Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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The Verdict

Rich Galen

Friday April 23, 2021

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Maybe not since the O.J. Simpson trial has the nation been on the edge of our collective seat awaiting a jury's verdict. That jury found Derek Chauvin guilty on all three counts of killing George Floyd and we all breathed - wording intentional - a sigh of relief.
I'm not certain everyone in the country was as overjoyed with the verdict as we might have been led to believe watching the cable news shows, the person-on-the-street interviews, and the hastily called press conferences by family and other interested parties.
I share a sentiment with a high school friend who said she was uncomfortable, not with the verdict, but her feeling that we had been looking for revenge, not justice; and in Chauvin we had found a scapegoat for all of the police and vigilante malpractice we have witnessed over the decades.
I am not a cop. I have never wanted to be a cop. I have never had the guts to even consider that as a career path.
According to Wikipedia there are 17,985 police agencies in the U.S. According to a site called Statista.com in 2019 they employed 697,195 sworn officers.
The Washington Post has a real-time database tracking officer-involved fatal shootings. As of this writing (Thursday evening, April 22) there have been "983 people shot and killed by police in the past year."
The database shows that about 95 percent are males between the ages of 20 and 40 and "the rate at which black Americans are killed by police is more than twice as high as the rate for white Americans."
SIDEBAR:
The Post explains: "Athough half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans."

END SIDEBAR;
The database does not track the legitimacy of those shootings.
To answer your question about how many cops are killed in the line of duty each year, according to the FBI, "89 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents in 2019. Of these, 48 officers died as a result of felonious acts, and 41 officers died in accidents."
Someone asked me why cops don't aim for a leg or an arm. I am far from being an expert in firearms, but I know that handguns are notoriously inaccurate at any significant distance. Hopalong Cassidy shooting at the bad guy (while at a full gallop aboard his horse Topper) and winging him has never, ever happened.
The big difference in the Floyd case is there was no tenth-of-a-second, shoot-or-be-shot decision. George Floyd had been armed only with a bogus, but non-lethal, 20-dollar bill. Chauvin had nearly ten minutes to decide how to deal with Floyd.
Chauvin chose to kill him.
The question that remains unanswered is why so many of these, apparently minor, interactions escalate to lethal force so quickly.
Daunte Wright, the 20-year-old shot by a veteran of the local police force is a perfect example. Putting aside officer Kim Potter had 26 years of experience. Putting aside the fact she apparently became so frantic that she mistook her service weapon for her Taser.
Putting those things aside. My question is: What was it in Daunte Wright's manner that caused a simple out-of-date registration sticker to escalate beyond, "Call someone to come and get you. I'm going to have this car towed to the impound lot until you get the registration straightened out."
Instead he's dead. She's in jail.
Finally, I have seen too many "BLANK of the century prize fights, sporting events, political campaigns and other human endeavors that, by the next Tuesday were totally forgotten.
We have all lived through too many mass shootings that were going to change Congress' mind about gun safety laws. Too many hurricanes, wild fires, and tornadoes that would finally lead government(s) to get serious about climate change - or at least where humans are allowed to build houses. And, now, too many police shootings, justified or not, that will certainly alter what police officers can legally do.
We'll see.
I suppose the only thing to do is take our cue from the George Floyd's family. They seemed contented with the verdict. They know nothing will bring Mr. Floyd back, but seeing Chauvin led out of the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back, must have been satisfying.
Maybe that's the best any of us can hope for.
See you next week.

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