While it was certainly the most preferred and just outcome in the long-awaited trial, the conviction by a Minneapolis jury of former police officer Derek Chauvin on two counts of murder and a single count of manslaughter, is more than a singular event in the long, shameful history of this country on race. The jury found Chauvin guilty on the charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine and a half minutes.
U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman rightly says, “We’ve known Chauvin was guilty since the second we saw him murder George Floyd on film, but we also know of the racism inherent in our carceral and policing systems. This verdict doesn’t change that racism or the work ahead needed to transform those systems to serve us.”
The right-wing media promptly sought to characterize this murderous, venomous police action as the work of a single “bad apple,” while denying the systematic nature of repeated racist police violence. Astonishingly, The Wall Street Journal wrote cynically that, “The verdict showed that the system is not systematically racist, and that a police officer who exceeded his power can be found guilty.” Apparently, they have never heard of Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Daniel Prude, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor or the hundreds of other cases that have never led to a murder or manslaughter conviction.
We must remember that a murder conviction of a police officer is “an exceedingly rare event.” According to New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, a recent study revealed that, “there have been only seven murder convictions for fatal police shootings since 2005. That suggests the chances of a police killing by the police leading to a murder conviction are about one in 2,000.”
Chauvin’s conviction does not mean we have entered a new period of police accountability. The Floyd case provided a rare exception because of a video watched around the world, showing Chauvin pressing the life out of Floyd with his knee, that prompted weeks of protests that were among the largest in U.S. history. In addition, we saw a rare instance of many police officers’ willingness to break the s0-called blue wall―no matter the misconduct.
Even President Biden said, “For so many, it feels like it took all of that for the judicial system to deliver just basic accountability.”
In St. Louis, Tishaura O. Jones was inaugurated as the city’s next mayor on Tuesday, April 20. She has already indicated she will appoint former police chief Dan Ison as the director of public safety and former Ethical Society of Police president and retired detective Heather Taylor as his advisor. They will be asked to address the issue of the vast systemic failings of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. As they work to address more broadly the police department’s role in reimagining public safety, they should make certain that it reflects policies that value, safeguard and invest in the lives of people of color.
We know that the Chauvin conviction is an anomaly. There continues to be no consequences for the police officers that take the lives of Black and Brown people. Most are not even charged and certainly not convicted. Even when there are charges and an occasional conviction, these murders by police continue. Since the Chauvin trial began on March 29, at least 64 people have been killed by police. People of color have been more than half of that total. These continuous killings include Dante Wright inMinnesota and Adam Toledo in Chicago. We must end this cycle of state-authorized police killings and make certain that police officers and departments are held accountable for their actions.
Since policing should be community-based, recruitment policy of police officers should be redesigned to create selection processes that identify and eliminate candidates that are more likely to succumb to hate-filled or extremist violence. We need to see a change in recruiting practices and outreach to assure we reduce the police conduct that produces the next Derek Chauvin, full of hate and bad intention.
The choice of Isom and Taylor is an encouraging move that should lead to some needed reform of the police that will mitigate some of the horrific behavior that finds the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department leading the entire country in killings per capita, more than any of the other 100 largest police departments in the nation.
We hope transformational change is on the way.
