Routine

Anyone who’s ever covered a stand on the Ocean City Beach Patrol probably has helped locate a kid separated from their parents. In the middle of a July scorcher the 10-mile strip of barrier island gets near shoulder to shoulder in some areas further downtown. Becoming distracted for but a moment or two can easily cause a mother to lose touch with her child amidst the sweltering throngs, happens all day long.

There are very few examples of a more striking dichotomy between the casual attitudes of those charged with resolving a situation and the abject panic of the people they are helping. Few of the lifeguards in OC have kids yet, so the empathy felt for parents stricken by the most horrible images possible during the longest 10 minutes of their lives is certainly less than it would be if they had endured a similar experience. Yet and still, it is a rewarding part of the job to have a relief-soaked mom express her undying gratitude for answering her prayers.

Several times I was directly involved with reuniting frantic parents with lost kids. Generally, I simply moved back to focusing on the ocean, but it wasn’t lost on me how traumatic the episode was for them. Each time a frightened parent came to me I made a point to exhibit a demeanor of concern and empathy their fears entitled them to, even though my attention was being diverted from the water for a situation certain to be resolved quickly and without incident. Years later, on the one occasion I experienced a similar scare with my own child in a public setting, I flashed back to that misguided nonchalance on the beach and figured a bit of karma had just caught up with me.

Undoubtedly it’s a tricky balance for public safety professionals to strike on the job, but a necessary one. Police in particular, common sense dictates, need to be cognizant that many of their routine duties are perceived as anything but by the public they serve. While arresting and processing somebody for, say, drunk and disorderly, may be routine stuff for them, it’s most always the apex of crisis for the suspect. As one who has been through just such a circumstance, not once but twice, I’m here to tell you each episode stands out near the top of my lifetime list of worst experiences. In short, getting arrested for anything is an ordeal no average person digests with anything other than shame and fear.

Any officer who ignores that fact and exhibits negligence or worse toward its significance is guilty of malpractice that warrants some form of a disciplinary response. One size does not fit all. An otherwise law-abiding citizen who has had one too many is not a hardened criminal, and should be entitled to at least the assumption that being arrested is a significantly more traumatic experience. Case closed. Moreover, it goes without saying that skin color should have nothing to do with such dispensations.

However, in an era of body cameras and daily YouTube videos we know just such callousness is anything but an aberration, and sanction is seldom imposed. Over and over the same pattern plays out: relatively minor situations escalating unnecessarily as cops expect suspects to calmly and crisply, without error follow their instructions and cede them total control. When they fail to do so, things quickly go south until, way too often, avoidable tragedy results. Worse, the Black community has disproportionately suffered such injustice, only to be continually denied accountability as one department after another circles the wagons and attempts to discredit the victim and/or rationalize the misconduct.

Everything about the sorrowful George Floyd story stinks, which is to say it epitomizes to a tee all the woeful deficiencies just summarized. From the farcical charge of passing a counterfeit twenty – who could possibly believe a white customer would face a comparable response – to the posse of cops summoned to contain him, George Floyd was targeted for abuse, his basic human rights trounced without thought. It was a casual atrocity performed in broad daylight before shocked witnesses, routine brutality dispensed with a yawn as it steadily extinguished a life of consequence, a man with many friends and loved ones.

Derek Chauvin’s trial isn’t much different from all of the many proceedings throughout the country that have proceeded it. More of the same. The most damning video possible reiterated by witnesses present during its creation, with a host of experts providing clinical affirmation of the injuries it documents. Meanwhile, the defense bases its case not on contesting the events that took place, that would mean imploring jurors to renounce what their own eyes see, but instead to understand that what they see is the defendant “acting within his training,” merely doing his job as he was taught. Any problems with what Chauvin did should be taken up above his pay grade; he was simply subduing a suspect who was more dangerous than you’ve been led to believe, and here’s why. Nothing new. Why change a winning formula. After all, look at the won-loss record when it comes to cops charged with such crimes. Think UCLA during the Wooden era.

What makes this case as bad as any is the hideous disconnect between the cops on the scene, who enabled the murderer, and the witnesses present, who grew frantic as Chauvin casually killed George Floyd. Despite being screamed at by citizens who pay their salary, including an off-duty EMT determined to aid Floyd, but prevented from doing so, all of the cops were utterly non-plused as the laconic Chauvin murdered the already cuffed Floyd. A fully restrained prisoner repeatedly gasping he can’t breathe, a crowd of onlookers screaming that the man is dying, an off-duty paramedic demanding to be allowed to provide medical care. Yea, just another day at the office. What is all the fuss about?

Genevieve Hansen did not mince words when she testified at Chauvin’s trial. “I don’t know if you’ve seen anyone be killed, but it’s upsetting,” the Minneapolis EMT declared. In fact, Hansen was determined enough to make her point that she had little patience for efforts by the defense to mine exculpatory nuggets from her testimony. At one juncture the judge felt required to dismiss the jury and admonish Hansen to not be argumentative.

“I was desperate to help,” Hansen swore under oath, “I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities, and this human was denied that right.” As Floyd lay motionless Hansen was ordered to stay back, even as Chauvin continued to kneel on Floyd’s neck. Derek Smith, a paramedic dispatched to the scene, testified he believed Floyd was dead when he arrived, again, even as Chauvin remained on top of him.

Dispatcher Jena Scurry testified that while watching the scene unfold on her monitor, she was as bothered as the other witnesses. Scurry actually called the duty sergeant to express her concerns. After giving heed to the Blue Wall and asserting “I don’t want to be a snitch,” she nonetheless worried that “something doesn’t seem right.” Her misgivings would go unheeded.

Witnesses, paramedics, medical examiners, pulmonologists, fellow officers, and even the Chief of Police, all have become a chorus indicting Chauvin as a killer. But what their testimonies fail to provide, the video of the awful incident delivers: a cop devoid of even a scintilla of humanity, a time bomb with a badge, who arrived on the scene ready and willing to dispense abuse with, to paraphrase a Grateful Dead tune, a pulse that doesn’t rise above 72 beats per minute. As Henry Hill described mob whackings in Goodfellas, “…it was all just routine.”

Even after the ambulance had taken George Floyd’s lifeless body away, Chauvin is caught on camera musing indifferently to a witness – who would later break down in court relating what he saw – that “… we gotta control this guy, he’s a sizeable guy… looks like, looks like he’s probably on something.” The banality of evil. BC