What more can be said about Derek Chauvin?

 

I love sitting at my desk, late at night, looking out the big window to my right at the back yard. It’s peaceful and quiet, flooded with soft light from the fixtures over the door of the main house and at the side of my house. I know, I know—we should treasure the darkness, and I do. But lights in the yard—and a motion sensitive light in the driveway—make me feel safe, even with an electronic gate that is firmly closed. In our neighborhood, we have what we call night visitors—people, usually young men, who check out driveways to see who has left a car unlocked with anything from pocket change to computers available for the taking. Also, just for my own pleasure, I have a light outside my French doors with a screen or something that throws tiny specks of green light on the wall of the back house next to me. I love looking at that display, even when I wake in the night, and have recently discovered that it stays on until about six in the morning. Wasteful, I know, and I should re-set it, but I’m not sure how to do that. So I just enjoy.

Tonight, Jacob was out hitting golf balls against his practice net in the driveway, but now he has gone inside, and all the dogs are in for the night. The yard is quiet and peaceful, and that’s the way I feel. Peaceful.

Like so many across our country, I am relieved, satisfied, ecstatic about the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, though I try to imagine what it would be like to be him and know the country is rejoicing because he’s been convicted. But then, I cannot imagine being him and keeping a knee on a man’s neck for over nine minutes. I want to feel some sympathy, some emotion for any human being, but he makes it hard.

I kept the TV on most of the day, muted, curious to see if the verdict would come back. I knew that if it came today, it would be guilty; if any jurors were unconvinced, it could make for long, drawn out deliberations. I told myself that having twelve jurors agree unanimously to three charges was a long shot, and I was geared not to expect much.

I napped, as I always do, this afternoon—and dreamt that the verdict came back. So I was only a bit surprised to wake up, look at my phone, and see that the verdict was in. I rushed to turn on the TV and got so carried away I did not do my PT exercises. (I suppose I may be forgiven one day’s vacation.) I was struck by the peaceful yet joyous crowds outside the courtroom, the flickering of Chauvin’s eyes as the verdict was read, though he tried to show no emotion, and the passionate speeches by President Biden and Vice-President Harris.

The internet is full of hopeful messages that this is the beginning of a new era in law enforcement, albeit with a recognition that change comes slowly. I don’t know about that. Even as I read all those positive statements, I remembered Sandy Hook. We thought surely that horrific slaughter of innocent children would bring a wave of gun control measures—and nothing happened. After a week or two, the world went on, leaving devastated families to grieve and cope as best they could. The Floyd family has gotten public support—tonight, it was everyone from Al Sharpton to—was that Jesse Jackson in the background? But President Obama went to Sandy Hook, spoke, and cried. I can only hope that this time the nation’s compassion has come out, this time we recognize what’s happening to our country, this time we see that, as the mayor of Minneapolis said, we cannot continue to live this way.

Even as the verdict was being read, a teen-age girl in Ohio called police because girls were fighting outside her house. They arrived and shot the girl who had called four times. And though I haven’t seen blowback, I hear that police across the country are threatening to resign. And a recent interview (was it 60 Minutes?) revealed that police are training Poor Boys and Oath Keepers in police and military tactics. It’s hard to cling to hope in the face of such outrages.

I am, by nature, an optimist, so tonight I cling to hope. I pray that this momentous day marks a starting point for change, that Americans rise up against police brutality and for gun control, that George Floyd did not die in vain. Pray with me, please.

A sad night

During the day I squirreled away a couple oh-so-clever items to blog about tonight, like my miniscule crop of tiny, tiny tomatoes from my unruly plants on my desktop green house. Or I could tell you about the birthday dinner I had tonight, with three friends—lots of laughter and a bit of commiserating about the difficulties of aging. But my heart is too heavy tonight for trivia, and aging seems a blessing denied to many.

A Paschal high school student died at noon today because he was racing his car against a friend, lost control, and hit a tree. On a street that I travel often, the route I took to work for years. Somehow, we don’t expect these things to happen close to home. I do not know the boy’s identity, but the horror increased when I heard that tomorrow is his sixteenth birthday, and the car in which he died--a Mustang—was his birthday present. I cannot stop thinking about that family whose child is not coming home tonight. Jacob will go to Paschal in another year, which also brings it closer to home. How do we build a protective bubble around our children?

