FINALLY we’ve got justice for an unarmed black person being killed by the police. On Tuesday former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter by a jury for his role in the murder of George Floyd last May outside of a local convenience store.
The world stood still once it was announced that the verdict was in. For the next hour and a half the hearts and minds of black folks in this country specifically were racing 100mph because we understood what a potential innocent verdict would mean to us.
If Derek Chauvin were to walk on those charges it would have been open season on black people. Bad police officers all over this country would have been given permission to hunt and kill us at will.
We’ve already seen and heard of the lynching of black folks for hundreds of years in this country. We watched Rodney King get beat half to death in 1991 on camera and all of the officers walked and celebrated. We’ve seen countless black Americans killed and brutalized by the police without any charges even being filed let alone getting convictions.
The Rodney King incident opened the door for the next 30 years of police brutality on blacks in this country.
Now that Chauvin has been convicted on all charges and faces up to forty years in prison most bad police officers will now at least think before they brutalize someone in handcuffs because in today’s climate everyone is filming. Hopefully this conviction is the shift in thinking that we’ve been praying for over the last 401 years. We must continue to fight for future policy change in policing in America. The battle for change has just begun with Chauvin being convicted. Now all of the other bad cops need to be convicted for their wrong doing.