MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – The images are tragically familiar. The death of an African American at the hands of the police. Manifestations of anger that turn into a riot—the mobilization of the national guard. The chain of events is set this time in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
It all started with the muscular arrest of a 46-year-old black man on May 25. The scene, filmed by a witness, is hardly sustainable. George Floyd threw to the ground, and a policeman kneels on his neck. “I can’t breathe,” he repeats. Neither his pleas nor those of those who attend the scene are heard. Then, the body of George Floyd stops. When the emergency services intervene, the policeman, Derek Chauvin, is always perched on him.
The City’s reaction was swift: the four police officers immediately Fired.
Mayor Jacob Frey said what happened was “wrong at every level.”
“This does not reflect the values that Chief Arradondo has worked tirelessly to instill. It does not represent the training we’ve invested in or the measures we’ve taken to ensure accountability. Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” Frey said.
The accused police officer had received eighteen complaints related to his behavior. The lack of immediate legal consequences, however, fueled the frustration of demonstrators for Three consecutive nights.
Deployment of the National Guard
The unrest prompted state Democratic Governor Tim Walz to request the deployment of the National Guard on Thursday. “The death of Gorge Floyd must bring justice and fundamental reforms, not more deaths and destruction,” he implored. A police station was burned down Thursday evening during the third night of clashes. Protests have spread throughout the country in Los Angeles as in Chicago, Denver, and Memphis.
The numbers verify this bloody routine. The number of people killed by the police in the United States in 2019 amounted to 1,004. According to the accounting of the Washington Post, which records only the deaths by firearms. A figure higher than that recorded in 2018 (992) and which disproportionately concerns African-Americans. The tragic death of George Floyd echoes that of a young African-American, Ahmaud Arbery, chased by a former police officer and his son while he was jogging.
Ahmaud Arbery had been killed in February. Still, Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael had pleaded self-defense and argued for a law of the state adopted in 1863, in full American Civil War, which authorizes a citizen to stop some another if he witnesses an offense.
Ahmaud Arbery
Ahmaud Arbery had entered a house under construction before being chased by the two men, then intercepted. A third had filmed the scene, also hardly sustainable. The publication of the video in early May forced local authorities to react after initially covering up the affair. All three men are now in prison.
Donald Trump has emerged from silence
The death of George Floyd prompted Donald Trump to break the silence he had long observed about police violence. He denounced Thursday, “a very shocking spectacle.”
“I asked the Department of Justice, the FBI, to really look into this matter and see what happened (…). What I saw was not good, not good, very bad,” assured the President of the United States.
Rev. Al Sharpton
Trump will, however, have a hard time convincing. “This is the first time I have heard of a case like this,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights activist for decades. “So he cannot be indignant if people feel that these are empty words, because it does not look like him,” he added.
A tweet from Mr. Trump in which he said, “When the looting begins, the shooting begins. Thank you! “, Was also reported Friday Twitter Hides Trump’s Tweet for” prohibit the glorification of violence, “his message can be interpreted as an incentive for law enforcement to use their weapons. “This tweet violates Twitter’s rules of violence. However, Twitter believes that it is in the public interest that this tweet remains accessible, ” said the social network. Several hours later, the official White House account tweeted the same message as that posted by the social network.
Eric Garner
Trump never commented on the death of Eric Garner, a black man who died in 2014 in New York after being suffocated when arrested by white police. The phrase “I can’t breathe,” which he had uttered before his death, had become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Stephon Clark
He did not change when he arrived at the White House. He declined to comment on high-profile dramas involving the police, including the death of Stephon Clark, a black man shot by Sacramento police in 2018. The young man killed while in the garden of his grandmother. He had been mistaken for a person suspected of breaking car windows. He was carrying a cell phone in which the police dispatched to the scene mistook for a weapon.
Considering themselves to be in self-defense, they had shot him twenty times. “This is something that is a local matter, and it is something that we believe should be left to local authorities,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said at the time.
Colin Kaepernick
On the contrary, the President of the United States regularly pays tribute to the police force, which he assures of his support. In 2017, he led a virulent campaign against the former playing master of the San Francisco American football team, Colin Kaepernick. The latter had launched a protest movement against this violence by placing one knee on the ground during the performance of the national anthem, at the cost of a shortened sports career.
On Wednesday, basketball star LeBron James posted on Instagram, side by side, a photo of the violent scene in Minneapolis and another of Colin Kaepernick with the caption: “That’s why, do you understand now !!? ? !! ?? Or is it still unclear to you? “