The small impetus for change

I was catching myself repeatedly holding my breath, even as I was being reminded to breathe by the panelist leading a “room” of lawyers on Clubhouse, as we awaited the verdict for the man who (again) made tragically famous the words, “I can’t breathe.” The irony is not lost on me.

This morning I awoke from a dream in which I had just found out that the jury had reduced Derek Chauvin’s charges to assault. As I surfaced from the dream, the feeling I had was one of deep dread and heartache. I wasn’t really coming to the present day, though. I went, for a second, to 2013 where I was a naive younger version of me, confidently waiting to hear the guilty verdict I was certain George Zimmerman would receive. I wasn’t new to the conversation of racial inequity, but I was foolish enough to think that the inappropriate killing of a 13 year old boy would be an “open and shut” case, and that our justice system would be immune to the ever present racist leanings of the American masses (read white people) when addressing a 30-some year-old’s unwarranted (and repeatedly ill-advised) assault on a minor. Needless to say, my rose colored glasses were shattered.

So for me, there was a lot riding on this verdict; after 9 years of varying degrees of activism, bearing witness to all the un-tried and un-charged deaths that followed, and the years it took me to even get liberal leaning Whites in my circle to utter the words Black Lives Matter publicly (avidly insisting they were not endorsing a ‘terrorist group’), the recent signs of a shifting tide of public sentiment had me cautiously optimistic for the first time in nearly a decade. If anyone knows anything about hope after a long stretch of hopelessness, you will understand that just the threat of shattering the tiniest glimmer of hope can sometimes be worse than a constant despair.

So, the fact that even wth a multi-cam array of live footage and a public growing tired of a never ending repertoire of publicized deaths in America’s policing pedigree, the fact that we were bracing for shattered hope is a depressing reminder of how far we have not yet come.

But, despite all that, the jury did, in fact, come through and hold a police officer accountable for his crime. And, I’ll admit, in the near term, I do get a little giddy envisioning the bullying, heckling and general negative reception Derek Chauvin will likely receive from his fellow inmates. Sure, the White Supremacists will be happy to have him, but, thanks to his own efforts, it serves to reason that a policing system that empowers white supremacy will leave him shorter on White Supremacists and heavier on the Black and Brown people who don’t like or trust him.

But, aside from petty Schadenfreude and the vindication of accountability for police, I am not fooled into believing that this verdict implies anything has changed in how our justice system works. In fact, many would agree, that Chauvin’s case is an exception to the rule, and likely only so, because of the global level of scrutiny it has earned.

But foolish as it may be, I do find myself coming back to a repeating thought of new hope, one in which I want to believe that Derek Chauvin could be a valuable cautionary tale to other cops. One that points out how the thin blue line will not be as “loyal” to them as they are expected to be to it. A reminder that, if the unions and the authorities, judges, elected officials and DAs that have enabled this system are going to use the “Bad Apple” excuse as a blanket tool to avoid real reform and responsibility, then they will eventually have to pay off their excuses with some actual bad apples. How valuable all of this would be if it were to reveal to the foot soldiers of the system that continuing to believe the lies of what and who they serve is the equivalent of serving themselves up as both wolf and lamb for slaughter.

There is an irony in heavily training officers to respond to nearly all situations with force, to act without a moment’s consideration or fear of consequence, to foster hostile & militaristic tactics, and to encourage a domination driven culture within the force, and then to turn around and paint individual cops who carry out their training and conditioning as the ill and lone actors in an otherwise functional environment. Derek Chauvin was not a bad apple; he was a good cop. We see this from the lack of objection and even the active participation from his counterparts present during the assault. We see this from the lack of initial concern reported by the Chief on the stand when viewing the incident from a traffic camera across the street. We see this from the “snitch” comment the dispatcher reporting Chauvin felt she had to make in order to do her job. We see this in the fact that Chauvin had numerous prior accusations of near identical nature and yet he was still a training officer, training other officers on how to police, up until the very moment that he killed George Floyd. He was policing exactly as he was expected to. Sorry, but that is not a bad apple.

So, the fact that his court and his leadership went out of their way to unanimously hold him accountable for the stuff they already knew he was doing and never took issue with before, sure makes it seen like perhaps the system isn’t designed to protect bad cops, so much as condition them to perform and then protect the structure around them that allows it to continue. And if and when circumstances arise that create a conflict of interest between protecting toxic policing and the toxic cop it produced, well, they have an easy path for painting the toxic cop they made… as toxic. Convenient for policing, unfortunate for the unlucky cops who find themselves as an indefensible example of “good policing.”

Here is hoping that cops and civilians start to realize that it isn’t actually civilians versus cops, it’s all of us versus this White Supremacist system that has used and gaslit us, repeatedly, without shame, and to our own detriment. Here is hoping this is an awakening that this system, and the defense of it, falls on all of us. This is our inheritance and as long as we leave it as is, as long as we choose which parts of it we reject and which parts of it we are ok with not questioning, it will continue to taint and harm our lives and our legacies.

I find a large portion of the political left are also unable to divorce the ideological falsities we have been taught about policing and “how it is meant to work” from the reality of what it actually is. As long as we commingle partial realities with the myths we are ok holding onto, we are no different than cops like Chauvin. In fact, we become destined to be the Chauvins of the future.

To me, this trial isn’t about progress on what accountability looks like, or a first step toward a racial reckoning, it is an opportunity for all of us to ask ourselves what we really know about “what works” in our system, and why we might be resistant to the notion that policing in America has no option but to radically change.

Make no mistake, the only solution is abolition. But the only path to proper abolition (one that supports those most made vulnerable by this broken system) is radical and aggressive reform.