Police Brutality, Drastic Difference in Protests

By: Kieran McIntire, June 2020

In the year of 2020, we have had many curve balls thrown our way. One of which is the ongoing threat on POC and black lives. Recently there has come to light many cases of police brutality, the systemic racism has been held over years and years and it seems to be getting worse every day. On May 25, 2020 George Floyd was killed on Chicago Avenue South street in Minneapolis Minnesota. His killer, Derek Chauvin a policeman, was responding to a “forgery in progress” at a nearby deli. The issue was a twenty dollar bill that Floyd had allegedly used to pay for his items that the employee deemed as counterfeit. The police reported that Floyed “physically resisted” as they asked him to step out of his vehicle. However nearby restaurant security camera footage has revealed that this claim isn’t true as Floyd fell twice while being escorted by the officers. The second time Floyd fell on the ground Chauvin held him there, his hands already cuffed behind his back, Floyd was helpless. Floyd laid on the hot concrete face down as Officer Chauvin kneeled on the back of his neck for 8 minutes and 42 seconds. Through these nine minutes Floyd begged and uttered “I can’t breath” those, his last words before he slipped into unconsciousness and later died.

The three other arresting officers are Thomas K. Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Keung, all officers were fired the next day. Since then, on May 29, Chauvin has been taken into custody and charged with third degree murder which is defined as: “homicide committed with the intention of causing bodily harm, but not necessarily death.” This means that the murder was counted as an accident, however it was not an accident that Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of an innocent man until he became unconscious. However the other three officers have not been charged yet. 

Since this event has taken place multiple protests have begun across the United States of America. There are other protests happening as well, and these are the anti-lockdown protests. The people holding these protests are mostly conservative groups and are demanding their states be opened up despite the on-going threat of a pandemic. Many of these protests occurring in Michigan, the second of these were populated with many people carrying firearms, screaming and shouting and charging at the Michigan State Capitol. However despite this violence the police described these protests as peaceful and calm.

The far more important movements are going on country wide as people stand up and fight for the justice of the many innocent black lives lost at the hands of the police department. In Philadelphia this movement started on Saturday the 30th in the morning, where protesters gathered at City Hall and began to kneel in silence for 9 minutes to show how long officer Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck. These protests where not only occurring at city hall but at the art museum as well. Upon arriving to the art museum there was a multitude of police vehicles and officers that had gathered. The protests were peaceful at first, but of course the crowd escalated as the police did. Midway through the day, some of the crowd dispersed to go to the roundhouse which is a police administration building. They were not able to make it in as they were blocked by many barricades and officers. As well as this, the police began to block in the crowd on all sides preventing them from leaving, this made the crowd begin to panic. It is likely that they will be going back on Monday June 1st when the next protest is scheduled to take place. Throughout all of this, the protesters remained peaceful until peace was no longer an option. The police were beginning to mace and tear gas the crowd becoming more and more violent as the day went on.

What is going on in our city is a display of what can be done when justice is not served. We need justice for George Floyd, we need justice for Ahmaud Arbery, we need justice for all of the innocent Black lives lost for the color of their skin. The police will continue to display this violence and blatant racism if there is no stop to it. If you say that violent protesting is not the answer, you are part of the problem. Violent protest is the only way to be heard, it is the reason that America is the way it is today. Stonewall was a riot, and LGBT rights would not be where they are today without that. Remember, businesses can be rebuilt, but the lives of thousands of Americans cannot be recovered. In 2019 the police killed about 1,099 people, black people making up 24% of those killings despite being only 13% of the population. Not only this but black people are 3x more likely to be killed by police than white people and they are 1.3x more likely to be unarmed when these killing occur. In 2019 there were 27 days in the year that the police did not kill someone. In the years 2013-2019, 99% of these police killings have not resulted in an the officers being charged with a crime. This needs to stop, we need change. We need peace but first we need justice.