The Killing of a Human Being

It is a tragedy whenever a human dies. It is particularly distressing when their deaths are needless. The death of Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis was not acceptable. It may be that racism was involved, but regardless of whether it was or not, his death illustrates a number of issues with the ways in which police officers are trained, socialized, and protected not only by other police officers but by our legal system.

Police officers live among violence or potential violence all the time. They are trained to control a situation and other people, to protect themselves first, and their buddies. This is all run of the mill and reasonable police training. No one is going to say that a police officer's first job isn't to go home at the end of their shift.

Even so, police officers are human beings with a lot of authority and a lot of legal protections for almost anything they do. It is important then that we expect police officers to do their jobs with respect for the dignity of the people they interact with, and with circumspect behavior not just on a Minneapolis street, but all the time.

The officer who puts his leg on another person's neck while the person is on the ground, face down, and with three other officers responding is simply unprofessional and well, mean. It is important to note here that in Minneapolis, doing that to someone is actually trained into police officers - it is a legitimate technique. Here's the rub though - just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do something. The question of professionalism and responsibility is not answered by "well, it's an approved procedure." That response is simply unimaginable in a self-restrained, respectful community - and yet here we are.

This is particularly important considering the lessons we might learn from the Stanford Study. Human beings take on the characteristics of their perceived roles even if the perceived roles are assigned to them arbitrarily. That is a fascinating dynamic within the human psyche. Here's the problem - we know that. And yet, we still send police officers into the streets with almost complete immunity and few effective checks on repeated abuses - minor, moderate, and severe perpetrated by police officers all over the country.

But we see this in almost every aspect of human endeavor when we give people what approaches complete power. We see it in politicians, we see it in judges, we see it in correctional guards, and we see it in domestic abuse situations. Recently, we've seen it in governors. We see it everywhere; we know it exists and we know people routinely suffer the effects of this dynamic for no reason other than the other person has this power.

To add to the problem, we have had for some time a principle called qualified immunity. This essentially results in police officers "getting away with" various severe behavior including killing people because no one wants to tell the police officer that they really should think before they do something, and they should consider the dignity of the human being they are about to abuse - or kill. Qualified immunity is a concept that needs considerable review and restraint in every state and federal court in the country.

So the four Minneapolis police officers have been fired. OK, if that's what needs to happen and it likely does for at least one of them. On the other hand, we didn't get here overnight. Every time someone with authority stretches that authority and abuses another human being in any way - or allows themselves the right to violate even small standards - and are not immediately and specifically checked for their behavior, we contribute to this sort of abuse toward each other. The problem isn't with the four officers - at least entirely or even majorly. It lies within the Minneapolis Police Department and every other police department that trains officers to perform such techniques and then lets them practice it with impunity outside of the camera shot. The problem lies with judges who abuse people because "this is my courtroom." The problem lies with politicians who are blatantly corrupt and apparently suffer only ridicule. It lies with us who utter language such as "let's send the pedophile to jail and he'll get what's coming to him," as though reciprocal violence is any less tragic and dehumanizing to others and to ourselves.

It lies with us when we don't demand corrective behaviors without the need for FBI investigations and lawsuits against cities and police departments.

What happened in Minneapolis is a horrendous tragedy of first and foremost disrespect of another human being; disrespect that is trained and allowed to flourish as part and parcel of having unrestrained power over other people. We will not see an end to this sort of behavior until we quit assigning it to some secondary and largely unprovable cause such as racism. That explanation quite frankly is nothing more than a dodge. Whether the officer is a racist or not says nothing about his behavior being unacceptable objectively. We will not see an end to this sort of behavior until we demand that those we entrust with the power of the state are held every day and in even the slightest situations responsible to act as professionals and co-citizens with every other human being they come in contact with.

Firing the four officers; arresting and trying the four officers will not fix the problem in Minneapolis. What happened there is simply a symptom of the lack of respect we allow not only in police officers, politicians, judges, and jailers but in various areas of our own lives. Until we demand of ourselves and those who enjoy the power of the state, behaviors that respect the dignity of the other, we will continue to have these events.

God help us all.