A Certain View
by Mike Powers
Today is day five thousand three hundred fifty-two of my five thousand four hundred seventy-five-day sentence. If you think it looks long spelled out like that, you are to try living it. While I wait for my out date, a pandemic rage, The economy is in tatters, and the streets are literally a flame with the anger and outrage poured out because of a Minnesota police officers brutality and murder us disregard for another human being’s life.
Please take a moment to go to your view were of choice and watch the heart wrenching video of four police officers murdering George Floyd. Take a close look at their faces completely absent of any emotion or feeling as Mr. Floyd repeatedly tells the officers he can’t breathe. “Please! You’re killing me. I can’t breathe, please!” To all manner of in treaties and requests great and small, mundane and life changing, I have seen That same Soulless apathy on the faces of correctional officer after correctional officer. I see it when I ask if I can get into my cell to retrieve my shower bag after getting off a 12-hour shift, and I see it when I ask a lieutenant for help with my friend who is having a stroke. The unspoken response, “that’s not my problem.”
The nobility and integrity, real or imagined, of the “99%” of police officers in our country who are doing the right thing should in no way be a shield or protection for those who murder, rape, extort or abuse their power while hiding behind their badges. To the contrary, this integrity art to be the catalyst for exposing the lawless ones and expelling them from the midst of the fraternity of Lockkeepers. There should be no individual more defenseless then the wayward peace officers. Just as a teacher or coach is held to a greater standard in regards to illegal or criminal conduct towards his students and players, so a police man charged with the safety and protection of all citizens should be doubly accountable for the violation of innocent life in his or her care.
Our society must use police unions, district attorneys, and the court system to protect criminals simply because their miss leads were done under the color of law. we must stop carelessly releasing those two tazers, pepper spray, shoot, and choke to death American citizens on the streets of our cities. The failure to hold them accountable has led directly to the current violence.
It took three days for this murdering police officer to get arrested. Do you think that if you or I killed a man by kneeling on his neck in front of a gaggle of police officers and a large public crowd for almost 9 minutes, that we would have been released to walk free while the “investigation was being completed?” Hell no! Of course not. We would have been rightly snatched up right then and there, arrested for probable cause, and rain with outrageous bail said before the sun went down. Or, in a better world, knocked off the man’s neck before he lost his life in the first place.
As of this writing, charges against the murder has been upgraded to 2nd degree murder. The other three officers who stood by and did nothing while George Floyd beg for his next breath and then died are charged with accessory. This is good, but it was too late. If this had been done on day One instead of day three and then some, perhaps other lives lost in the ensuing violence would have been spared. Maybe businesses and public buildings wouldn’t have been burned to the ground. There’s a chance the public perception of “justice for all” - an ideal that has admittedly taken some bad hits lately - would be less damaged.
Please don’t think for a minute I support the looting, writing, or even the “protesting” behind this issue. George Floyd’s life and tragic death have been hijacked by venomous left us with a highly polished agenda, and further exploited by common criminals who rather steal a TV then get a job and earn one. And if this idiot of an officer had provided such a perfect subtext, another one would have come along soon enough.
The fact remains, however, that we have forgotten the very basis of our laws and government. Our rights, privileges (and I dare to mention it), responsibilities DO NOT flow to us from the government. They are “inalienably” hours, provided to us as a gift from our creator, God. And we, in turn, in power of the government to accomplish certain tasks too large for the common man - public defense, the establishment of treaties, the response to natural disasters. It occurs to me, not for the first time, but there was a time a peace officer held less power, when district attorneys and judges were needless autocrats, a day when a vast plurality would have rankled at being told they Will close their business and wear a mask or else! I haven’t confused the issue, my friends. The knee that choked the life out of George Floyd is the same knee that is trying to choke the life out of America at large, and it’s time we throw the autocrats out of office in a constitutionally-ordained revolution, the ballot box.
