The three guilty verdicts against the Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes and suffocated him were not a surprise.
Some may contend that public pressure made it impossible for the officer to get a fair trial. But surely the evidence in the case, specifically the videos of bystanders who recorded Floyd’s arrest on their smartphones, made the difference.
In closing arguments, the prosecutor urged jurors to use their common sense and believe their eyes. They apparently did, returning their verdicts quickly.
There have been two surprises in this case. Many cities around the country were prepared for demonstrations to get violent, no matter what verdict the jury delivered. Thankfully that did not happen on Tuesday night in the hours after the jury announced its decision.
But the bigger surprise was the number of police officials who testified for the prosecution, saying the officer’s actions violated policy, and that officers in Minneapolis are not taught to kneel on a suspect’s neck to subdue him.
These kind of admissions within the thin blue line are rare, and they illustrate that you can’t fix something until you acknowledge the problem. It’s up to police departments to develop fairer crimefighting tactics. Legislation, public protests, the “defund the police” silliness or any other strategies will have far less of an impact.
Here are numbers from the Statista.com website that show how Black people are at far greater risk of harm from police.
From 2017 to 2020, an average of 420 white people died at the hands of police each year. During the same period, an average of 227 Black people and 163 Hispanic people died annually.
The first thought might be that more whites are being killed by police. That is true, but there are six times more whites in America than there are Blacks. If the racial death rates were the same, 1,362 Whites would be dying annually compared to 227 Blacks.
Dozens of factors, unique to each confrontation, go into each fatality. And those skeptical of police would do well to remember that these men and women assume the risks of a very dangerous job. They put their lives on the line, and several times over the last 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court rightly has given great deference to split-second decisions officers must make.
Complain about law enforcement all you like, but when it’s your car in a wreck, or your home that’s been burglarized, you’ll want help from an officer. Derek Chauvin’s actions last year do not represent the honorable way the vast majority of officers in America go about their jobs.
Nevertheless, the statistics don’t lie, and it’s up to law enforcement leaders to train and equip their officers to start reducing this obvious imbalance. The George Floyd trial showed the important role that cameras can play in getting at the truth, and assigning those to all officers, and disciplining them if they don’t turn them on, is one good place to start.
