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Police in gas masks stand in the street after protests in Seattle, Washington on May 30, 2020.
JASON REDMOND/Getty Images
The day after George Floyd was pronounced dead at a Minneapolis hospital, Tucson, Arizona, police chief Chris Magnus had seen and heard enough to weigh in on a growing national scandal.
“Indefensible use of force that good officers everywhere are appalled by,” Magnus tweeted late Tuesday night. “This is contrary to how PROFESSIONAL police officers train & conduct themselves. Conduct like this anywhere makes it more difficult for police everywhere to build community trust.”
Magnus was one of the nation’s first major law enforcement officials to weigh in on the now-viral video of the arrest of Floyd, who died on Monday after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by an officer’s knee. That Minneapolis officer, Derek Chauvin, and three others were fired Tuesday and Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder Friday.
It wasn’t a surprise that Magnus was out front of his contemporaries, given his reputation as a progressive police reformer. But the day after Magnus’s tweet, many more top cops from across the country joined him in denouncing the actions of Chauvin.
“I don’t know how you defend what you saw. I can’t defend it,” Houston police chief Art Acevedo said. “It is very evident that what occurred there was wrong. …There is a lack of humanity that is exhibited there,” said Miami chief Jorge Colina. Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore told the Washington Post, “The lack of compassion, use of excessive force, or going beyond the scope of the law, doesn’t just tarnish our badge—it tears at the very fabric of race relations in this country.”
These chiefs were joined by the heads of major law enforcement organizations like the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major Cities Chiefs Association and even the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)—the nation’s largest police union, which rarely does anything but take the offending officer’s side.
The chorus of condemnation caught the attention of Phillip Goff, a researcher and expert in racial bias and discrimination in policing. Goff has been working with law enforcement for more than a decade through his organization, the Center for Policing Equity. Usually, police—from the chiefs to their patrol officers to retired cops who move into jobs as experts on TV—ask for the public to reserve judgment until all the facts are in. But last week represented a noticeable shift in the tone from previous police responses to the killings of unarmed black men.
“They believe the health of officers is best served by establishing to the public the difference between what they saw [in the video of Floyd] and who they are,” Goff told me. “And law enforcement is a culture, nationwide, of imitation.”
And this is why, rather than the words of the chiefs, it’s been much more instructive to follow what’s been going on with their rank-and-file officers since the death of Floyd.
In Chicago, Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara may have told the local NPR station, “I don’t think there’s a single policeman in this country that would say that that was sound police tactics in any way, shape or form.” But by the time Catanzara’s quotes were published, police officers—the ones who make the traffic stops and enforce the public disturbance complaints—were lining up to face off against protesters in cities all around the country. They brought billy clubs, riot gear, and even tanks. They shot rubber bullets at TV reporters, turned pepper spray on large groups of protesters—especially dangerous in the midst of a pandemic—and rushed to the defense of a motorist who recklessly drove through a crowd of demonstrators.
It was hard to miss the duplicity. NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea strongly and publicly rebuked the four Minneapolis officers involved in Floyd’s death. “What we saw in Minnesota was deeply disturbing. It was wrong,” he tweeted. “This is not acceptable ANYWHERE.” But on Friday in Brooklyn, his officers were swinging batons and scuffling with protesters in the streets, and on Saturday they were ramming their police cruisers into them.
In Seattle, police chief Carmen Best tweeted Wednesday that “no one is above the law,” referring to Chauvin. By the weekend, two of her officers were pummeling a protester on the ground.
And in Minneapolis, where the national uprising got its fiery start, police chief Medaria Arradondo earned praise for his decisive action in firing the four officers involved in Floyd’s killing. “I know that there is currently a deficit of hope in our city,” Arradondo said in a news conference Thursday. “I know that this department has contributed to that deficit of hope, but I will not allow to continue to increase that deficit.” By Saturday, journalists reported on Minnesota state troopers firing tear gas at media members at point blank range.
The initial response of police leaders may have felt like progress, but video footage of police and protesters clashing in the streets reveals the truth: Officers are much closer to what we see in viral videos documenting their brutality than in the well-intentioned words of their leaders. Despite the shift in public statements, police haven’t changed since the protests of 2014 and 2015. As my colleague Julia Craven wrote on Sunday, this week has happened before.
