Why does this keep happening? Seriously, why?
The viral video of Minneapolis police kneeling on the neck of arrestee George Floyd, who died while in custody, is worse than sickening. To call it a textbook example of police brutality is to understate the case. It’s worse than brutality; it’s inhuman.
For those who somehow missed the story, Floyd was arrested on suspicion of the minor crime of using forged documents. He was inebriated but unarmed. He allegedly resisted arrest but was restrained and handcuffed. Yet, even after constraining him, police officers at the scene continued to kneel on his neck for seven full minutes, even after he repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe, even after he said he would get in the police car if let up, and even after bystanders noted that he clearly was no longer resisting arrest (if he ever did so to start with). Then he lost consciousness.
At some point, Floyd died.
During the whole time that one officer essentially choked the life out of Floyd, another officer stood by, appearing to be completely unconcerned with anything except trying to shoo away the onlookers who were taking videos of the appalling incident.
Again, how can things like this keep happening? How can police be so oblivious both to human life and their own duties, even after so many well-videoed examples of police misconduct resulting in deaths or severe injuries to unarmed arrestees and the firing, and often criminal convictions, of the cops themselves?
Some of us instinctively want to defend or find a good explanation for police behavior. We revere the “thin blue line” that protects us all from criminals. We know that the well-publicized incidents represent a tiny fraction of police encounters with suspects. Yet, still, we cannot possibly condone behavior like this. An unarmed man on the ground, handcuffed behind his back, with other police officers standing there with guns to keep him subdued, is not a threat.
It usually seems that the suspect in such cases is black. This isn’t always true, but surely the impression is correct that gross misconduct is more often perpetrated against blacks than whites.
Is this racism at work? Is it just a case of police forces sometimes attracting bad actors on power trips? Who knows? But what we do know is that all across the country, a small subset of police officers does vile things to suspects.
Is there some good solution to offer? Some policy change?
Well, nothing obvious. Still, if there is a single police department anywhere in the United States that is failing to train officers about the line between appropriate force and inappropriate brutality, that department is a plague on the society it is intended to serve.
None of us should allow this sort of police behavior to seem normal or to go unpunished. Outrage is justified, and so, at times, is the full weight of legal prosecution against the offending cops.
