Complications Aren’t What’s Stopping Police Reform. Courage Is.
We find ourselves here again.
On the one side, a frantic push to punish the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as a nod to reconciliation. On the other, a pulsating thump of outrage that is building, not abating.
And in between is the inescapable truth: charging these men cannot calm our nation’s unrest because it is not an end to their terror we seek.
It is an end to our leaderships’.
Our governors’. Our police chiefs’. Our president’s. And the burning will not stop until we take that on with courage and candor.
Forget for a moment that arresting Chauvin, et al. looks exactly like what it is — an attempt to get raging Americans back into their places. Forgive that the less than impressive “rush a charge and lose a case” thing has lost its appeal. And put aside hope this one trick pony will save Minneapolis’s 5th Precinct from being doused in figurative gasoline.
There stands an armada bearing weapons of military grade, ready to crush every avenue of protest. There is a militia staging a theater of war to protect an innocent’s killer. And neither the paramilitary’s passion nor promise was spared to protect a single American community. To the contrary, our nation’s Full Force of Might was brought to bear to crush the innocent and protect the guilty.
These things exist with the blessing of a government now clutching its pearls. It seems utterly baffled about why this rage will not die down. Why the fear will not die down. Why the pain will not go away — as if it is no fallacy of logic that victims of this brand of savagery should find no cause for concern for the thousands of Chauvins who just replaced him.
STOP.
Look at George in this picture here. His swollen face, purpled and oxygen-starved. His cheek and slackened mouth pressed into the asphalt. And now Chauvin, study him. Looking down, hand casually in his pocket, mildly curious if he’s curious at all. Loose and unengaged, and unconcerned he’s still crushing a man’s throat despite clearly feeling no threat from him. Sit with them both. Feel that moment. Do these things and do not look away.
You see, it is only when you FEEL George suffocating that you have any hope of understanding what George is SAYING.
He’s saying stand up and acknowledge you put us under siege. Not here, in response to these protests, but for months and years and decades and centuries.
He’s saying be bold and bring in the Justice Department and its experts on the force continuum, constitutional policing, leadership, training, and accountability. Make every person, paper, video, report, recording, whisper, rumor, moment of malice and folly of mistake available without exception.
He’s saying be courageous and commune with representatives from any coalition who want a seat at the table. And stay there while it hurts. And stay there when it makes you mad. And stay there when you feel wronged. And stay there while you’re scared. And stay there until you’ve moved through all of it because heavy is the crown you promised you’d wear with not just strength but grace.
He’s saying be ambitious and leave no corner of the globe untouched in an unparalleled quest to bring all the hearts, minds and agents of change to bear.
He’s saying be vulnerable and commit yourselves to sitting with the Floyd family if they’ll have you, and making yourself available at any minute, of any day if they won’t and until they’re ready, no matter how long that takes.
He’s saying be humble and entreat the support of the National Guard to move local police off the streets because they — too — are scared and angry and don’t belong anywhere near this.
He’s saying be curious and seek two or five or fifty departments across the country with the nation’s lowest incidents of citizen complaints and highest reports of police/community integration and entreat them to teach you how to get there.
He’s saying be just and thus indifferent to how low or high the breach sits along the accountability chain, and be damned if you let even a single weak link remain.
He’s saying remember that policing is not about power but community, and put your beat cops and your sergeants and your lieutenants and your captain and, yes, your 911 callers and desk jockeys and patrol unit queens back into the community where they belong.
He’s saying this isn’t about liability, it’s about lives. This is our home, together, and we are neighbors and not sovereign nations who cramped and angry and resentful within borders where we all must lay our heads.
He’s saying be pioneers — right here, right now, today — and build the nation’s model for what this process MUST be — as one of trust not treatment, community not commandos, the coming together of all of our voices, not the slow and steady suffocation until none of the brown ones remain.
He’s saying know that for yesterday it’s too little and pray that for tomorrow it’s not too late.
George Floyd is saying do these things and mean it, for if you do, and if your words ring true, you won’t see so much as a pebble scatter across the pavement by the end of the day.
Breonna Taylor is saying it.
Botham Jean is saying it.
Atatiana Jefferson is saying it and Marquis Jefferson is too.
Every person of every shade on the brown rainbow’s spectrum is shouting it this very second into your ear.
Police accountability is not the cornerstone of NOTHING at issue right now. And if you don’t hear that here today, you’ll hear it in Atlanta tomorrow or New York the next day or Washington, D.C. a day later. In fact, look around you: the entire nation stands ready to shake the planet silent until YOU stop resisting.
When we say we want the next Floyd not to be dead, we mean we want the next Floyd not to be dead.
Nothing. Short of that. Will do. Ever again.
Catherine Pugh is an Attorney at Law and former Adjunct Professor at the Temple University, Japan. She developed and taught Race and the Law for its undergraduate program, and Evidence, Criminal Law, and Criminal and Civil Procedure for its law program. She has worked for the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section, and as a Public Defender for the State of Maryland. #SJWDropSquad
