Message of the George Floyd verdict

Debbie Jacob -
Debbie Jacob -

ACCOUNTABILITY is the most appropriate word describing the guilty verdict of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin who killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for near ten minutes. Some call the verdict justice, some call it a victory, but nothing can bring back Floyd’s life and nothing can remove the trauma witnesses experienced on that day.

Now comes the real challenge: turning the lessons learned from the Floyd murder into lasting action to deal with prejudice and police injustice. There are good police and bad police and both have to make split-second decisions that forever define their lives and the lives of the people they arrest. There are police who cross the line, abuse their power and use excessive force. We need to take that into consideration when we look at policing in TT, a place where too many people still pretend that everyone in prison waiting for a trial deserves to be there.

For those of you who celebrate the Chauvin verdict and lose yourself in a rare moment of hope and even dare to visualise justice, look around at the state of this country where men and women wait ten to 12 years in unspeakably squalid and demoralising conditions for their trials to work their way through the court system. Ask yourself what we are doing in this country about guaranteeing justice for all. What are we doing to prove that people are innocent until proven guilty? Who is holding our police and our court systems accountable for injustice?

We cannot take an interest in other countries’ examples of injustice and excuse our own. We know that people get treated differently because of who they are and where they are from. We know some police take their anger and frustration out on people during raids or even in traffic stops or roadblocks. I don’t think that all police in the US are bad or filled with prejudice, but I cannot imagine being a black person in the US and not fearing the sound of a police siren. I can’t imagine the terror black people feel when they are pulled over in a car with a police officer’s gun pointed at them and then being told to step out of the car.

I can’t imagine that even even though I once had police pull me over and make me step out of the car. That wasn’t in the US. That was here. I was already a middle-aged, white woman, a journalist who had written scathing commentaries about the Belmont police because my neighbourhood had been terrorised for years by thieves who beat down our doors and entered our homes at exactly 3 o’clock every night, and the police did nothing to apprehend the thieves or help us.

When the Belmont police were building a new police station, and they had a mobile police station across from Queen’s Hall, I called it an ice cream truck. I told the police stationed there they should be selling ice cream instead of pretending they were police. They didn’t take kindly to that.

One day in a roadblock, the police spotted me, pulled my car over and told me to come out of the car. I humoured them at first, but when they told me to lean against the car like a criminal so all the passing cars could watch I lashed out.

The officer said, “I know you are going to write about us,” and I said, “Then why are you doing this to me?” I protested, shouted and demanded the officer’s name and badge number. He took off his badge and stuck it in his pocket.

I said, “That’s illegal.”

He shrugged.

I demanded to see the police officer in charge. He came; I vented. In all my anger, frustration and in the whole indignity of the situation, I never once feared for my life. I had one such disdainful encounter with a police roadblock on a “white” level. That was enough to last me a lifetime, but it didn’t take me a millimetre closer to understanding how the George Floyds of this world feel in such situations.

In an effort to excuse police abuse of power, some early internet reports stressed Floyd was a drug addict; he had some criminal charges in the past and didn’t have the character to be a martyr. Those stories missed the point. The law is for everyone – especially the George Floyds of this world. The law should never be abused.

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"Message of the George Floyd verdict"

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