Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Just three simple words. But with those three simple words, George Floyd’s daughter was right, her Daddy changed the world. Following the verdict, a common complaint from pretty much everybody from activists to commentators to social justice experts complained about was the fact that it took an almost perfect confluence of events to force the jury to vote for a conviction.
They were talking about things like the fact that getting a jury to vote a conviction of a cop on murder charges required things like a 10 minute cell phone video of the crime, in broad daylight, a whole passel of distraught witnesses who passively tried to intervene to stop the carnage, multiple police witnesses willing to break the Blue Wall to testify against a fellow officer, and a robust prosecution ready to go for broke. But there’s just one problem with that complaint. That perfect confluence of events is just going to keep on happening!
Cell phones are now a universal part of life, and the cops can’t stop it. Last year in the summer, Teri and I were walking from our then apartment to Walmart for some supplies. We were just south of Flamingo on Boulder highway. The light for Boulder highway south turned green, and all hell broke loose. More than a half a dozen cop cars, sirens screaming, closed on a car in the left hand lane. Cops poured out, guns drawn, hiding behind doors. Being sane, I had to grab Teri, who had her stupid cell phone out, by the elbow and pull her behind a car. There was no violence, but if there had been, Teri would have caught it.
Cell phone videos are inevitable, and the cops can’t stop it. And with the prominence of social media, once a video goes viral, and is picked up, other witnesses, Cell phone video or not, are going to come forward. Because now they feel safe to do so. Which means that from now on, police departments across the country are going to have to be careful about going all in on lame ass excuses supporting officers in the heat of the moment, not knowing what may pop up on Facebook overnight.
The pressure is now going to be on the police. Following the Chauvin verdict today, masses gathered to hold a rally in Minneapolis to celebrate, only to head 10 miles away to protest again tonight in Brooklyn Center against another cop shooting of an unarmed black man. When the evidence starts to pile up, the PD brass are going to have to decide whether their fear of the police union is so terrible that they will sacrifice justice, and face prolonged protests that their officers have to bear the brunt of.
And here’s another new sheriff in town. Up until now, one of the greatest protections for criminal cops has actually been the prosecutors themselves. cops This fact is simple, if you’re a prosecutor, whether an assistant States Attorney, or an assistant District Attorney, you rely on goodwill from the cops. It’s the cops that gather the evidence, make the arrests, and testify on your behalf in court, increasing your conviction rate. That conviction rate is key to your future raises and promotions. If you alienate the cops. and they stop cooperating, you’re sunk.
But, starting with the murder of Floyd last year, the clamor for social justice has only grown, not faded away. And as a result, look at what happened today. The prosecutors who put Chauvin behind bars were busy taking a victory lap in front of the press, thanking almost as many people as an Oscar winner. If social justice pressure continues to surge after every questionable cop killing, it is going to make it more likely for prosecutors to take up these cases, and cops to cross the line to testify.
SO yes, it took a perfect confluence of events to bring about the conviction of Derek Chauvin. But when you look at each of those components, you can see that they are all only going to become more likely to converge again and again. And when that happens, over the top cops are actually going to have to start thinking about what they do before they do it. That’s a damn good start. There is one more new sheriff in town today, but that’s grist for the next article.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
Regarding your thoughts on prosecutors I think the key event was the Governor getting MN Attorney General Keith Ellison to take over the case from Hennepin County. That made a huge difference. Frankly, I’ve thought for a long time that every state AG’s office should have a cadre of professional career investigators and prosecutors tasked with police prosecutions.
Seeing someone go to jail for Mr. Floyd’s death was the best news we had, but we need more justice for all the black men in this country who have been shot.
We need cameras on our bodies and on our cars to protect us all from people we thought were protecting us.
We have a war going on in this country and it needs to stop the 2nd Amendment is not as important as losing innocent people to gun sick people.
The people who stormed the capitol were doing just what the 2nd Amendment was meant for, if you don’t like what your government is doing take up arms against it.
The misunderstanding about this Amendment runs deep in this country, and the meaning needs to change.
Write men get knelt on and shot by police, too. At the same rate per encounter as black men. Even white people don’t seem to know this, which adds unnecessarily to the racial divide.
Whites men.
White men. Damn autocorrect.
The Science Fiction author David Brin (Whose family came to the US from the former USSR) has been making this very point for quite a while on his blog. His catchphrase is ‘The Transparent Society’, precisely referring to the phenomenon that it’s getting harder for authorities (of all kinds) to simply hide their actions.
How this plays out is, of course, a matter for conjecture. It COULD be that the authorities become more brazen . . .