Photos: Twitter\YouTube
Today, state-sanctioned killer-cop Derek Chauvin, one of the many monsters of racist American policing, was sentenced to 22.5 years for his brutal broad-daylight torture and murder of George Floyd.
Chauvin got off lightly for taking George Floyd’s life.
Let’s remember this: Chauvin was convicted on three counts: second-degree unintentional murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years; third-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 and 1\2 years; and second-degree manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years for his ghastly crime in taking the life of someone deemed unworthy because of his African skin by a white American system which has a long history of institutional racism. Chauvin was given this sentence for executing a death sentence on an innocent Black man in the streets of America.
Chauvin’s crime, has been multiplied numerous times over in America’s history, by racist killer-cops, and others. Will this sentence be a deterrence? After all, abusing, torturing, and killing African-Americans, like Floyd, is just as American as apple pie.
To pretend that the truth is something different is what many in white America have always done. Lying and denying is the typically cowardly response of far too many whites to the nation’s legacy of criminality against America’s kidnapped children of Africa. The current conservative Republican hysteria regarding “critical race theory” is an example of the dishonesty.
The hate that Chauvin exhibited in his cold-blooded murder of Floyd was taught to him by the white America he grew up in. For murdering a Black man, especially as a cop, Chauvin never expected to pay any price. Many from communities like Chauvin’s see Black life as less than, therefore, expendable.
When Chauvin lynched George Floyd, by using his knee as a southern rope, he was following a long tradition of America’s serial murders of African-Americans. And he thought, like many other killer-cops, what better way to do that in 21 Century America than to do it while wearing a police badge.
The “license to kill” mentality many cops have is obviously particularly made manifest in their dealings with African-Americans. So we saw Chauvin posing–with sunglasses on top of his head–on Floyd’s body like a white Safari hunter posing with his African kill, a stunning analogy my cousin made to me.
As it relates to racial policing, many are still engaging in idiotic whataboutisms like in the contemporary debate about the recent rise of crime.
Police apologists are now using the catastrophic convergence of COVID-19, with all the already existing economic inequality that has been exacerbated during COVID, along with the attendant mental anxiety, to argue that, somehow, the uptick in crime has something to do with the national call for police accountability which erupted across America after the 9 minutes and 29 seconds murder of George Floyd.
That argument is deceitful bogus bull.
These disingenuous people pretend not to see the crystal-clear connection between most of America’s inner-city crime, economic inequality and poverty. The fighting crime talk of these phony folk advocates the false philosophy that crime reduction is primarily dependent on flooding Black and Latino communities with police officers from largely segregated white communities. Some now even insinuate that we should accept racist policing as a necessary tradeoff for “public safety,” by which they mean the safety of so-called white people.
Under this theory, Chauvin, Jason Van Dyke, who murdered LaQuan McDonald; Michael Slager, who murdered Black veteran Walter Scott; Daniel Pantaleo, who strangled Eric Garner; and the other killer-cops, should just get a pass for killing Black people because they are crime fighters. This is the sick racist ideology of these hypocrites. And they have the nerve to call us criminals and animals while justifying the killings and murders of our people.
Because of the unsurprising crime uptick, in this time of COVID, they now tell us that police need more funding, not less–to terrorize and further exploit economically crippled communities. Of course, the truth is the exact opposite. It is governmental disinvestment of poor Black and Latino communities which is the primary driver of crime, gangs, gun violence, etc. And then these same people say nothing regarding police policy that target our fiscally struggling communities with tickets, summons, etc.
Moreover, some politicians in white America, while decrying crime, push legislation that creates fertile breeding ground for crime to mushroom. Phony “small government” Republicans, who mostly utter this when they are arguing against programs to help the working poor, contribute to the continuance of crime levels with their lack of support for marginalized communities.
In this moment, Republicans are using the crime uptick to pretend they support police–while they ignore the Capitol Police who were attacked by their MAGA Mob terrorist supporters. Worse of all, the police unions who aid-and-abet the killer-cops of Black people, like Derek Chauvin, have been revealingly silent about the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
Today’s sentence underscores the fact that much more work must be done to realize racial justice.
When a police officer can use his badge to murder an innocent Black man, and receives less than the maximum, this again illustrates the double standard in America’s criminal justice. Yes, Judge Peter Cahill didn’t give Chauvin probation as defense attorney Eric Nelson absurdly asked for.
However, lets ask this question: if George Floyd had murdered Derek Chauvin would he have gotten anything less than the maximum sentence allowable in Minnesota? If there is no mercy for a cop-killer why is there another standard for a killer-cop, a so-called “peace officer,” who uses his position to murder another person?
If one goes by the maximum allowable for the three charges, Chauvin could’ve received 75 years in prison. At 45 years-old, even if Chauvin serves most of the 22.5 years, he could conceivably be released in time to live out some of his golden years, while George Floyd is in the cemetery.
Is that really the fair administering of “justice” for someone who tortured and murdered a human being, while “under the color of law?”
That being said, Derek Chauvin still faces prosecution by the Department of Justice. Hopefully, the DOJ piles more time on Chauvin for his hideous heinous crime.
For taking George Floyd’s life, Derek Chauvin should spend the rest of his miserable life rotting in prison.
