Crimes Against Humanity

You're taught to respect, maybe even revere police officers here in the United States. The usual rational being the humble police officer the only thing standing between chaos and law and order. For the greater portion of my life I bought that party line and chaffed whenever someone spoke differently. Furthermore being white and raised in the American South, you grow up hearing the adults talk about the police being the only thing ensuring certain segments of the population don't get too uppity. This comes from Southern white folks having nightmares about black uprisings for literal centuries.

Don't believe me? Drive down to beautiful Charleston, South Carolina and take a carriage tour close to the Battery. Look closely at all those ornate Antebellum houses and ask the tour guide about the scary spikes sticking out from second story windows. The short explanation being those spikes were meant to deter slaves from climbing up the walls and into the bedrooms of sleeping white folks and cutting their throats. Slavery may have ended and Civil Rights Movement may be seen as justified by most white folks now, but those fears still linger.

Personally, I grew up watching shows like Dragnet and Adam 12 that portrayed police as soldiers in a “never ending war against crime.” The fictional police detective Joe Friday from Dragnet was a trip, straitlaced and totally by the book, you would have gotten more human compassion from a T-100 Terminator coming fresh off the Skynet factory floor.

When you combine that residue of racial fears and the glorification of cops unable to do any wrong you get the bullshit situation we have now. If you find this all distasteful, you can sidestepping the racial issue completely, let's frame this another way. What we have is the economically advantaged scared shitless that the economically disadvantaged will come and take their stuff and rape their daughters producing a lot of off-colored babies. Okay if I offended anyone I frankly don't give a damn.

We're twenty years into the twenty-first century and I can still easily find individuals that spout crap that the “races shouldn't mix.” Or that God has somehow ordained humans oppressing other humans because of a difference in skin color.

This gets me to my real point. Why the fuck did Derek Chauvin have to keep his knee pressed down on George Floyd's neck for eight minutes, killing him in the process? I've seen the videos, Mr. Floyd was handcuffed and being held down by two other police officers. Why the hell did Chauvin feel the need to not only keep his knee on the dying man's neck but clearly be seen pushing down harder?

Apparently all the police officers involved with Mr. Floyd were so harden by their daily battles on the front-lines of that never ending war on crime that they had become divorced their basic humanity. What part of, “Please, I can't breathe” did they not understand?

Yes, I know the death of Mr. Floyd was not an isolated incident. Crimes against humanity like that have been occurring on an all too regular basis in this country. The thing that makes it even worse is that not only do most white folks don't give a real rip, a huge number of us will find reasons to justify it.

Oh yeah, if you didn't catch my mindset, fuck the cops. I ain't buying their pitiful bullshit anymore. You believe you're soldiers in a never ending war, well man up and deal with it. Can't hack the pressure but still want to be an essential worker in society, quit and become a grocery store clerk or health care worker. You just can't easily find a reason to kill anyone in those jobs.