The struggle for justice in US still has far to go
IN the streets surrounding Hennepin County Court in Minneapolis there were as many sighs of relief as there were cheers as the guilty verdicts came in. At first you wondered how there could possibly be any room for doubt.
The heinous act had been captured on camera, after all. Police officer Derek Chauvin placing his knee on George Floyd’s neck and keeping it there for the nine minutes and 29 seconds it took for the last breath to leave the father-of-five’s body. This was murder in plain sight. Dozens of witnesses on the scene. It was unthinkable that Chauvin could walk free from court.
That so many people thought his acquittal was a possibility says everything about the rotten state of race relations in the US today. The unthinkable has a nasty habit of showing its ugly face when it comes to America’s treatment of its black citizens.
The Chauvin verdict has been hailed as a tipping point, the case that will change history. Another one. An end to the Jim Crow laws, the passing of civil rights acts, the election of a black President: all of them seen as monumental advances at the time. Yet here we are again. Dare anyone believe that this time really will be different, that there will be no more George Floyds to mourn?
Cities across America had braced themselves for the unrest that would likely have followed an acquittal, just as they did three decades ago when four white officers walked free from a Los Angeles court after standing trial for viciously assaulting Rodney King. In the days of rioting that followed, 63 people died. The police came close to losing total control in some areas.
There have been comparisons made between the King and Floyd cases, largely as a result of both attacks being captured on video.
There was a crucial difference, though, between the two. The assault on Mr King was shot from a distance. While you could see in close-up the Los Angeles police officers batter their victim with nightsticks and kick him in the stomach, you could not see his agonised face, or hear his shouts of pain.
With Mr Floyd everything could be seen and heard in detail, from his pleas that he could not breathe, to his cries for his mama. The images went around the world and people came out from lockdown in droves to protest.
The up close and personal footage of Mr Floyd’s suffering, horrendous as it was, echoed film of another victim of police brutality, Eric Garner, six years ago. Mr Garner, held in a chokehold by police during an arrest in Staten Island, could also be heard saying, “I can’t breathe”.
If shocking footage changed anything it would have done so then. Yet the outrages continued to occur and are still happening. Last week, only a short drive from the courtroom where Chauvin was being tried, a 20-year-old by the name of Daunte Wright was shot dead by a police officer.
When researchers at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health looked at 5,494 police-related deaths in America between 2013 and 2017, they found black citizens were three times more likely to be killed by police as their white counterparts.
The country has the facts about police violence towards black Americans. It has the footage. There are decades of history from which to draw more examples of police violence going unpunished. But nothing seems to change.
A large part of the problem is America’s refusal to believe it really has a problem with police violence, as opposed to its thinking there are a few bad apples who commit misdeeds now and then.
In a survey carried out last week by Rasmussen Reports – again, while the Chauvin trial was in the papers and on the news every day – 66% of respondents thought most police were not racist.
It is hard to see how America can still be wrestling with itself over race, yet it is. Difficult to see, too, when and how it will ever stop. Perhaps that is why so many, while welcoming the verdict against Chauvin, have been keen to take a wider view.
As a statement from the Obamas put it after the Minneapolis verdict, “True justice is about much more than a single verdict in a single trial. True justice requires that we come to terms with the fact that black Americans are treated differently, every day.”
Who can say how long it will take to right that great wrong, and the many others perpetrated? Where to even begin?
Such concerns are not an excuse for doing nothing, as the Obamas would be the first to say. With Donald Trump gone, America now has a President committed to fighting racism rather than fanning its flames. It remains to be seen, however, how Joe Biden intends to go about getting results. The more radical wing of his party want him to defund the police. But other Democrats think such demands, and the Black Lives Matters protests in general, cost the party votes at the last election, and could do so again at next year’s midterms.
A more effective tack would be legislation which, among other things, bans chokeholds and makes the wearing of body cameras by police mandatory. There is even such a bill ready to go. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Bill failed to pass last year, but a re-write has been produced which stands a better chance.
For all that we have seen turning points come and go without much effect, I would like to think George Floyd has left a lasting legacy. Here’s how. Chauvin is thought likely to appeal and it could be several months before he is sentenced. This case is not quite done yet. But by the end of the process, assuming he loses an appeal, the ex-cop is staying in jail and will remain there, week after month after year, for a very long time.
That image of him in prison, and the pictures of him being led out of court in handcuffs, will be fixed in the memory of every police officer. There is nothing like witnessing the possible consequences of wrongdoing to focus the mind.
While cautioning that there is much still to be done, President Biden hailed the Chauvin verdict as a giant step forward in the march towards justice in America. One can only hope he is right.
In the meantime, there will be another funeral in Minneapolis today, this one for Daunte Wright. The sorrow goes on.
Some Democrats thought the defund the police demands cost the party votes at the last election, and could do so again at the midterms
Read more: Alison Rowat appears in The Herald every Monday and Thursday