Reform? It will take more than Chauvin’s verdict
I guess the best way to describe how I felt after the jury found former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder was that I let out a deep breath.
I don’t think I was even aware that I had been holding my breath until the verdict was announced.
Guilty. I had been waiting a long time to hear that word and it was ringing in my ear.
Finally, a police officer was held accountable for needlessly killing a Black man. It was something they had been doing throughout my lifetime, using that blue uniform and their bullets to bully, intimidate and maintain control of Black Americans.
From the time I was a kid in Newark, N.J., in the 1960s when they held a gun on my mother to the time I was a teenager and thrown into an adult jail because the cop didn’t like my attitude, to the time I was stopped by Fairfield police in 2017 because I was driving while Black, I had been waiting for this day.
Guilty. I just can’t say that word enough. It feels almost like a fog is lifting. Finally, a jury looked beyond the ideology and hype of the blue uniform and believed what they saw with their own eyes: Murder.
Now we will find out how much time Chauvin will spend behind bars.
I didn’t watch the trial because I didn’t want to listen to the defense attorney tell the world that Chauvin was justified in killing George Floyd because he may have been involved in passing a counterfeit $20 bill and resisted arrest.
I didn’t want to listen to another defense attorney tear down and dehumanize another Black man while extolling the character of a killer simply because he wore a blue uniform.
Most of all, I didn’t want to have my psyche crushed again by a judicial system that always managed to find a way to clear the officer’s name, even if the suspect was unarmed and shot in the back or are seat-belted in their vehicle, as long as the victim was Black.
It has never mattered how much evidence there was against an officer or if there were eyewitnesses or video; time and time again, what Black Americans heard was “not guilty.”
This was a verdict of guilt that had to happen. To have rendered any other verdict would have strengthened this country’s already suffocating systemic racism.
There was no doubt in the 9 minutes and 29 seconds that Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck while he lay handcuffed and not a threat, that Chauvin put on a full display of just how brutal, uncaring and, most of all, arrogant that America’s police force had become.
And the world witnessed it, too.
Now we wait to find out if this really is a pivotal moment in police reform, despite a flurry of pending laws around the nation.
I can say watching news accounts of different police officers testifying against their own, including a police chief, was encouraging because there can be no reform without police policing their own.
But just like police wonder where are the snitches in the Black community who remain silent while shootings and drug-dealing run rampant, the Black community wonders where are the snitches in the police department that allow killers to go unchecked.
Because it is not possible that the good cops don’t know who the bad cops are. The only question that remains is, has enough of the blue wall been brought down to turn the tide?
The public should not forget that it was not police, but an unedited video recorded by Black teenager Darnella Frazier that exposed minute-by-minute the horrifying end to Floyd’s life.
The public should not forget that other police officers stood by silently for 9 minutes and 29 seconds watching one of their own “slowly” murder a man in front of their eyes — and not only did they not intervene, but they backed up Chauvin’s version of the story.
If not for Frazier’s video, Floyd would have been just another Black man murdered and covered up by police and ignored by the country.
Like so many Black Americans, I deeply distrust the men and women in blue — a feeling that has only deepened each decade I’ve been here on Earth because of the lack of accountability they face and the country’s willingness to believe what they say.
Even here in Connecticut, we have cases about police misconduct languishing for years.
I don’t think anyone, myself included, can say they have not benefited from the work of good cops and want these same cops on the streets. But this column is not about good cops and I am not going to give them any more ink.
Because it will be a long time, at least for me, before the deeds of good police
officers can erase the ugly stain of racism that they allowed to bring disgrace and dishonor to their uniform.
Instead, I think about all the other Black men and women who have been shot dead or died under suspicious
circumstances while in police custody. I wonder, if they were alive today, how much different their story would be than the official police report on file.
Even as I write this column, police are still shooting and killing Black Americans
and asking questions later.
I wanted Chauvin found guilty. I wanted it badly in order to keep what little trust I have in the judicial system intact.
I am a Black man in America and I am tired of being targeted by police. I am tired of justifying walking down the street, driving a car, shopping, how I dress or how I wear my hair.
I don’t know a single Black man who doesn’t have a story to tell of a bad encounter with police and there are countless unarmed Black fathers, brothers, husbands, uncles and cousins who died with the police version of what happened as their final words.
May 20, 2020, and April 21, 2021, are days that will be marked in the annals of Black history.
One signifies death and the other a possible rebirth — but together, they show the ongoing atrocities Black people have to overcome in order to breathe in America.
Guilty. One bad cop down but so many more to go.
Reform? It will take more than Chauvin’s verdict.