Murder by Cop

Once again, we in America are having to confront the ugly fact of racism in our cultural genes. This week, Floyd George was murdered when a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, kept his knee on George’s neck for several minutes until he died. The whole grisly episode was caught on video, where George can be heard pleading that he “cannot breathe.” Bystanders can also be heard pleading for the officer to let up, and for three other officers to help George. None of that help transpired, until George, not responding, was taken by ambulance to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. 

The episode is one of the most horrific such videos to emerge in recent years, reminding us of the similar death-by-choking video of Eric Garner, who died in a chokehold administered by another out-of-control Staten Island cop. A day before, another incident—this time of a woman in Central Park calling police to rescue her from a “threatening” black man—adds to the trope of blacks in America threatened by law enforcement. In this case, fortunately, the black man, who had chastised the white woman to leash her dog (he was bird watching, not threatening her at all) was able to prevail because he, too, videotaped the whole thing. The woman later apologized, but her racist ploy resulted in her being fired from her job. And not long ago, on February 23, Ahmaud Arbery was murdered in Georgia by a former police officer and his son, who alleged that Arbery might have robbed someone in their neighborhood. Arbery was, in fact, going for a morning jog, and made the ‘mistake’ of jogging through a white neighborhood, for which he was shot and killed.

The recent murder in Minneapolis was met with understandable outrage, not just by the black community, which demonstrated and ran rampant last night, but by the white mayor, who fired not only the officer who committed the crime, but also his three companion officers, all of whom simply watched the murder without attempting to stop it. But firing these men does not come close to justice here. As Floyd George’s sister has insisted, these men, or at least the one who knelt on her brother’s neck, should be prosecuted for murder. For that’s what it was: cold-blooded murder. There can be no attempt to excuse the action by appealing to that old police standby, ‘I thought my life was in danger.’ No. Floyd George was already subdued, lying prone with his hands in handcuffs behind him, when the life was choked out of him. Whether or not he had earlier resisted arrest, or committed a crime (the suspected crime was allegedly forgery), he was helpless at the time when brutal, lethal force was applied and he was executed. 

Now, we as a nation have to ask why? How could this brutality have happened again? And again. And again. Execution of a black man before even an arrest or trial. Murder by cop. Are all the policemen in this country insane? Racist? Products of a warlike nation that has steadily produced gun-toting veterans of those wars in which anyone classified as ‘enemy’ is to be ruthlessly exterminated, only to return to apply for jobs as cops where they seem inclined to continue their warlike behavior, only this time grimly bringing the war home to exterminate domestic 'enemies,' i.e. African Americans? It seems. I mean a few isolated incidents might be explained as the doings of ‘rogue’ cops, letting things get out of hand. But this consistent murder of black men cannot be seen anymore as isolated, one-off accidents. The pattern is too repetitive, too consistent, too frequent, more the rule than the exception. And it is clear that there is a whole history behind it; a history of seeing free black men as threatening. A history that began in the horrors of slavery, when plantation owners put a price on the head of any black person that had the temerity to try to escape a life of servitude. And that original virus has come down to us after 400 years almost unaltered, though mutated into several perhaps more subtle forms, especially in the area of law enforcement. 

And of course, we cannot forget the not-so-subtle influence of our current racist-in-chief, President Trump. For there is no question that his dog-whistle hatred of everything his black predecessor did, and his praise of “good people” who parade their racism and Nazism in public, has set the tone for our era. That public presidential support for tearing down the accomplishments of the black man who had the temerity to win the White House, has had the effect of unleashing the worst impulses of the already fascist-inclined among us—not least in our police departments.

But this is all too moderate. Too distanced. For what we are faced with here is, pure and simple, a racist armed force in a nation that has never gotten over its primal racism, with the awful result that the greatest danger to every black person in America is law enforcement. And it is a cause for outrage, for bloody murder. And the effects, as in all such situations, are not limited to black people in black neighborhoods. The effects of this persistent racism, now magnified by the politics that feed off it and exploit it, affect every American, white or black or brown. If one of us is unsafe, then none of us are safe. The toxic brew of fear, of aggression, of resentment, of hatred, spills over onto us all. The terrible, terrorist history behind it spills onto us all. Including the murderous riots by whites targeting blacks that most people, including myself, were unware of until a recent post reminded us of the white rampages of 1919. Known as the Red Summer, the attacks started in Chicago, and spread through some three dozen cities and towns across the United States. The riots involved white terrorists attacking blacks (some blacks fought back), and resulted in shootings, beatings, lynchings, and home burnings. The worst death toll occurred in Elaine, Arkansas, where between 100 and 240 black people and five whites were slaughtered, while in Chicago, 38 people died, with 15 more in Washington, DC. The riots were believed to have been fomented by competition for jobs in an economy depressed after World War I, and by government-inspired fear of labor-rights agitation among returning-from-the-war African-Americans that the government feared was bolshevik inspired. Whatever the causes, the persistent racist impulse in the nation made it almost inevitable that the fear and anger would be directed at blacks. 

Now, sadly, we are facing the same old animosities that have never gone away. And it is frightening and disheartening, to say the least. What can it be like to have skin color that makes you the target of the very authority that is supposed to protect you? What kind of anger, fear and outrage must assail one who must not only react from a distance, but from within the danger zone—which, for an African American, is everywhere? We who are white can hardly imagine. But one thing is certain: watching a police officer choking the life from a black man in cold blood, on camera, is something few of us can ever forget. The memory of it, the full realization of what it signifies, is enough to make anyone ashamed not just of America itself, but of being tarred with the identity, "American."  

Lawrence DiStasi