I condemn the actions of the officers involved in George Floyd’s death

First and foremost, police in a free society exist to protect life. Today, I was saddened as I looked at images from Minnesota.

I saw crowds of angry people, of every ethnicity, telling us they would not accept the behavior of the officers responsible for the death of George Floyd. I saw images of police in riot gear dispersing tear gas yet again in what is supposed to be the best of free societies in history. I have three images repeating over and over in my head.

The first is the video of the officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he said he could not breathe. The second illustrates the dichotomy of seeing a Minneapolis Police car with the motto, “To Protect with Courage, To Serve with Compassion” in the middle of unrest after seeing the officer’s behavior in the video of the encounter. The third image, the one that gives me some hope, is the picture of three women of differing ethnicity joining hands peacefully to send a message of common humanity to the world. I am trying to focus on the third image, but I’m failing.

In Anne Arundel County, your police department’s relationship with the community it serves means everything to us. I mean all of our community. We do not care what color a person is; how much money one has; how one prays or where one lives. We serve everyone in our county.

Unfortunately, we also have to acknowledge that events elsewhere affect that relationship. Because of this, I needed to put pen to paper to say: I condemn the actions of the officers involved in Floyd’s death. It does not take specialized training to know that force applied to a human being’s neck can cause serious injury or death

It should not take training to understand this, but cops do get that training. Kneeling on a person’s neck can cause serious injury or death, especially a handcuffed person on their belly. Over seven minutes of the force of an officer’s weight on a human neck almost guarantees a horrific outcome. The officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck was trained better than that, I would bet my life on it.

The officers who did not step in and tell him to move and help should have! I am sure this is why Chief Medaria Arradondo acted quickly in firing them. In a free society, we have a right to know our officers will be professional and believe human life, all human life and its loss is a tragedy every time. Taking a life is an extreme last resort used only in defense of another life.

You have my promise that your Anne

Arundel County police understand this! This concept is instilled in us from our earliest days in training.

We are held accountable to the standard that only the force necessary to overcome a dangerous situation will be used. Every use of force is reviewed by all levels of our chain of command and our Professional Standards Unit. Indeed, this training and reinforced respect for other humans is why the Anne Arundel County police uses force in about .03 % of our encounters with the public and around 1% of our arrests.

It also the reason why about 70% of our sustained excessive force complaints originate from among our officers.

There is no defending the conduct of the officers in Minneapolis. I also can’t promise that we won’t have a “bad night” here.

I can promise that we do not and will not accept less than respect for all lives and professional service to every human being we contact — including those we arrest. As we move into the summer, your police are working with community leaders and clergy to walk together in the communities that need it most to show a unity of purpose in keeping people safe and to continue to build relationships between the community and your police department.

We will never stop working on it. Please, keep working on it with us!