George Floyd Is Victim, Not Defendant
– By Ed Kociela –
Despite what you might think if you have been watching the court proceedings in a Minneapolis courthouse this past week, George Floyd is not on trial, he is the victim.
The attorneys for Derek Chauvin, the lying, murderous cop who killed Floyd last year, are trying to paint him as a violent, strung out thug who battled with police before he was pulled out of the backseat of a squad car at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Ave. in Minneapolis, and was killed when Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly 10 minutes.
Just think of that.
Think about how incredibly torturous it must have been for Floyd to be flopped to the ground, face-first, and have some guy close off your blood and oxygen flow, slowly, very slowly.
A few facts, please.
George Floyd was, indeed, a big man.
George Floyd had battled opioid addiction after getting hooked on legal prescription medication for an injury. Instead of doctors helping him to ease off the pain meds, they cut him off, cold turkey. But, it was too late and he had to turn to the streets for relief.
George Floyd, was accused by Chauvin of turning, necessitating the elevation of force. “I was just going to call for you to come to our scene here,” Chauvin told Sgt. David Ploeger in a body-camera captured phone call that was replayed in court Thursday. “We had to hold a guy. He was freaking out. I didn’t want … I didn’t want to get into the back of the patrol … ” Except, it didn’t go down that way, at least not according to the many witnesses and plethora of video evidence. There was some very mild resistance when they forced Floyd into the back of a police cruiser, face-down, as he told officers he was claustrophobic and having a problem. So they dragged him out of the vehicle and onto the ground where Chauvin killed him by kneeling on his neck.
I don’t like declaring guilt or innocence. That’s a job for the courts. However, we have all had access to the videos and heard enough eyewitness testimony to come to a reasonable conclusion. Chauvin is guilty, guilty as sin, and if he walks, God help us all because it truly would mark the end of justice in the United States.
When this all went down, I remember a sense of shock settling in. Not that I was surprised to see another African-American killed by rogue cops, but that it happened in Minneapolis. I’ve been to the city several times, always thought it was a friendly, clean town with historically progressive residents and officials. I had always thought of it as a peaceful place, a welcoming place. It wasn’t somewhere I had any interest in because it is too damned cold during the winter and loaded with too damned many mosquitoes during the summer, but, one of the more tolerant, comfortable cities in the United States.
So when I watched the coverage last year, I was in a state of shock. How could this happen in such a usually docile place?
The truth is, of course, a little bit different. Like most cities, there are good places and bad places in Minneapolis and while crime numbers may reflect the number of rapes, robberies, and mayhem, they do not reflect the fact that, apparently, you’ve got to watch your back even in the presence of the police. Especially if you are black.
Over the years I have spent a lot of time around cops. There were those I dealt with professionally as a news guy and others who were family members or friends. I’ve seen them in on-duty and off-duty situations and can attest that like in any profession, there are some I respect, but not many I would invite over for Sunday dinner. I would never wish to indict an entire profession, but I would advise that you should be wary when dealing with somebody who wears a shield. That advice, it is important to stress, comes from a white guy who lived most of his life in predominantly white neighborhoods. My skin color was right and even though my hair is a little longer than the buzzcut Aryan look preferred by many cops today, I never worried much about getting cuffed and carted away, let alone beaten or killed.
I have African-American friends with nightmarish stories of harassment and brutality including four guys I worked with who got pulled over coming back from a lunch break because they were black guys in a nice car. Never mind that they were all in shirt and tie, had broken no laws, and were pulling into the company parking lot. They were “suspicious” and left-leaning against a patrol car outside of the office while cops ran their driver’s licenses to see if they had any outstanding warrants. FYI: they didn’t.
The context of growing up black in a white world, the context of a young black man dealing with the police, the context of the entire black experience is lost on those of us with light skin. You could shrug your shoulders and say that the cops are simply doing their job, but before you do that, look at the disproportionate number of people of color in our prisons. It is clear that the police have been at war with the African-American population, as well as all people of color since the first tin star was pinned on some guy’s chest.
We thought, for a while, that we had grown beyond that, that we had been enlightened, that we were on our way to equality, but we weren’t. Boiling beneath it all was the poison of racism, which is a part of the White Nationalism pledge, the dogwhistled essence of the MAGA movement legitimized over the last five years. And, yes, I blame “that guy” for giving the misanthropes license to hate.
Still, I expected better from Minneapolis. I would expect this sort of thing in my hometown of St. Louis, where they sold slaves on the courthouse steps. I would expect this in Utah, where the predominant religion would not extend full rights to African-Americans until the late 1970s. I would expect this in the Old South, where the Stars and Bars are still revered and Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are considered heroes.
But, I didn’t expect this in Minnesota.
My only hope is that the jury understands that George Floyd is not on trial, that they are judging a rogue cop, and that they put him away for a long, long time.
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