Justice Served Cold

Nothing can change the fact that George Floyd is still very dead, dead on the street with a Police Officer’s knee pressed against his throat, but from that moment where the living stood and watched the dying, they did not fail him, they testified in every sense of the word. I cannot stress enough that it was 17 year old girl who did not waiver and did not move and took the film that shook the world and yesterday the verdict shook those who waited to the core. And there were two sides to this Jury, those who believed in Chauvin’s innocence and those who watched that image and could think anything but the contrary. Mr. Floyd’s last words were Mama, and with that he fell into a place where one hopes he is with her in the place one goes when one passes from the earth. I don’t believe in heaven and hell but I do believe that we are a collective of souls that create the universe of energy that makes all of us whole.

With that verdict on all three counts, I will admit surprised me as I was sure the murder one would not take, but then again who doesn’t love surprises! And let the appeals begin and undoubtedly all will be challenged but that one will be the one most likely tossed. I don’t think Chauvin “intended” to murder Mr. Floyd but that day, that moment in time, it was just that – murder.

To die at the hand of cop, be that from a “taser”, a gun, a projectile, a baton, a push, a neck, an arm, a beat down or just by one’s own hand as you are so exhausted you choose to simply give up we know that Police in this country are not here to protect and serve anyone but their own. The Blue Wall cracked somewhat during this trial but as anyone who has traveled down these roads in America our infrastructure is one hot mess and our roads have been well traveled and will need a lot of stimulus in which to repair and rebuild. Police reform is one that will take more than a bulldozer. And how do we know this? Well we are at 3 deaths a day since Mr. Floyd died. We have numerous other stories of Police misconduct that did not end in death such as the Military Officer in Virginia who was not blinded by the light but by the pepper spray over a fucking license plate. We have the “Karen” a 73 year old woman whose arm was broken over a $14 dollar incident at a Walmart and held in a cell for 6 hours before taken to the hospital. We have the Rochester 9 year old pepper sprayed and cuffed; a 5 year old cuffed and berated by Police for being well 5; Or the zip ties to restrain a 6 year old. Was she at the Capitol March?

And only moments prior to the verdict an Ohio teen was killed by Police.

I read this story today and his story is like many:

A security guard saw that Stephen Vest was injured. The dark-haired 30-year-old’s left arm appeared to be bleeding as he walked out of the park just before 8pm on a warm night last October.

“What’s wrong? What happened? What can I do to help?” the guard asked Vest from his car.

Stephen Vest was in distress. In the next 10 minutes, he would allegedly pull out a knife and try to stab the guard. Vest was Tased and jumped on the back of a motorbike stopped at a traffic light. He would ask a truck driver to kill him, and pursue men through a pet store.

Just outside the store, local police were waiting. They too attempted to Tase Vest. And then they fired their guns at him 11 times.

So, once again the story ends as they all do, a person in distress DEAD. How is it that a man survived the Paradise wild fires only to end up dead by the Police as again what were they going to do? Well kill him.

We have no way of generating the change needed across the country to stop the tide of Police violence towards Americans who once they are in the eye range or should I say target range of those assigned to protect and serve, there will be little of that going on. This is been ongoing for DECADES. There are no bad apples, there is a bad tree and that needs to be cut down. Sorry but Mr. Rogers Officer Friendly was a fictitious character. And he is likely if not dead is well retired from the force. I want to point out the word force and I want to remind myself that many of the insurrectionist/seditionists were members of our Military and Police/Sheriff departments? Proud Boys? Really are your Mothers proud? Just call yourself what you are Angry White Boys. And do I hate White Men? Well kinda sorta yeah. But their fuck buddies, the White Sisters are not anything I am too keen on either. I must have been dropped on my head as a baby. But in all honesty, I like and dislike people on the color of their soul. And that is like the color of their skin but I see it and that is not the same as that what is within is something more fluid and more than the sum of their extrinsic parts. You can see that if you choose and if you choose not you don’t. And that is how Police sees you, sees me, sees us. They make the call the minute they see you. And based on any number of factors that have little to do with you, they, the Police, make the call to kill, beat, handcuff, taser or let you walk away. In one minute they hold the power of your life in their hands. They are God. They are Justice and they Exterminator. They will make that call and they can walk away and wipe their hands of it all. And yesterday on 4/20 of all days, as you needed to get high, the drug that has brought pain into the Black/Brown community as it is illegal and yet like a glass of Chardonnay to the white folk, the light was shined in the other direction. And this time Derek Chauvin had 12 sets of eyes on him and in about 24 hours those eyes took the time to debate and decide his fate. Imagine had he given that same amount of time to George Floyd.

