“Forgery in progress” reads the Minneapolis police report of the Memorial Day call that ended in George Floyd’s death. It is not clear from early reports whether the allegation of a grocery store employee that Floyd, a large black man, was attempting to pass a forged check had any merit. It is not clear from reports whether the alleged check was forged or real or even existed. What instigated the original call has been lost in the shuffle because what is real is George Floyd is dead from his interaction with white Minneapolis police that followed.
A ten-minute bystander video of the incident shows officers pinning Floyd to the ground. One officer has his knee on Floyd’s neck as he pleads “I cannot breathe” and “Don’t kill me!” By the end, Floyd lies motionless, the knee still on his neck. The police allege Floyd “physically resisted officers.” That, however, is not on the video that went viral.
Floyd, a 46-year-old Houston native, was a security guard at Conga Latin Bistro in Minneapolis where he had worked for five years. His employer and landlord, Jovanni Thunstrom, last saw him a week before when he came top pay rent.
“The way he died, he was begging for his life,” said Thunstrom, “I just hope he gets some justice. … I just don’t understand.”
The Hennepin County medical examiner has not determined the cause of death, although the video suggests asphyxiation by mechanical compression of the chest likely contributed. The four officers involved have been fired. Investigations by state and federal authorities are underway.
Protests involving vandalism of police vehicles and police responding with flash grenades and tear gas followed last night.
Christian Cooper was in New York’s Central Park on Memorial Day for birdwatching. The Harvard-educated, Audubon Society member asked a woman who had let her dog run off-leash among the plantings to comply with park postings that dogs be leashed in that area of The Ramble. When she refused, he began filming her from a distance and things escalated. The woman threatened to call the police, “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.”
She did.
“There is an African American man. I am in Central Park. He is recording me and threatening myself and my dog,” she pleads into the phone, dragging her cocker spaniel by the collar as it struggles for air. She grows more hysterical with each repetition, “Please send the cops immediately.” When she re-leashed her dog, Cooper said “thank you,” stopped recording and left.
The race or sex of the Minneapolis grocery clerk is not clear from reporting. The woman with the dog is white. We know because Christian Cooper posted the video of his encounter on Facebook. News reports indicate Amy Cooper (no relation) has been fired from her investment firm job and surrendered her rescue dog. She has since apologized for her behavior. The Central Park Civic Association has called for her to be banned from the park.
Eliza Orlins, her Washington Post byline says, is a public defender and Democratic candidate for Manhattan district attorney. She writes that the Central Park park scenario is a familiar one:
As a public defender in Manhattan for more than a decade, I have represented many people in similar situations. Most of their stories have followed a similar pattern:
A white person calls the police on a black man. The police arrive and take the side of his white accuser, refusing to believe his version of events. He is arrested and arraigned. An outrageous bail amount is set. His family can’t afford to buy his freedom. He gets sent to Rikers Island, where he sits for days, months or sometimes years.
Eventually, his case is resolved in some way — either because the charges are dismissed or because he decides to plead guilty to a lesser charge. In the meantime, he may have lost his job, his home, his children or some combination of the three.
In Christian Cooper’s case, none of these happened.
In cases I’ve taken to trial, the district attorney has offered recordings of “hysterical 911 calls” as evidence of my clients’ guilt, urging the jury to “just listen to the fear in her voice,” saying, “You can tell she can sense a threat,” and asking questions such as, “Why would she lie?” All too often, it works.
Usually, there’s no video. On Monday, there was. You can hear “the fear” in the voice of the woman who called the police on Cooper, too.
Bird-watcher Christian Cooper walked away. Dog-walker Amy Cooper lost her job.
Floyd died. The four officers lost their jobs. We don’t know what happened to the grocery clerk or if the Minneapolis 911 call was supportable or, like the Central Park incident, hysterical.
Christian Cooper told CNN’s Anderson Cooper (way to many Coopers in this tale):
“I think her apology is sincere,” Cooper told CNN’s Don Lemon Tuesday night. “I’m not sure that in that apology she recognizes that while she may not be or consider herself a racist, that particular act was definitely racist.”
“And the fact that that was her recourse at that moment — granted, it was a stressful situation, a sudden situation — you know, maybe a moment of spectacularly poor judgment. But she went there and had this racist act that she did.”
That is, Amy Cooper weaponized white privilege to threaten a black man with death-by-cop for having the temerity to ask her to abide by park rules. Too often, police oblige. That’s why death-by-cop is an expression at all. That is why Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, and too many others to list here are dead.
This system is not simply broken. It works just as designed, says Orlins, “protecting the wealthy, connected, powerful and white, while disenfranchising already-marginalized communities of color.”
Orlins concludes:
There are two different sets of rules in our criminal legal system. White Americans live every day with the privilege of knowing that they can call 911 and get help. For poor people and people of color, calling for help when in danger presents a new set of risks — including the risk that they won’t be believed by police or that they’ll be charged with falsely reporting a crime.
Or face what amounts to extrajudicial execution.
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Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.