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\nStephen Maturen\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Catesby Holmes<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is underway in Minneapolis, Minnesota<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chauvin, who is white, is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter in connection with the death of George Floyd, who was Black, during an arrest last May. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds<\/a>, Floyd \u2013 handcuffed and face down on the pavement \u2013 said repeatedly that he could not breathe, while other officers looked on.<\/p>\n A video of Floyd\u2019s agonizing death soon went viral, triggering last summer\u2019s unprecedented wave of mass protests<\/a> against police violence and racism. Chauvin\u2019s murder trial is expected to last up to four weeks.<\/p>\n These five stories offer expert analysis and key background on police violence, Derek Chauvin\u2019s record and racism in U.S. law enforcement.<\/p>\n Since 2000, U.S. police have killed between 1,000 and 1,200 people per year, according to Fatal Encounters, an up-to-date archive of police killings. The victims are disproportionately likely to be Black, male and young<\/a>, according to a study by Frank Edwards at the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, in Newark.<\/p>\n In 2019, Edwards and two co-authors analyzed the Fatal Encounters data to assess how risk of death at the hands of police varies by age, sex and race or ethnicity. They found that while \u201cpolice are responsible for a very small share of all deaths\u201d in any given year, they \u201care responsible for a substantial proportion of all deaths of young people.\u201d<\/p>\n Police violence was the sixth-leading cause of death for young men in the United States in 2019, after accidents, suicides, homicides, heart disease and cancer.<\/p>\n That risk is particularly high pronounced for young men of color, especially young Black men.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout 1 in 1,000 Black men and boys are killed by police\u201d during their lifetime, Edwards wrote.<\/p>\n In contrast, the general U.S. male population is killed by police at a rate of .52 per 1,000 \u2013 about half as often.<\/p>\n Many police officers who kill civilians have a history of violence or misconduct, including Chauvin.<\/p>\n In an article on police violence<\/a> written after George Floyd\u2019s killing, criminal justice scholar Jill McCorkel noted that Derek Chauvin was \u201cthe subject of at least 18 separate misconduct complaints and was involved in two additional shooting incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n During a 2006 roadside stop, Chauvin was among six officers who fired 43 rounds into a truck driven by a man wanted for questioning in a domestic assault. The man, Wayne Reyes, who police said aimed a sawed-off shotgun at them, died. A Minnesota grand jury did not indict any of the officers.<\/p>\n Nationwide fewer than one in 12 complaints of police misconduct result in any kind of disciplinary action, according to McCorkel.<\/p>\n Even when officers who use excessive force are fired, as Chauvin was after the George Floyd killing, these incidents \u2013 occurring so frequently, for so many years \u2013 take an emotional toll on Black communities.<\/p>\n In a 2020 Gallup survey, one in four Black men ages 18 to 34 reported they had been treated unfairly by police within the last month.<\/p>\n The racism and inequality researchers Deadric T. Williams and Armon Perry analyzed data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which surveyed nearly 5,000 families from U.S. cities, and found that negative police interactions have \u201cfar-reaching implications for Black families<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFathers who reported experiencing a police stop were more likely to report conflict or lack of cooperation in their relationships with their children\u2019s mother,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n Black mothers also report \u201cfeelings of uncertainty and agitation\u201d after Black fathers are stopped by police, Williams and Perry found. That can \u201caffect the way that she views the relationship, leading to anger and frustration.\u201d<\/p>\n [Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter and get expert takes on today\u2019s news, every day.<\/a><\/em>]<\/p>\n According to a 2014 study on policing in Europe and the U.S. by Rutgers researcher Paul Hirschfield, American police were 18 times more lethal than Danish police and 100 times more lethal than Finnish police.<\/p>\n The top reason for this difference, Hirschfield wrote in an article explaining his findings, is simple<\/a>: guns.<\/p>\n In most U.S. states, it is \u201ceasy for adults to purchase handguns,\u201d Hirschfield wrote, so \u201cAmerican police are primed to expect guns.\u201d That may make them \u201cmore prone to misidentifying cellphones and screwdrivers as weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. law is relatively forgiving of such mistakes. If officers can prove they had a \u201creasonable belief\u201d that lives were in danger, they may be acquitted for killing unarmed civilians. In contrast, most European countries permit deadly force only when it is \u201cabsolutely necessary\u201d to enforce the law.<\/p>\n \u201cThe unfounded fear of Darren Wilson \u2013 the former Ferguson cop who fatally shot Michael Brown \u2013 that Brown was armed would not have likely absolved him in Europe,\u201d writes Hirschfield.<\/p>\n Well before modern gun laws, racism ran deep in American policing<\/a>, as criminal justice researcher Connie Hassett-Walker wrote in June 2020.<\/p>\n In the South, the first organized law enforcement was white slave patrols.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first slave patrols arose in South Carolina in the early 1700s,\u201d Hassett-Walker wrote. By century\u2019s end, every slave state had them. Slave patrols could legally enter anyone\u2019s home based on suspicions that they were sheltering people who had escaped bondage.<\/p>\n Northern police forces did not originate in racial terror, but Hassett-Walker writes that they nonetheless inflicted it.<\/p>\n From New York City to Boston, early municipal police \u201cwere overwhelmingly white, male and more focused on responding to disorder than crime,\u201d writes Hassett-Walker. \u201cOfficers were expected to control \u2018dangerous classes\u2019 that included African Americans, immigrants and the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n This history persists today in the negative stereotypes of Black men as dangerous. That makes people like George Floyd more likely to be treated aggressively by police, with potentially lethal results. Catesby Holmes<\/a>, International Editor | Politics Editor, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n ================================================================ The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\n P.S. Thanks again to all who congratulated me on Post #250. This post is actually the one I’ve been waiting for. 260 weeks ix exactly five years. Time certainly does fly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":40593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3729,4115,4334,3748],"class_list":["post-43276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-furies","tag-justice","tag-policing","tag-racism","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Police violence is a top cause of death for Black men<\/h2>\n
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\nBrandon Bell\/Getty Images<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n2. Chauvin has a track record of abuse<\/h2>\n
3. Bad police interactions hurt Black families<\/h2>\n
4. This happens far less in Europe<\/h2>\n
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\nCC BY<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n5. American policing has racist roots<\/h2>\n
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\nAMT, I have not been watching the actual trial, but have been following it through the videos of Glenn Kirschner. So far it is all pprosecution witnesses. Much has been heartbreaking – which is good, because what happened, what was done, was heartbreaking, so hearbreaking testimony is appropriate and necessary. Mr. Kirschner has expressed, and it certainly seems, that the prosecution is doing a good job – better than good. But of course juries are juries. It will be a while before we learn whether there will be justice.<\/p>\n