George Floyd and injustice, from murder to mayhem
Wrong: murder. Doubly wrong: murder by an officer whose job it is to uphold the law. This cannot be overemphasized. While there is no qualitative difference in the death of any innocent person, there is a qualitative difference in murder by a common criminal and murder by a representative of the authorized legal system.
Right: Peaceful protests.
Wrong: Violence.
Right: Peaceful protests with social distancing observed.
Wrong: Peaceful protests without social distancing observed.
Right: The approach of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock: affirmation of the right to peaceful protest; arrest of violent protesters; interception (or attempted interception) of arms brought to protests; imposition of curfews.
Wrong: Murder, white on black, wherever it may occur, but horrendous now in the case of George Floyd in Minneapolis; murder, black on black, wherever it occurs, but horrendously concentrated in certain neighborhoods in Chicago; and murder, black on white, wherever it occurs, most recently last May in the case of Paul and Lidia Marino. The Marinos, a white couple, were shot dead while visiting a veterans’ cemetery in Delaware, where their son, a veteran, is buried. The suspect was Sheldon Francis, a black man, who couldn’t be questioned or prosecuted because he was killed in an exchange of fire with police.
Right: that the terrible death of George Floyd is widely known, because it reflects a more general scourge: a distortion within a system that is mandated by the people to ensure the equal application of the law. Wrong: that the terrible deaths of the Marinos is not widely known, because they reveal the sociological complexity in the assignment of racial disparities in crime.
Right: the horror over the murder of innocent people.
Wrong: the assumption that every murder of a white by a black or of a black by a white is racially motivated.
Right: To acknowledge racial injustice and to highlight it through peaceful protests.
Wrong: the assumption that in every case when a black is killed by a police officer, the cause is police brutality; and the assumption that in every case when a black is killed by a police officer, the cause is never police brutality.
Right: the mantra of protesters, “I can’t breathe,” calling attention to the despicable mode of death of George Floyd.
Wrong: The destruction of the property of innocent people, most ironic in the destruction of stores whose owners themselves protest the killing of George Floyd, no less appalled by it than other protesters.
Right: Outrage over police brutality, often brought to the broader public only through videos filmed by bystanders and by journalists.
Wrong: Attacks on journalists, whether by protesters or police.
Right: Jail time for those who commit acts of violence.
Wrong: Leniency for those who commit acts of violence on the grounds that their cause is just.
Right: Tough police response to riots.
Wrong: Hatred by police of anyone, including racially based hate.
Right: the constant review of police tactics during protests and riots.
Wrong: the idea that there is some happy medium equally perceptible to all as to what an appropriate police response is.
Right: Aggressive police response to rock throwing.
Wrong: The idea that it’s “only” rock throwing. In fact, rocks kill people, as tragically demonstrated when thrown by Palestinians, most recently in the death of Amit Ben-Yigal, 21, on May 12.
Right: these words of Mayor Hancock: “You don’t show up at peaceful demonstrations with assault weapons, handguns, baseball bats, golf [clubs] and flash-bang bottles with the intent of being peaceful.”
Wrong: car rammings, whether by a white supremacist, as in Charlottesville, or in Denver last week when a hit-and-run driver ran into a patrol vehicle and injured three officers.
Right: accountability for bad police behavior.
Wrong: the high sums paid out by cities around the country to settle police brutality cases — wrong because of the tremendous waste of city resources that better training and policing should obviate.
Debatable:
The assignment of police resources to address violent crime at the expense of attention by police to non-violent crime.
George Floyd was killed as a consequence of four police officers focused on Floyd’s alleged passing of a counterfeit $20 bill. This side of the debate argues that the focus on a minor theft, at the expense of focus on violent crime, is an egregious waste of police resources, all the more in this case when four officers spent time on a $20 crime.
The other side of the debate: People who see that they can get away with small, non-violent crimes often graduate to violent crime. Stop the potential violent criminal while there is time.
This side of the debate still leaves inexplicable the dispatch of four (!) officers to handle a non-violent, $20 theft, which ended in a loss of human life.
Not debatable:
The result of the intimidation of police work by violent protesters is a reduced willingness by police to wade into tricky criminal situations. This has the direct effect of more crime, more homicides, in the very communities that, for the most part, spawn the violent protests. No different from anyone else, police officers, who are men and women, white and black and brown, want their work to be appreciated. It is humanly impossible to say both: You are all brutal and racist, and, at the same time, Where are the police when we need them? Why aren’t they coming? The insistence on reform in policing without the acknowledgement of the wholly professional work performed by the great majority of police officers is a prescription for police standing down. Translation: anarchy.
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
