Reforming the Police

"Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Floyd grew up in Houston, Texas, playing American football and basketball throughout high school and college."

"Between 1997 and 2005, he was convicted of eight crimes."

"He served four years in prison after accepting a plea bargain for a 2007 aggravated robbery in a home invasion."

Wikipedia

 

"We observed many MPD [Minneapolis Police Department] officers who did their difficult work with professionalism, courage and respect."

"But the patterns and practices we observed made what happened to George Floyd possible."

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland

 

"[Minneapolis officers used excessive force, including] unjustified deadly force [and violated the rights of people engaged in constitutionally protected speech]."

"[Both police and the city discriminated against people with] behavioural health disabilities [when officers are called for help]."

"[Police for years] used dangerous techniques and weapons against people who committed at most a petty offence and sometimes no offence at all."

"[Officers] used force to punish people who made officers angry or criticized the police." 

"[Police also] patrolled neighbourhoods differently based on their racial composition and discriminated based on race when searching, handcuffing or using force against people during stops."

U.S. Justice Department civil rights investigation 

Getty Images

 

It has taken two years, but the Biden administration's Justice Department has finally issued the results of its investigation into the situation prevailing in Minneapolis with respect to the working strategies of the city's police department in addressing and apprehending crime. It is a damning report in its scope and conclusions, condemning the Minneapolis police of what the investigators claim is a pattern of constitutional rights violations, in particular discriminating against Black and Native American citizens.

 

The killing of George Floyd -- a petty criminal with a penchant for violence -- during an attempted arrest when he resisted the efforts of three police officers which led to a violent, ultimately lethal hold by one officer aided by two others, in an effort to subdue the man, was captured on video and broadcast widely horrifying the general public and enraging the Black community within the entire country. The result was a series of violent protests and the emergence of a movement: "Black Lives Matter".

 

BLM went on to become a mantra against the historical maltreatment of Blacks in the United States, one that was picked up globally, as individuals, groups and governments made haste to indicate their rejection of police violence perpetrated on minority groups. Black Lives Matter became a force to be reckoned with, their message echoing across the globe, and in the process George Floyd became an icon of rejection of racism. In their furious rampages across the United States, BLM boosters themselves exacted a ritualistic violence, looting, burning buildings, issuing threats, confronting their white counterparts.

 

Above all, a movement issued out of the maelstrom of angry blame and violent reactions, that the police, guilty of abusing their public trust and guilty of the use of deadly violence, were out of touch with the population, and governments at every level agreed. Two of the police officers who assisted Derek Chauvin the white Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murder and manslaughter were themselves minority ethnics. Police chiefs all over the United States were often Black themselves. 

 

But 'defund the police!' resonated and city councils began to vote down annual increases in police budgets and began slashing them. The predictable results have been chaotic. Crime has risen notably. There are fewer police  on the forces that once saw their goal as maintaining law and order. Drug use, homelessness, mental health failures have all contributed to a steep rise in crimes of all kinds. There are fewer police to be deployed with greater number of crimes committed; the legacy of the death of George Floyd.

Black Lives Matter, as a movement began to have a putrid odour of corruption; vast sums of donations were discovered to have been used for personal profit. Throughout the entire wild controversy the fact that Black populations themselves were bedevilled by high rates of crime, including Black-on-Black murder was never adequately addressed. The fact that out of the Black demographic the percentage of crimes of all types; gangs, drugs, home invasions, robberies were disproportionate to their numbers is politely set aside.

The police officers faced time over time with recognized faces of criminal offenders being re-arrested reacted with frustration and aggravation that often vented itself in inappropriate responses by the authority figures that they are; a reflection of  human nature, pushed too far. The investigation has led the city of Minneapolis and its police department to agree to a federal consent decree where reforms are required to be overseen by an independent monitor, approved by a federal judge.

Similar arrangements in reforms of other police departments have taken place in Seattle, New Orleans, Baltimore and elsewhere in the U.S. In the May 25, 2020 altercation which left George Floyd dead and the country in an uproar of violent reproach, George Floyd was seen to repeatedly say he was unable to breathe as Officer Chauvin knelt on his neck for 9-1/2 minutes. Such restraint techniques with their

predictably dangerous potential should never have been approved. They now no longer will be.

