America is bracing for a verdict in former Police Officer Derek Chauvin’s trial over the execution of George Floyd.
Closing arguments in Chauvin’s trial will take place Monday, after which the jury will begin its deliberations. Chauvin, was a Minneapolis police officer when he was filmed nonchalantly kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. With his sunglasses jauntily perched on his head, and his hand in his pocket while he slowly and deliberately snuffed the life out of Floyd, he is the poster boy for the police genocide of people of color.
The Floyd execution video is the most infamous snuff film in history, and if Chauvin is found guilty of the most serious charge that he faces, second-degree unintentional murder, media outlets should never again play that sickening video.
The graphic video, played endlessly on cable news outlets, opened the eyes of many white Americans to the reality of the violence and brutality that people of color face every day at the hands of the police. A traffic stop for a white person is a minor annoyance in the great scheme of things, but for a black man it’s a terrifying ordeal that all too often leads to an arrest at the least, and injury or death at the worst.
The trial of Chauvin for the murder of Floyd should be a slam dunk, and I don’t see why the jury would need more than a few minutes to find the killer cop guilty of murdering Floyd.
If Chauvin is found not guilty or if the trial ends in a hung jury, it will be undeniable proof that the judicial system is stacked against minorities, and I wouldn’t be surprised if riots erupt all over this racist country. I can only hope that the violence isn’t indiscriminate and that an outraged citizenry will focus their wrath on the homes of racist Republican politicians and the white evangelical churches that supported the racist agenda of Donald Trump.
I am not advocating violence; I’m just being a realist by declaring that America will burn if a miscarriage of justice takes place and the killer cop isn’t convicted.