I grieve too for Bothran Jean, who left us some time ago, and for his family and for Amy Guyger who shot him and who today was convicted of murder. I watched TV for a while just after the verdict was announced, and it was wrenching. What she, a police officer, did was so wrong that there is no comprehending. Jean was in his apartment, eating ice cream—the only thing he did wrong was to leave his door ajar. She entered, thinking she was in her own apartment a floor below, and shot him, out of fear for her life, she says. I presume, as a police officer coming off duty and still in her gear, she had other ways to subdue a threat, but she shot to kill.

As the prosecutor said today, there’s a strong lesson there for police officers, a lesson about deadly force that should be a cautionary tale for so many police officers across the country. I was sad that supporters of Bothran Jean’s family made it into a racial issue, though the tones of racism were always there—she is white, he was black. But it seems to me this is more a police training and brutality issue than a racial one, though perhaps in our society today the two are so intertwined as to be inseparable. But like the teenage driver, Bothran Jean will not be coming home to his family—ever.

The judge allowed the castle theory defense for Ms. Guyger which seemed really out of whack to me. She wasn’t defending her “castle,” which was one story below. She was invading his castle. Still I thought she might be convicted of manslaughter. When the murder conviction came back, I felt a wave of sympathy for her, awful as what she did was. I could imagine, seeing the shock on her face, that she was desperately wishing that this was a bad dream from which she would wake up. But it wasn’t. She will pay a stiff price—from five to 99 years—for the grief that she had brought to two families and to a community and a city.

As a good friend of mine says, there’s a world of hurt out there. Be gentle with one another, my friends. None of us can see around the next corner in our lives.

Out of the mouths of babes--policemen are our friends

When my children were quite young, there was a local TV program called "Hobab Means Helper" and a friend of mine hosted it. So one Saturday, all four of my children were her guests. At one point, following the helper theme, she asked them what they did to help their mother. Oh, you wouldn't have believed those little angels--they made their beds, picked up their dirty clothes, carried their dishes to the sink, etc. All with halos shining brightly. Until, that is, it was four-year-old Jordan's turn. She looked at them in amazement and said, "The maid does all those things." (Disclaimer: I was then married to a doctor and had a far different lifestyle than I do now.)
Then came a discussion of policemen, and I forget what the others said, but Jordan's answer will live on forever: "Policemen are our friends, and if you don't have a Cadillac or a Mercedes, they will help  you get one."
That line rings in my head these days because I am so appalled at the instances of police brutality we're seeing daily on our televisions--if it's not Ferguson, it's New York or Tulsa or, now, Baltimore. I truly believe that most law enforcement officers are good people, trying to help others, enforcing the law when necessary but not taking pleasure in beating the less fortunate. But it's happening too often, and the victims of this brutality are (without an exception I can think of) black. Don't even begin to talk to me about profiling.
Not too long ago I read an article by a black mother who talked about her fear every time her son went out, her cautions to him to be polite, respectful, etc. When a policeman shot a man in the back (see, there've been so many incidents I can't remember where this one was), I wished the man hadn't bolted when he got out of his car. He was wrong. Apparently he had something fairly minor against him--traffic violations or failure to pay child support. But is there no other way than to shoot him in the back and kill him?
I know that crime is high in black communities, and I can understand police frustration. I know they feel their lives are on the line every time they go on duty. But to break a man's back? It sickens me. Or to shoot a man because you mistook your gun for your taser. There's probably too much overuse of tasers anyway, but that's not a subject I'm qualified to speak on.
I do feel capable of asking if law enforcement attracts people with hidden anger that they are waiting to take out. What's outrageous and scary is that this is not a localized problem--it's happening in cities far and wide. So I don't know what the solution is. Except police forces have to work together, to screen candidates, to train them better, to train them to reach out to their communities and avoid the obvious antagonism that existed (and still does) in Ferguson and other communities. God help us, if we become a nation terrorized by those who are supposed to keep us safe.
I'm like Jordan--every policeman I've ever met, including those who came when I mistakenly set off my health alarm, have been unfailingly kind, helpful and friendly. No, they didn't offer me a Cadillac or a Mercedes. But then, I'm not a black male.