List of Floyd's charges, Office of Harris County District Clerk

The Cobbler's Childen Poorly Shod

"Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don't operate off of what the right thinks about me."

"I've created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave."

"It feels like the time is right." 

"I think both of them [two new interim senior executives to help steer it in the immediate future: Monifa Bandele, a longtime BLM organizer and founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in New York City, and Makani Themba, an early backer of the BLM movement and chief strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies in Jackson, Mississippi] come with not only a wealth of movement experience, but also a wealth of executive experience."

"I think I will probably be less visible, because I won't be at the helm of one of the largest, most controversial organizations right now in the history of our movement."

"I'm aware that I'm a leader, and I don't shy away from that. But no movement is one leader."

Patrisse Cullors, co-founder, Black Lives Matter

In this Nov. 4, 2018, file photo, Patrisse Cullors poses for a photo on day three of Summit LA18 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)

"[Prior to 2019, Patrisse Cullors had] received a total of $120,000 since the organization's inception in 2013, for duties such as serving as spokesperson and engaging in political education work."

"As a registered 501c3 non-profit organization, [the foundation] cannot and did not commit any organizational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer." 

"Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false."

Black Lives Matter Foundation statement

 

"If you go around calling yourself a socialist, you have to ask how much of her own personal money is going to charitable causes."

"It’s really sad because it makes people doubt the validity of the movement and overlook the fact that it’s the people that carry this movement."

"We need black firms and black accountants to go in there and find out where the money is going."

Hawk Newsome, Black Lives Matter organizer

USA Today network

An avowed Marxist and co-founder of the Black social-activist group Black Lives Matter is resigning from her position with the movement she was instrumental in bringing to life and worldwide attention. She has garnered praise from almost everyone associated with the movement, but also criticism from those within the movement, apart from accusations from what the woman herself, 37-year-old Patrisse Cullors, dismisses as right-wing White Supremacists. She has amassed a personal property portfolio worth millions and cast suspicion upon herself as a millionaire-Marxist.

This is a woman who was not born to wealth, but also a woman who saw opportunity when it presented itself. The opportunity to organize Black anger and resentment at a long history of discrimination and violence directed against Blacks, exploiting to great effect the killing by police in the United States of Blacks being arrested for infractions of the law. The long history of Black subjugation by white society as slave labour of an oppressed and enslaved people gave birth to a movement of angry victimhood demanding equality and respect and opportunity for advancement.

Black Lives Matter focused attention within the greater American community on the injustices of the past and the continued stripping of the dignity of human rights of the present-day Black population in America. Undeniable is the fact that Blacks represent a larger segment of the population involved in petty crimes, drawing the attention of law enforcement in a society mortified by its own ill-treatment of Blacks but within which resonance of virulent Black prejudice still festers. 

Black slavery took place when European countries colonized Black Africa. But Black slavery far predated those European colonizers who approached the slave trade as a commercial enterprise in competition with Arab slavers who had been in business far longer. And nor did Black slavery begin with Arab slavers; it was Black tribes themselves who warred against other tribes, taking their populations, men, women and children into institutional slavery. Slavery was universal in Africa; Blacks owning other Blacks.

This too is part of Black heritage, but one that is not audibly acknowledged, considered irrelevant to their current situation of living prejudice against blacks. It is a prejudice that will, in all likelihood, never completely dissipate, just as anti-Semitism rises and wanes interminably. As persecuted people, Jews have seen fit to defend and support Blacks in their traditional struggles to achieve equality. Blacks have not always reciprocated in kind; among their populations there are ample instances of Black antipathy to Jews. Human nature asserts itself in predictable ways.

Patrisse Cullors saw other opportunities in the movement she helped found, and as a leader gaining recognition in a context where the left, liberals, and the newly-recognized progressive 'woke' arose to defend and enshrine Black Lives Matter as a new campaign they could champion to demonstrate just how progressive they are, Ms. Cullors was recognized as a figure to contend with. She became an author of best sellers, and will author more of the same, and is now moving as a celebrity figure toward debuting a television series.