Didn’t Get the Memo

I have been only reading the daily reports on the Chauvin trial, I truly do not need to see the footage, the photo or hear endless recaps of what ostensibly has become a snuff film. The man was killed on the street at the knee of an officer who restrained him in a technique that has contributed to numerous deaths in the past and regardless of their health or drug use this is abuse regardless. And I never want to hear the expression “take a knee” again as that only serves to bring that image up and not the one Colin Kaepernick intended as an act of protest. Let’s go back to raise a fist that came of age in the Mexico Olympics in 1968 to show a gesture of protest and unanimity.

And with that one would think that Police across the country would at least attempt to show some attempt at a new kind of restraint, and try to lessen their need to pull out guns and other tools to demonstrate their power and position in society. Given that the Chauvin trial for the first time has demonstrated that the Thin Blue Line is now fracturing, I am sure the dog whistle is out on what to do in encounters with Black suspects. I would say pull out their dicks but today brings a new element to the debate – how women police. Well it appears they do the same as the male. We saw this in Texas last year when a Police Officer went to the wrong apartment and went ballistic thinking a black man was in her home. And we have some women Officers who have also used guns to shoot suspects as they have an inability to wrestle some suspect down to the ground and shove their knee into the windpipe of a suspect. So tase away or shoot whatever that works there lady. And in of all place Minneapolis a woman Cop did just that. She “thought” it was her taser but whoops it was her gun. And now Duante Wright is dead. They will blame that he crashed his car after driving off, after he was shot, so that is why he died. See how that works there?

Oh that taser thing was what led to the death of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta at Wendy’s where he was sleeping off his drunk; but when he took the Taster and took off running, I mean shit that could do what to whom where and when? Well nowhere as it was now out of commission but fuck it, that asshole needs to die! I get that way over the last piece of pizza so I get it, I really do. The Officers were fired and are pending trial. I am sure that the drunk thing, then running off with a stolen taser will be the defense, trust me it is always the victim’s fault. I get it, I really do.

And then we have the Cop in Virginia who went all mental head case over a young Reservist, Caron Nazario, temporary tags that he could not see on the vehicle he was driving, and because the man is of mixed race he did what we should all do really, drive to a well-lit area a couple of miles up the road to a gas station. Fuck this if a Cop is going to pull me over I am going to drive 5 miles an hour to the nearest Police Station to get cited. Again this was not a high-speed chase it was for safety and security, irony even for the Cop. But fuck that fuckers we are not having it. That was one video that I threw up my coffee watching. The Reservist had the sense to tape the encounter but the dash and body cams were actually running and this was as if I watching a bad Bruce Willis movie. Pepper sprayed then forced down to the ground with the threat of the electric chair. Okay, overreact much? Well with Duante it was for those absurd air fresheners that hang from the rearview mirror and then when she ran the plates there was the outstanding warrant and from that point on it was game on and guns out. A young kid with his girlfriend in the car is the next Bonnie and Clyde, only black. But then if you ever look at the photos of that scene you can see Cops love guns and love shooting the shit out of people. Just now they do it to more Black/Brown people. Times change.

And yes we can say that Police do have dangerous jobs and a recent shooting death OF a cop during a traffic stop in New Mexico demonstrates how highly charged these encounters can get; however, they are not as common place as one believes. If you are curious as to how many Officers are killed annually, the FBI keeps that data. They don’t with regards to civilian casualties. IN 2019 48 were killed. In 2019 civilians were killed at much higher rates as according to the Washington Post who have been accumulating that data for the last few years and it was holding at 1,000 with 985 last year. Wow, just wow.

Yeah I don’t like Police and I don’t want to have anything to do with them. But they can be trained and educated and in turn work to get guns off the street and in turn that will end the overall violence that has enabled if not permitted them to go into these encounters with guns up. Let’s raise arms, just not those kind.

