“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
Those, of course, were the famous last words of Eric Garner. And, despite all the “conversations” and investigations his death provoked, deadly encounters of this sort – between white cops and black men – continue to happen.
But I’ve infuriated fans and bedeviled haters in equal measure over the years by pointing out that assigning fault in these cases is not always black and white. I refer you to “DOJ: No Charges Warranted in Garner Case,” July 17, 2019, for a summation of my nuanced, but invariably vindicated, take on some of the more infamous ones in recent years.
All the same, there have been, and I fear will continue to be, egregious exceptions like the killings of Walter Scott and Philando Castile, which I commented on in “Three White Cops Kill Two Black Men,” May 3, 2017. Of course, I could also name Breonna Taylor and far too many other blacks who have died as a result of police brutality, negligence, or both.
But every black person in America would be forgiven for wanting to take to the streets after seeing the video of three white men gunning down black Ahmaud Arbery. They killed him in February while Arbery was jogging in his own neighborhood.
But then someone leaked their snuff video to the media earlier this month. Once published, it went viral; the national outrage was immediate, and all three are now behind bars facing murder charges. But, again, it took seeing the murder on video for the police to even properly investigate.
Now comes this latest case of a cop killing George Floyd … in black and white.
In a video shared on social media early Tuesday, a Minneapolis police officer pins his knee against the neck of a black man who appears to be struggling to breathe on the ground.
‘I cannot breathe! I cannot breathe!’ the man yells as bystanders gather. ‘Don’t kill me!’
(The Washington Post, May 26, 2020)
Floyd died hours later at a local hospital. His alleged crime? A forgery in progress … and resisting arrest.
But two prevailing factors explain why the cop involved should be getting his affairs in order to spend the rest of his life in prison:
- The police department will be loath to explain that, its officers are so poorly trained, one of them ended up killing a man over an alleged forgery. Because, even if Floyd had survived, what we see on that video constitutes more of an institutional indictment against the police than a criminal one against him. This is why, instead of admitting any institutional fault or prejudice (as it should), the department will throw this bastard under the bus.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey telegraphed his police department’s intent with this incriminating (but wholly warranted) confession:
Being black in America should not be a death sentence. For five minutes, we watched as a white officer pressed his knee to the neck of a black man. … When you hear someone calling for help, you are supposed to help. This officer failed in the most basic human sense.
(CNN, May 26, 2020)
No s#*+!
Frankly, if ever there were a case for presuming guilt, this is it. What’s more, the mayor effectively sealed this cop’s fate with that televised statement.
That said, as indicated above, these tragedies usually trigger feckless, traffic-jamming protests. But I wish they’d spare us this time, especially since we now know that Russian trolls dispatch useful idiots only to turn them into violent clashes with the police.
Instead, I urge black men to finally heed my call to join the police force in droves. Because the surest way to reduce these fatal encounters is to have more black cops patrolling their own communities.
Yet it’s a curious thing that black men seem so willing to cede that role (of protecting their own) to white men – who seem all too eager to patrol black communities like invading soldiers.
Related commentaries:
Eric Garner…
Three white cops..
UPDATE
Rioting, vandalizing, and looting in the name of justice…?
Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at 8:37 AM
The following image is courtesy of The Daily Mail.
These rioters clearly don’t care about the black man this white cop killed. And they couldn’t care less about the community properties they vandalized and looted.
This is why the only question is for those who insist they were there just to march in peace:
- Why the hell did you think you’d be able to march in peace given that such marches invariably end in riots?
In fact, if ever a time common sense should have told you to “stay home,” this was it!