This is undoubtedly where her wealth stems from, not from siphoning off funding Black Lives Matter gathered during its public relations campaigns in support of their mission to change the world by confronting what they call White Imperialism, and uplifting Black lives and expectations toward a brighter future for the Black community. Which should, itself of its own volition begin to deal with the very real situation of Black crime; Black-on-Black violence, Black gangs, and Black criminality altogether. Intact families raising children, which BLM appears to be cavalier about, impart moral values and civilizational mores for the well-being of society.

The BLM Foundation collected $90 million in donations during its campaign for equality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer who just incidentally committed his violent 'arrest' of the Black man in the company of other Minneapolis police officers, several of whom were visible minorities themselves. In the United States, where Blacks thunder against a vibrant brand of discrimination against blacks, there are Black mayors of major cities, Black police chiefs of large metropolitan areas, Black state and federal legislators, Black justices, Black university teachers, Blacks in the arts and sciences competing equally with their white counterparts. This too is reality.

A third of the $90 million the BLM foundation raised in donations was spent for operating expenses, and they claim grants to black-led organizations and other charitable enterprises, amidst concerns over the disbursements and where they were going related to a lack of transparency. "I know some of [the families directly impacted by police brutality] are feeling exploited", stated Rev.T.Sheri Dickerson, representing the BLM10 national group of organizers publicly criticizing the foundation for its lack of funding transparency. There are large accountability gaps in Black Lives Matter.

Its frenetic calls to defund police at a time when they themselves lack fundamental answerability to those they claim to represent has a bad odour. Defunding police will do nothing to advance the measures that the black community needs to improve itself so that the police are not always on guard against black misdemeanors in lawful conduct. Who will protect blacks against other blacks, should police be withdrawn? Revenge does not answer to the need within their communities, but they seem unprepared to address their own issues, preferring instead to cast themselves interminably as victims of White Imperialism.

Black Lives Matter has become a global rallying cry   Getty Images

"A Black Lives Matter protest on May 30 in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles turned violent. A Los Angeles Times account and a local CBS TV affiliate report made no mention of Jewish targets, but there were reports that synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized."

"As we watched the fires and looting, what didn’t get covered were the anti-Semitic hate crimes and incidents," Los Angeles Councilmember Paul Koretz said, according to the Jewish Journal, which reported that Congregation Beth El was vandalized with graffiti stating "free Palestine" and "f— Israel."

Politifact

Identity Politics of Black Lives Matter

"Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) made a statement — while jurors in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin were not yet sequestered — which demanded street confrontations unless Chauvin were found guilty of murder. The trial judge correctly suggested that any conviction in the case might ultimately be thrown out on appeal, based on what Waters said. He condemned Waters' remarks in the strongest terms, but he did not have the courage to grant a defense motion for a mistrial. Had he done so, that almost certainly would have led to riots — which would have been blamed on the judge, not on Rep. Waters. So he left it to the court of appeals, months in the future, to grant a new trial -- which he should have granted."

Alan M. Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School

Pictured: National Guardsmen and other law enforcement officers stand guard outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, on April 20, 2021. (Photo by Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)

Two things of a certainty: The former police officer Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police, did, through his deliberate actions, take the life of a former felon, George Floyd, while attempting to arrest him for having passed a counterfeit $20 bill in the purchase of a pack of cigarettes. That Mr.Chauvin caused the death of Mr. Floyd is irrefutable. There are witnesses everywhere to the act, which was captured on video and repeatedly aired to great public dismay and anger. The man was in custody, had been subdued when he resisted arrest, and handcuffed in the prone position, and met his death when his oxygen supply was cut off.

 

Through the evidence of the video, more incriminating than any credible testimony, it was clear that Mr. Chauvin was the instrument of Mr. Floyd's death. There may well have been extenuating circumstances; Mr. Floyd was a drug user and had fentanyl in his system, and his health was compromised by a heart problem. Clearly, however, it was then-Officer Chauvin's knee pressed to Mr. Floyd's neck for over nine minutes of agony for Mr. Floyd who gasped for relief to enable him to breathe, that was the cause of  his death.

"They're a good family and they're calling for peace and tranquility, no matter what that verdict is."

"I'm praying the verdict is the right verdict, which is -- I think it's overwhelming in my view."

"I wouldn't say that unless the jury was sequestered now, [would] not hear me say that."

