By Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma
Yesterday’s testimony in the George Floyd trial brought home Irish poet Brendan Behan’s remark: “I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn’t make it worse.”
Trial witness Chris Martin, the 19-year-old clerk working the cash register at Cup Foods convenience store, was in a bind. He had just sold a pack of cigarettes to Mr. Floyd, an affable, chatty customer who also picked up a banana. But Chris could tell that the $20 Big Floyd gave him was counterfeit. Per store policy, Chris would have to replace the money. He didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but he did not want to have his pay docked, either. He went outside, twice, to where Floyd was sitting in a car and asked him to replace the money. Floyd did not come out of the car.
A store manager asked another clerk to call the police.
The rest, of course, is history: police officer Derek Chauvin and three cowardly officers took a dismal situation and turned it into a tragedy.
After more than nine minutes of leaning on Floyd’s neck, Chauvin killed the him. The police he was with did nothing to intervene. They said they were scared of the gathering crowd, who asked them to stop killing Floyd as Floyd lay on the ground, begging for mercy. On Tuesday, a member of that crowd, 9-year-old Judeah Reynolds, testified that she saw the whole thing: “I was sad and kind of mad,” she said. “It felt like he was stopping his breathing and it was kind of like hurting him.”
As the City of Minneapolis seems to be coming to acknowledge, it won’t be enough to simply purge the police of men afraid of nine-year-old girls (although that would be a start). The bunker mentality of white cops in black cities must end, even if it means removing those officers and replacing them with mental health professionals, drug counselors, firefighters, and other problem solvers. More police do not lead to less crime. Derek Chauvin thought he could get away with murder because, historically, our laws have given far too much deference to armed officers.
And what about Chris Martin, the clerk who tried to work it out without calling the police? His reaction was “disbelief and guilt,” he said. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided.”