While we wait for County Attorney Mike Freeman and his advisors to assure themselves they have an “airtight” case against Derek Chauvin and the three other ex-cops who killed George Floyd, I’m preparing myself for the appearance of Earl Grey, or someone of his, um, stature.
A slick, high-priced lawyer like Grey (who successfully defended the hapless, panicked cop who killed Philando Castile) is, in my mind, umbilically linked to the tried and true cop defense, “He feared for his life.”
The argument being that the average cop (pick any of them from any of the hundreds of dead black man/woman incidents) faces such constant peril protecting and serving their city they have every reason — and therefore right — to operate with a hair-trigger for “resistance” to their authority.
Grey’s problem — of whoever accepts the high-profile challenge of defending Chauvin and his band of brothers — is all the video documentation of Floyd’s killing. Not being a great legal mind, I can’t imagine how you create a situation of peril … to the cops … with killing an unarmed man already on the ground and in handcuffs. But based on experience we’ve all seen with the American court system, given enough time and money, I’m sure there’s a way.
But until the logic-bending court room theatics begin, you have to feel overwhelmed by the reaction to this particular incident of race-based violence. This one is as stark a case of “depraved indifference” as you could imagine. Newsfeeds are filling with police chiefs, retired law enforcement officials, legal scholars and such making unequivocal condemnations of Chauvin and partners. With them — right now, based on videos alone — there’s no “wait to see all the evidence”. It’s right there. Caught in the act. You’re looking at a capital crime.
With all this, and searching for solutions, I’ve found myself most interested in … police union contracts. The outrageous thuggery of Chauvin and the jaw-dropping complicity of the other three proves that stricter guidelines and all the city/community hours spent improving “dialogue” are a futile waste.
Police culture is diseased. It’s infected. And will continue to undermine its own authority unless and until you A: Hire better quality people to be cops, and B: Make them sign contracts with swift and heavy penalties for what, let’s face it, is regarded within “the brotherhood” as sanctioned brutality.
I’ve said before there’s a solution to this institionalized thuggery in better, tougher psychological screening of cop candidates. Half-facetiously, I’ve also said the red warning lights should start flashing when any candidate tells you they’ve always “dreamed of being a cop.”
Obviously, pay and benefits would have to be a lot better than they are if you want to attract and hold people who don’t get a secret tingle over being “the man”, the dude in uniform, with a badge … and nearly unlimited authority over whoever they cross in the street. Because as we’ve seen, there’s obvious racism in that “tingle”. A racism that becomes more overt and less restrained once out on the job and interacting with a lot of marginal people.
As of this morning Keith Ellison is telling CNN he expects charges soon.
That’s already overdue and will be one small step. The big ones come with thundering criminal penalties on the heads of Chauvin et al and a top to bottom re-write of the current police union contract.
I agree that the key thing here is the union contract. Management needs better control of hiring, training and firing of police officers. Right now I imagine that of the 4 officers fired for this incident, 2 or 3 will get their jobs back under current arbitration guidelines.
Thank you for writing this, Brian! It is SO true. We need police contract reform and it’s going to be a long, hard slog, so it will take a lot of us demanding it and sticking with it.
This is where liberal urban elected officials have some complicity. They haven’t been tough enough in contract negotiations because so many covet the police union’s endorsement and/or don’t want to be seen by other unions as being broadly “anti-union” with demands to make firing bad cops more feasible.
I’m pro-union, but with any profession, there has to be a feasible path to remove the relatively few demonstrably bad actors. When you look at how these bad cops get reinstated over and over and over, clearly a feasible path just doesn’t exist.
Also, there should be a requirement that officers live in the communities they serve, or there should at least be a hiring preference. So many of these inner city cops live in suburbs and exurbs and are completely disconnected with urban civic life, if not disdainful of it. As a result, they dehumanize the people they are supposed to be serving as The Others, instead of getting to know people and thinking of them as neighbors.