U.S.President Joe Biden, at the White House

Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, has been convicted on all charges in the death of George Floyd.   Pool

 

That would, of course, be viewed as the President of the United States interfering with the justice system had the jurors not been sequestered. It was obvious enough that he expressed the opinion that the jury of twelve women and men, black and white, needed to find the defendant guilty as charged. Some, like Professor Dershowitz, feel the state overstepped itself in declaring the death of George Floyd a murder and not a case of manslaughter. Murder is usually premeditated, while Mr. Floyd's death was a miscalculation and a heartless oblivion to his suffering.

 

This was a case fraught with danger for society in general and peace and stability in particular. Black Lives Matter adherents, passionate in their rage over past injustices against the black community in America see their purpose as forcefully reminding the majority white communities in the country of their past and current responsibilities in having enslaved a people, forcing their labour for profit, and over the course of the years manifestly believing in the inferiority of blacks while committing grave human rights crimes against them.

 

The BLM movement has been influential both in the U.S. and abroad for the outrage it invokes that is credible and deserving. But it, like the Minneapolis police officer who committed a black man to death in an age-old manner, has transgressed the boundaries of civil behaviour, committing serious offences of their own in the process. Posturing, threatening, and committing violence against others, both black and white, destroying public and private property, creating chaos in their wake. Defying law and order.

 

Many now view the finding of guilty in the criminal trial of Mr. Chauvin just and deserving. During the course of his professional duties, after all, he committed the cardinal sin of overstating his public duty and in the process of disabling a struggling man, applying continual undue force resulting in his tortured death. Now, Mr. Chauvin is the one in handcuffs and Mr. Floyd's memory as a handcuffed and subdued arrestee has filed the final chapter in the sad and sorry event that transformed a nation into a BLM-revenge-fearing country.

 

Chauvin pressed his knee into the back of Mr Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes.  EPA

 

Having pleaded not guilty to the charges of second-degree unintentional murder involving "intentional infliction of bodily harm", third-degree unintentional "depraved mind" murder involving an "act eminently dangerous to others", and second-degree manslaughter involving a death caused by "culpable negligence", former Minneapolis police officer Chauvin has been declared guilty on all counts. And now faces a likely prison sentence of at least ten years, as a first-time criminal offender. Longer, if "aggravating factors" are proven.

 

There were four police officers in total at that scene where George Floyd died. One, at least, was an ethnic minority. The three officers other than Mr. Chauvin were fired by the Minneapolis Police Department when Mr. Chauvin as the perpetrator of Mr. Floyd's death, was fired. All others are due to face trial as the year progresses on charges of aiding-and-abetting in Mr. Floyd's death. None appeared to have made an effort to intervene, to persuade Mr. Chauvin to release Mr. Floyd from the excruciating pain of impending death.  

There is another story here. The story of hardcore animosity between black and white. Guilt on the part of the white community, accusations that cannot be denied from the black community. And a deadly rage that promised to unleash mayhem and even murder along with looting and destruction should Mr. Chauvin not be found guilty. Witnesses who testified for Mr. Chauvin have received threats and a general aura of violent intimidation hung on the air in anticipation of a verdict that could not have been other than it was.

The reasons twofold; that guilt was indeed his, as the evidence clearly demonstrated, though the charges might have been different; and the fear of violence once again erupting on a scale that might dwarf those that were mounted last year in the wake of the death of Mr. Floyd would be repeated. And may yet still be. The BLM movement appears to be addicted to the rage of violence and defiance of the law which nothing seems to appease.

 

People gathered in Minneapolis to celebrate the verdict and pay tribute to George Floyd   Getty Images

Conveniently Re-Assignment History to the Waste Basket

"It is absurd and shameful that this national monument should today be at risk for attack by violent protesters."
"Yes, he [Sir Winston Churchill] sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today, but he was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial."
"We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history."
"Whatever progress this country has made in fighting racism — and it has been huge — we all recognize that there is much more work to do. But it is clear that the protests have been sadly hijacked by extremists intent on violence."
“Would it not be better and more honest to ask our children to understand the context, to explain the mixture of good and bad in the career of Churchill and everyone else?"
"I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square.” 
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Police officers stand in front of the Winston Churchill statue during a rally in Parliament Square in London on Tuesday. Ahead of expected protests on the weekend, the statue has been boarded up. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/The Associated Press)