Little of this is a surprise to Jin Hee Lee, senior deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund who was part of the team that won class action lawsuits challenging the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.
Over the past few days, Lee has been watching the dichotomy between the flowery formal statements on social media and the countless videos of cops bullying protesters in the streets.
“So many of the problems with policing is what we’re seeing [this week]” Lee told me.
While police chiefs were busy lamenting the grisly video of Floyd’s arrest, Lee and her legal team were asking a court-appointed monitor to conduct an investigation into the NYPD’s social-distancing enforcement practices. This came after data showed 81 percent of summonses for social distancing violations in New York were issued to black and Latino residents.
“Racial discrimination in departments that go unchecked can have terrible consequences,” Lee told me. “I do think it’s important to make these connections. It counters the narrative that there are a few bad apples.“
Over the weekend, another video of the police interacting with protesters made the rounds on social media. This one was from Atlanta, where police chief Erika Shields turned her attention to a woman who tearfully explained her fear that cops might someday harm her family members. Shields placed her hands on the woman’s shoulders.
“We agree with you,” Shields told the woman. “It’s fucked up and nothing changes.”
By the end of the night, Atlanta police officers in riot gear were setting off smoke bombs.
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NYPD officers arrest protesters during a demonstration against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 30, 2020 in the Borough of Brooklyn in New York.
BRYAN R. SMITH/Getty Images
Videos posted to social media Saturday night showed two NYPD vehicles driving into a crowd as protesters took to the streets for a third night over the death of George Floyd. The videos showed that protesters placed a metal barrier in front of a parked police car in Brooklyn. Then another NYPD cruiser drives up and protesters can be seen banging on the car before the driver accelerates into the crowd. The first vehicle then follows suit and accelerates into the crowd, knocking lots of people to the ground.
It’s not immediately clear how serious the injuries were but the events captured on camera took place in a tense evening when thousands of protesters joined demonstrations that were planned in all of the city’s five boroughs. Most of the protests were peaceful but dozens of people were arrested as videos showed several police vehicles were set on fire. At least a few of those arrests took place outside Trump Tower.
A man runs by an NYPD police van on fire during a demonstration against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day on May 30, 2020 in the Borough of Brooklyn in New York.
BRYAN R. SMITH/Getty Images
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez released a statement Saturday evening, in which he said that while he understood the anger, he urged a change in tactics. “I join with all of you who say enough and never again, and I am committed to changing the system of justice in Brooklyn to one we can all trust. But we cannot build that trust by tearing our community apart,” he said.
On Friday, a cop in Brooklyn was caught on camera shoving a woman to the ground. That took place on a night when more than 200 arrests were made after violent protests outside the Barclays Center, which is also in Brooklyn.
Amid all the chaos, President Donald Trump decided to throw in his two cents Saturday night by tweeting his support for the NYPD. “Let New York’s Finest be New York’s Finest,” he tweeted. “There is nobody better, but they must be allowed to do their job!”
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Join Slate PlusViewing A Dragon Launch From Orbit
"Ivan Vagner @ivan_mks63 2 minutes before the #CrewDragon launch the @Space_Station passed Cape Canaveral. Captured some pictures of LC39A from where the Falcon 9 launched. Congratulations to everyone and looking forward to seeing @Astro_Doug, @AstroBehnken"
SpaceX Launches Astronauts on Historic Mission
"For the first time in history, NASA astronauts have launched from American soil in a commercially built and operated American crew spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station. The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley lifted off at 3:22 p.m. EDT Saturday on the company's Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida."
SpaceX's mission: A new chapter in space exploration -- and in humanity's age-old quest, OpEd, Sean O'Keefe, The Hill
"The Obama administration modified the strategy, slowing NASA's spacecraft development but accelerating the commercialization plan to develop new systems to competitively sustain the space station. This was the objective SpaceX has successfully pursued for the past few years, sending cargo and supplies to the space station -- the biggest, most advanced laboratory in space the world has ever conceived."
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- Commercial Crew Did Not Start With Trump. Just Sayin', earlier post
