Tag Archives: Rodney King

Walz and Ellison Are On a Short Leash to Get This Right

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On the list of people for whom I sympathy, down past George Floyd, his family and those who were close to him are Gov. Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey and now Attorney General Keith Ellison. In the midst of an economy-crushing pandemic, with no constructive national leadership and the usual “opposition party” petulance, they have to deal with this. Another thug cop race killing jacked up to an epic national scale.

Walz and Keith Ellison, who is now getting “final say” over Hennepin County Mike Freeman in running the Floyd case, have just left their 7 p.m. news confrence, and I wish I could say I was encouraged that they were getting a grip on the situation.

Some thoughts:

The Governor, as he should, continues to express his anger and indignation over the Floyd killing, as well as a decent human being’s understanding of the pent-up frustration over police brutality exploding here and all over the country. But when he says “we”, meaning Minnesota government and courts, have to get this right, I couldn’t help but say out loud, “Uh huh. But as in this case and right now. Not in maybe the next killing or the one after that and not in a year’s time.”

Ellison than got up and reminded viewers of the difficulties in prosecuting cops.

Uh. Sir, we know that. All too well. Those “difficulties” are seeping wounds of America’s original sin, which is going back a ways now.

The unenviable job you have, taking over for (although in coordination with) Freeman, is getting the prosecution train up to speed in days, not weeks and months, and securing a murder conviction of not just Derek Chauvin, but his three accomplices as well, all of whom should have been charged and taken into custody by now.

Ellison is a pretty savvy political animal. So I hope he’s also aware that the collective antennae of outraged Minnesotans are going to be watching — closely — to see if he is just a black face getting slapped on the usual institutional rope-a-dope. If he is a cynical move to give the bureaucracy time the public wasn’t going to give a establishment white guy like Freeman he’s in for a very rough time, black be damned.

The point again being, this case has to move, dramatically and quickly. Everyone understands the courtroom peril of a jury of 12 law and order-abiding citizens giving the men in blue the benefit of every implausible doubt. And everyone is aware the 1992 Rodney King riots — with destruction far beyond what we’ve seen here to date — came after the trial, when the jury acquitted LA cops in spite of the filmed evidence.

Walz and Ellison have to gather what lessons they can from that failed prosecution, (i.e. venue and jury selection) and somehow apply them to a winning verdict against Chauvin and the others. Moreover, to repeat myself, they are not going to have the luxury of months of secretive, exhaustive investigation. I could be wrong. (I often am.) But this case is so egregious, so outrageous and so fully processed in the entire country’s mind there is not going to be any patience for the normal, glacial pace of evidence gathering. (As though we needed more than what our lying eyes are already telling us.)

Then, adding to my sympathy for them all, is the matter of these “outside agitators”. I’m sorry. But healthy skepticism is in order, and will remain in order until I see unequivocal proof that “professionals” have descended in our midst and have been guiding the attacks on property.

Of course it’s possible. But what little evidence there is in terms of social media chatter to date, is pretty vague and inconclusive. There was talk tonight of planted incendiary devices and an unusual influx of stolen, plateless cars, and a guy in Bloomington pulled over in such a vehicle getting out and setting the thing on fire. All of that stuff is very provocative, and supports a wishful narrative that no Minnesotan would ever do such things, apparently because there couldn’t possibly be a hundred of us so enraged and despairing at the endless cop beat downs and court system bullshit they’d torch a dozen city blocks.

Give me a break. Twin Cities cops pulled Philando Castile over 49 times before they killed him. Of course there are enough people, black folks mainly, who are enraged.

On a pure reptilian level, I’d love to have solid evidence that white supremacists are here in town acting out their long-planned “boogaloo” scenario by juicing up a race war. But if a major publc official is even going to hint at something like that, they better have the goods. Otherwise they sound hysterical, which seriously undermines their hard-earned credibility.

Toxins and Taboo in Ferguson

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Lambert_to_the_SlaughterIt is very hard to see how the situation in Ferguson, Missouri gets better before it gets worse. Several of the most virulent toxins of modern American culture have induced a powerful infection.

Our racial/class divide has again been ignited by gun violence. An entertainment-based news media umbilically linked to images of violence, the more violent the better, has descended in numbers equivalent to a Super Bowl, and political leaders better suited for managing profit and loss ledgers are at a baffled for what to say and what to do next.

As the spectacle nears the two-week mark, the situation is as over-heated and overwrought as the last days of the Rodney King trial in LA in ’92. And that was before CNN had 24/7 competition. The toxic brew is so bad its hard to imagine even an indictment against the white cop, Darren Wilson, will do a lot to tamp down the protests, the posturing and the overreactions. (Only an event more irresistible to the cable outlets will make them reconsider their all-hands-on-deck Ferguson deployment. Think: Beyonce trapped on a cruise ship without adequate plumbing.)

No one knows what exactly happened when Wilson shot Michael Brown, and the expectation is that no one ever will. That is often what happens when these things get as politicized and celebritized (made that one up) as this. The truth becomes what it needs to be to “restore order”, which of course to the legitimate protestors in Ferguson means “business as usual’, where an overwhelmingly white police force will continue to routinely shake down every black kid dressed like a rap star.

One area of discussion that has remained largely taboo amid all the talk of the “militarization” of American police forces, with their surplus tanks and Hollywood-looking SWAT gear (the latter used most for over-the-top drug raids, like the one in St. Paul last month) is the character quality of those paid to “protect and serve”.

Recognizing that police work is A: Dangerous, as we saw again in the killing of Officer Scott Patrick recently; B: Thankless, unless you count the occasional “atta boy” award from the chief; and C: Poorly compensated, because the menace of public employee benefits, including pensions, is at least as serious to pandering politicians as street crime, the “bulldog” media is extraordinarily reluctant to question whether certain individual cops should ever have been in uniform to begin with. (That and the reality that ripping the notoriously tight brotherhood of cops means a kind of sourcing death for offending reporters and their newsrooms.)

The suspicion at this point is that Darren Wilson was/is an unremarkable ordinary suburban cop … and that he panicked when Brown pushed back at being collared for walking across a street. (Even the cops have said Wilson didn’t know about Brown boosting the cigarellos.)

My point is that I doubt guys like Wilson go into police work for the money. Most likely they need a secure job, they like the idea of doing something useful, something that commands a level of respect, and … work that comes with a community, a like-minded brethren that they relate to day in and day out. It’s within that brethren where things get funky, especially when the predominantly white “us” is given loaded-gun authority over a nearly all black “them”. With such a brethren you earn respect is a number of ways, not all of them attractive to or publicly condoned by polite society. Occasionally you overreach with someone (a big guy like Brown in this case) who is in no mood to take it and has his own bull moose machismo to display for his peers.

A truly honest discussion of all the factors culminating in Wilson killing Brown should include what it would take to cull out the weakest, least stable, most thuggish of cops and replace them with people in better command of their ego and emotions.