"It's clear that we're in the middle of a public health crisis. So it's not safe for them [protesters], it's not safe for the people around them [for everyone to be gathering in crowds during the COVID-19 pandemic]."
"Secondly, we do have information that people are intent on coming to cause violence and confrontation."
London Police Chief Cressida Dick

The statue of former British prime minister Winston Churchill is seen defaced in Parliament Square, central London after a demonstration outside the US Embassy on June 7, 2020. Photo by Isabel Infantes/AFP via Getty Images.

In Britain, those styling themselves anti-racism protesters, taking the opportunity of the Black Lives Matter protests set off by the Minneapolis police killing of African-American George Floyd in the United States, have made demands of government and its agencies at every level, universities and other groups who sought to memorialize events and personages in history as part of the nation's heritage, that it is their intention to see that all vestiges of Britain's imperial past reflected in monuments and statuary, the naming of institutions and public thoroughfares be extinguished.

Damage and the assaults of graffiti declaring Sir Winston Churchill -- the WWII saviour of Great Britain, who stood virtually alone with his British Empire support against the axis powers supporting Nazi Germany until the entry of the United States of America following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour -- forced the British government to close off Parliament Square and to board up the parliament-facing statue of Sir Winston Churchill, Britain's war years prime minister whose pledge to the country to 'never give up' in the struggle against the Thousand-year Reich was fulfilled in Germany's defeat.

In the United States, where the protests first emerged in late May, statues erected to memorialize Christopher Columbus were destroyed by ravaging mobs of violent thugs; the statues disfigured in Boston and Richmond, Virginia last week. Black Lives Matter groups protesting the death of George Floyd have outdone themselves in their destructive fury, aiming their vandalism at Confederate memorials n the south of the nation; Richmond and Birmingham, Alabama, Charleston, South Carolina and Raleigh, North Carolina.

In Virginia, a statue of Christopher Columbus erected in Byrd Park, Richmond, was pulled down, and thrown face down into Fountain Lake; a just end, the mob felt, for a man who violently abused the indigenous people he found occupying the New World, when he 'discovered' it in 1492. A bronze statue that was dedicated in 1927 in recognition of a great explorer. Back in London, its mayor, Sadiq Khan, supported the protests' claims that controversial monuments that cause offence be removed.

Churchill statue, Whitehall boarded up  Photograph: Blitz Pictures/REX/Shutterstock

The list drawn up by Black Lives Matter supporters includes statues of leading historical figures included among them, Sir Francis Drake, Nancy Astor, Christopher Columbus and William Gladstone "for celebrating slavery and racism", according to the campaigners. A figure of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave trader, was thrown into Bristol harbour before councils and museums were able to tuck it out of view.

Over a thousand demonstrators in Oxford fixed a demand for the removal of colonialist Cecil Rhodes' statue. Mayor Khan remarked that he "hoped" a new commission for diversity in the public realm would recommend removal of memorials that "don't accurately reflect our values", in a mayoral bid to place history in the dungeon of a revisionist garbage heap. If you can't see it, it cannot have occurred. London had "an uncomfortable truth" with historical links to slavery, according to Mayor Khan.

  Baden-Powell statue in Poole. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

"Our nation and city owes a large part of its health to its role in the slave trade and while this is reflected in our public realm, the contribution of many of our communities to life in our capital has been willfully ignored -- this cannot continue."  Not all are in agreement with the mayor's assessment. An assembly member, Susan Hall, stated that "Instead of virtue-signalling and starting a divisive debate, Sadiq Khan should focus on his job"

A list of 60 statues, plaques and monuments was put together identifying which among Britain's rich history of movers and shakers were to be destroyed, according to anti-racism activists who declared the "need to be removed so that Britain can finally face the truth about its past". Charles II, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Nelson, Prime Minister Gladstone, Sir Francis Drake, and Charles Grey, the former prime minister who oversaw the abolition of slavery in 1833, all listed given their "responsibility for colonial violence".

The Cenotaph war memorial in Whitehall being boarded up on Friday. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images