be walking free.

Other videos have emerged of other events during the Chauvin closing arguments and jury deliberations.

In one, a 13 year old kid with a gun ran from the police, looks tossed the gun behind a fence, turned, raised his hands, and was shot in the chest by the police. And died. Prosecutors then made claims about the event that did not stand up to what a video showed.

In another, a 16 year old girl being threatened by other girls, called the cops. When they arrived on the scene, they saw the girl with a knife lunging at her attackers, they yelled at her to drop it and then shot her. And she died. Because she called on the cops to protect her.

The verdict on Chauvin doesn’t ‘solve’ anything. Especially with the history of backlash that occurs in this country when it comes to racial hatred.

The US Attorney General has begun an investigation of the Minneapolis police department. That’s another necessary step. There are definitely some city police departments who have demonstated a pattern of hostility towards people of color over several or many years. The Portland, OR police are another one worthy of investigation. The protests there didn’t continue so long because Portlanders are spontaneously more anti-police than elsewhere. I saw the problems when I lived there more than 15 ears ago and they weren’t new even then.

The US AG has neither the time nor the resources to investigate all the big city and rural town cops displaying these symptoms of terrible policing. The reforms must also be instigated from within. Cops need to put down the thin blue line flags and change the code of silence culture and police themselves as aggressively as some go after racial minorities.

We hear sociologists and historians and medical professionals discussing ideas like ending traffic stops and creating crisis intervention teams that don’t utilize guns when dealing with people who are intoxicated or having a temporary mental health crisis. But how many police officers or police chiefs are stepping up with fresh suggestions?

There are far too few. We read more reports about police who secretly donate to killers like Kyle Rittenhouse or the Capitol Police leadership setting up to deal with counter-protesters instead of the far more dangerous hate groups that threatened the lives of Congress, the VP and the Capitol Police.

There are a lot of thankless professions. Police unions warn that their ranks will thin due to rising police resentment at a public fed up with the status quo. Certainly, no one wants to hear calls for their profession to be defunded.

But ongoing resentment, closing ranks around their peers and anger or revenge are proven failed responses. Police training has to change drastically. Crisis intervention teams like we have in Eugene (CAHOOTS) are nationally recognized and can be replicated. Every police force should have an independent oversight board. An internal affairs departnment is far from enough. These problems aren’t new and have lasted hundreds of years.

This time, will we find the will to create the major necesary changes?

Only if police, their leadership, and even their unions actively step up and take part in developing successful reforms. Only if they change the desired psychological profile of the people that police departments hire.

Most politicians won’t solve the problem. Many of them are busy passing laws to give credence to ‘Stop the Steal’ idiots or to pemit motorists to run over protesters they encounter that scare them. How many motorists have actually been physically harmed by protesters to justify such a law?

There’s far, far more minorities who’ve died from poor policing. And until the police across the country get actively involved in the badly needed reforms, there will be needless deaths, costly protests, a few riots and all the other side effects of a lengthy war that serves the best interests of no one.

And community members pursuing these reforms might find additional benefit by researching to find the best community policing departments in the nation and consulting with their leaders. Emulating them is another step.

But the staircase that leads to the major successes required can only be built with pro-active efforts by rank-and-file officers who want the same thing.

Their silence is tantamount to cowardice under fire.

Police oversight by random video is far from enough.

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