Without intending to, defense attorney Eric Nelson, representing Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, is doing an excellent job of demonstrating why African Americans are more than two and a half more times likely to be among the 1,000 Americans fatally shot or violently killed every year by police tactics, often during routine traffic stops and arrests for minor, nonviolent offenses.
The prosecution far more skillfully has shown why no decent American community should ever again accept violent policing in black neighborhoods that would never be tolerated in white neighborhoods. That message resonated throughout the nation for the past year as millions of Americans watched a horrific video of the murder of George Floyd with Chauvin kneeling with one hand in his pocket pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for what we now know was nine minutes and 29 seconds. No American can ever again claim ignorance of such deadly police tactics.
We wondered how a defense attorney would try to explain away an officer making a show of ignoring witnesses shouting Chauvin was killing Floyd and begging him to stop. Nelson’s defense seemed to accurately reflect the indifference of Chauvin and three other officers toward what Nelson said they considered a dangerous neighborhood. In Nelson’s telling, the police were determined not to allow a menacing, threatening mob to distract them from doing their job.
The prosecution’s most effective strategy was to present many of those neighbors who were still reacting emotionally to what they saw nearly a year ago. Darnella Frazier, who was 17 when she took the video of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck played millions of times around the world, testified: “It’s been nights I’ve stayed up apologizing and apologizing to George for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life.” Her video may be the only reason Chauvin is on trial.
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Medical Aid Rebuffed
Another neighbor was off duty firefighter Genevieve Hansen, who was rebuffed when she begged officers to let her use her emergency medical training to save Floyd’s life. “I would have checked his airway,” Hansen said, “I would have worried about a spinal cord injury because he had so much weight on his neck. I would have checked for a pulse. And when I didn’t find a pulse, if that was the case, I would have started compressions.” She admitted she became angry and began shouting when Chauvin refused to move after Floyd lost consciousness. “I don’t know if you’ve seen anybody be killed,” she told Nelson, “but it’s upsetting.”
Donald Williams, a security guard who competes in mixed martial arts, refused to let Nelson characterize him as an angry black man. He said he grew louder and more profane because the officers were refusing to listen to him and other witnesses pleading for Floyd’s life. Williams denied he was anti-police. After the incident both Hansen and Williams dialed 911 calling police on the police. Williams said he gave the operator Chauvin’s badge number because “I believed I witnessed a murder.”
Charles McMillian is one of those colorful, older black men on the streets of many urban neighborhoods talking to everybody they meet. He stood close giving streetwise advice as the police struggled with Floyd: “Get on in the car because you can’t win.” But McMillian broke down sobbing at the first images of that struggle on a court monitor. After the judge called a recess for McMillian to regain his composure, he had a one-word answer about how he felt: “Helpless.” McMillian testified he reminded Chauvin after Floyd’s body was removed in an ambulance he’d spoken to Chauvin after another recent arrest in the neighborhood. McMillian said: “I told you that day, ‘Go home to your family safe.’ But today, I look at you as a maggot.”
Just Ordinary, Everyday People
As traumatized as many witnesses still were about the deadly police attack in their neighborhood on an unarmed black man face down on the pavement with both arms handcuffed behind his back, they bore absolutely no resemblance to a violent, threatening mob endangering the police officers. They obediently stepped back on the curb when an officer told them to. Since Jan. 6, we all know what a dangerous mob killing and injuring police looks like. These witnesses looked like ordinary, everyday people who live in any neighborhood because they were. Unfortunately, they recognized what they saw as ordinary, everyday policing in black neighborhoods.
Defense attorney Nelson said two other things in his opening statement that were clearly untrue: “There is no political or social cause in this courtroom” and “The use of force is not attractive, but it is a necessary component of policing.” Two of Chauvin’s police superiors testified what he did was not only unnecessary it was unacceptable. The police chief who fired him will say the same thing.
Failure to protect human lives based on race can never again be accepted as standard police practices in any American community.