Trial By Force

The idea that a Police Officer is being tried for murder of an individual who was either under arrest or identified as a suspect is a rare occasion and even rarer – a conviction. This goes back to Rodney King and even earlier when in the 60s during Lady Bird Johnson’s visit to San Francisco, a young black youth in Hunter’s Point that led to riots never led to any investigation into Police violence regarding the death Matthew Johnson, Jr. And that story has been pushed into a multitude of others at the time over the same issues that continue to this day, so what has changed? Well this. But Radley Balko who has written on the subject for decades is less optimistic about what the outcome will mean overall and there is this essay below that also weighs in on the subject.

When police kill people, they are rarely prosecuted and hard to convict

The Washington Post Mark Berman April 4 2021

The footage has played multiple times inside the downtown Minneapolis courtroom where Derek Chauvin is on trial for murder, showing George Floyd, a Black man, gasping for air under the White police officers knee.

That video is the centerpiece of the case against Chauvin, which prosecutors emphasized by urging jurors to “believe your eyes.”

But prosecutors face a steep legal challenge in winning a conviction against a police officer. Despite nationwide protests, police are rarely charged when they kill someone on duty. And even when they are, winning convictions is often difficult.

Between 2005 and 2015, more than 1,400 officers were arrested for a violence-related crime committed on duty, according to data tracked by Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University. In 187 of those cases, victims were fatally injured in shootings or from other causes. The officers charged represent a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of police officers working for about 18,000 departments nationwide.

Police charged with committing violent crimes while on duty were convicted more than half the time during that period. In the most serious cases — those involving murder or manslaughter — the conviction rate was lower, hovering around 50 percent.

Chauvin’s case is different from many of the most high-profile police prosecutions in recent memory, in part because it centers on an officer who never fired his gun, experts say.

There are a few reasons it is hard to convict a police officer, according to legal experts and attorneys who have worked on such trials: Police have considerable leeway to use force, can cite their training and are typically trusted by juries and judges.

“The law favors the police, the law as it exists,” said David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert in policing.

“Most people, I think, believe that it’s a slam dunk,” Harris said of the case against Chauvin. But he said, “the reality of the law and the legal system is, it’s just not.”

Attorneys who have worked both sides of these cases say they invite heightened scrutiny and raise a host of issues about the authority police have, the force they are allowed to use and the dangers they could confront on the job.

“It’s fundamentally different than handling any other kind of case,” said Neil J. Bruntrager, a St. Louis-based attorney who has represented officers in high-profile cases.

A key element that experts say factors into many of the cases is the Supreme Court’s 1989 Graham v. Connor decision, which found that an officer’s actions must be judged against what a reasonable officer would do in the same situation.

“A police officer can use force, but it has to be justifiable,” Bruntrager said. “And what the Supreme Court has told us is we have to see it through the eyes of the police.”

Officers charged in fatal shootings

According to the Police Crime Database, 130 officers have been charged in a fatal shooting between 2005 and February 2021. About 46 percent of officers whose cases have been adjudicated have been convicted.

Chauvin’s case is unlike thosein key ways, experts say. “It’ll be much harder … for Mr. Chauvin to claim the usual justification of self-defense than it is when there are shooting deaths,” said Kate Levine, a professor at Cardozo Law. “It’s very hard for him to say, ‘I was in fear for my life when I knelt on this man’s neck.’ ”

When police shoot and kill someone, the officers’ descriptions of what they saw and felt — and accounts of the danger facing them or someone else — can be a major part of the defense, experts say.

“In many of the shooting cases, the officer will say, ‘I perceived a threat in the form of reaching for a gun, or an aggressive move towards me,’ ” said Rachel Harmon, a law professor at the University of Virginia. “It is difficult for the state to disprove the perception of that threat.”

In this case, Harmon said, “there’s not the same kind of ability to claim a perception of a threat.”

Chauvin’s attorney argued in his opening statement that the officers charged in Floyd’s death felt the “growing crowd” at the scene was threatening. But Chauvin’s core defense, as presented in legal filings and his attorney’s remarks in court, appears focused on something else: making a case that he didn’t actually kill Floyd.https://e7a44a9ff57a8c9a8deafd8753241cbf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Debates over causation have come up in other cases not involving gunfire, including when people die behind bars or after being stunned by Tasers, said Craig B. Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor and director of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. In those cases, he said, the argument is often made that “other contributing factors,” such as drugs in someone’s system, played a role.

The invocations of Floyd’s drug use in Chauvin’s trial also echo previous cases in another way, Futterman said.

