A Letter To the George Floyds of the Past
Whose Witnesses did not have Camera Phones
It is inescapable, in this grateful moment of judiciary success, that we inherently know thousands and thousands of George Floyd-type murders have happened before. We, as a nation of white male supremacy, believed the lies and not the victims.
Why do we know this?
We know the police in the Floyd murder told a complete, automated lie about what happened.
Their initial statement was:
“He was ordered to step from his car. After he got out, he physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress. Officers called for an ambulance. He was transported to Hennepin County Medical Center by ambulance where he died a short time later.”
We know that without the video Fox “News” would have gone into hyper-drive finding problems in Floyd’s life (“He smoked marijuana!!!”), trying him in the public instead of his repeat offender vicious murderer. Making it appear as if the ‘gentle giant’ George Floyd was a fearsome monster the police had to subdue to ‘save their white women from danger.’
We know that police regularly carry ghost guns or drugs they can plant on the victims of their abuse to create a scenario fitting their lies.
We know the police have pat stories they’ve memorized which will cause them to not be held accountable, using phrases such as “I feared for my life.”
We know the police unions will defend these officers no. matter. what. Murder is just a part of the game for them.
We know for 20 years our police have been militarized and now consider their neighbors to be enemy combatants, which is the core problem.
We know their training is to shoot to kill. Their neighbors.
We know their mentality, their training, their “brotherhood” is really, really sick.
We know that rules keep them from ever experiencing responsibility for their actions, either legally or financially.
We know that police have a significantly high rate of domestic violence which is highly correlated with guns, murder, violence.
We know our police departments do not routinely screen for sociopaths, white supremacists, narcissists or repeat problems on previous forces with violence, racism, sexism, sexual assault or domestic violence.
We know citizens pay billions of dollars a year for settlements for violent police who often go on to recommit with abandon.
We know that the American people, chronically baked in flag-waving, apple pie white male supremacy, have ALWAYS believed the lies. They were trained to believe the lies. They did their duty to the White Supremacy of America.
Per all of these facts and more, we know that many to most of the officers involved in these deaths were likely murderers or at least violators of protocol. Yet nearly none of them have been held accountable until now.
It is a shame we must bear…a wound we must heal… behavior we must remediate… reparations we must make.
For today, we celebrate that another failure of justice did not occur. That is the best that can be said. It is not justice, George Floyd is still dead and nothing in policing has changed..
Because the sad, disgusting truth is, this morning we did not know if that policeman who committed a heinous murder we all witnessed on video, whose fellow police officers declared his behavior wrong, whose medical experts determined it was a murder committed by the officer, would be found guilty.
We are a nation who can witness a heinous murder with our own eyes yet still require a trial with uncertain success.
We are a sick, racist, misogynist, bigoted nation.
We must openly admit the problem before we can heal it.
To all the families, friends, loved ones who have lost someone to police murder, just know I am thinking of you tonight.
Shedding a tear for your pain tonight. I will stand on the side of justice and decency with you. For all of us.
Please join me in demanding a dismantling of this mentally and morally sick policing system we have allowed. We can do much better.
In Memoriam
The universe shrank
when you went away.
Every time I thought your name,
stars fell upon me.
— Henry Dumas (poet, social activist, teacher)
https://www.reneeater.com/on-monuments-blog/tag/list+of+unarmed+black+people+killed+by+police