“One of the standard strategies in the playbook that I’ve seen, when police officers are accused of misconduct, are charged with killing someone, is putting the victim and the victim’s character on trial,” he said.

But it’s unclear how that might play out in an evolving environment, in which attitudes on how police use force have changed, Harmon said.

“One of the things that’s really shifted in the public debate over use of force is that many people think that there’s too much force even against people who committed crimes, and may use drugs, and may have problems in their lives,” Harmon said. “The public tolerance for the argument that the victim of misconduct or victim of police use of force has done something wrong is less broad than it once was.”

Another key shift observers said may impact these cases going forward is the changing way people mayview police officers.

Juries have typically been inclined to trust officers, who come to court with no criminal record and experience testifying, experts and attorneys said. But, they said, recent years might have chipped away at that, due to repeated viral videos of police shootings and other uses of force.

“It’s not an easy place to be in a position where you’re defending police officers who are charged these days,” said Bruntrager, the defense attorney, who represented former officer Jason Stockley in St. Louis and former officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo.

Wilson’s fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, fueled widespread unrest in 2014 and helped lead to a years-long nationwide focus on how police use force. Before then, Bruntrager said, if police “had any kind of credible defense, people wanted to believe that … police were following the law.”

“Now it is the reverse,” he said. “Now it is a situation where you start out with the idea where people believe police officers are violating the trust.”

But prosecutors still worry about convincing juries to convict on the most serious charges.

When Joseph McMahon, the former Kane County state’s attorney in Illinois, was preparing to try a Chicago police officer for murder, his team contacted other prosecutors who had charged officers — often unsuccessfully.

These prosecutors had spoken to the juries after their cases. Again and again, McMahon said, they reported hearing the same message about the officers from jurors: “‘We were convinced what he did was wrong. But we weren’t convinced what he did was murder.’”

McMahon and his team were preparing a case against Jason Van Dyke, who fatally shot Laquan McDonald, a Black 17-year-old. Video footage of the shooting, which showed the officer firing 16 shots at the teenager, set off intense unrest when it was released in 2015. Van Dyke was charged with murder the same day the video was released.

After speaking to other prosecutors who said jurors in their cases could not bring themselves to convict the officers of murder, McMahon said he had Van Dyke charged with another 16 counts of aggravated battery, one for each gunshot.

“I didn’t want my jury to be faced with an all or nothing decision,” said McMahon, who was named special prosecutor in the case.

If the only option facing jurors involved the word “murder” in it, McMahon said, he was worried one or two jurors might be unwilling to sign off on it. Jurors get instructions about the legal definitions of specific crimes, he said, but people might still walk in with preconceived notions of what murder is and not think an officer’s actions fit the bill.

It wound up being unnecessary, he said. The jury convicted Van Dyke on all counts in 2018, including second-degree murder.

Chauvin, who was fired after Floyd’s death, is charged with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death, and the judge in the case reinstated a third-degree murder charge during jury selection.

Attorneys representing police in controversial use-of-force cases have defended them by saying that they can use force and often have to make split-second decisions in tense, potentially dangerous moments.

Police officers are only human and can get “scared like everyone else” during stressful situations, said Dan Herbert, the Chicago attorney who represented Van Dyke. “The fact of the matter is that the law recognizes that police are allowed to use force, including deadly force, in a number of situations,” he said.

Herbert said it is “probably naive” for the defense in Chauvin’s case to hope it can convince a dozen jurors to vote to acquit.

Instead, Herbert said, Chauvin’s defense will likely aim to “pick off one or two of those jurors and possibly hang the case” by having the jury deadlock. The defense’s best chance heading into the trial, he said, was likely its attempt to break the chain of causation and argue Chauvin didn’t actually kill Floyd.

Prosecutors sought to combat the defense’s claims of an overdose by having Floyd’s girlfriend testify about his struggles with substance abuse, a testimony aimed at establishing his tolerance for opioids.

The defense’s argument on that front could potentially appeal to someone inclined to blame Floyd, rather than the police, for what happened, said Harris, the law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Chauvin’s team doesn’t have much else to work with, he added.

But while the prosecution must convince every juror to vote to convict him, the defense just needs “one juror who feels a little funny about convicting a police officer,” Harris said.

“You have the law leaning in the direction of, give police the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “That seems a difficult thing to do with this video. But if somebody had that inclination, deep down, here’s your way to exercise it.”