After Chauvin Verdict Look For Republicans To Start Legislating Against Photographing Police Crimes

Darnella Frazier was only 17-years-old when she saw Derek Chauvin in broad day­light mur­der­ing George Floyd. Young Darnella instant­ly thought about what she could do; she took out her cell­phone and began record­ing. Darnella was going to Cup Of Foods with her young cousin to get snacks when she saw police offi­cers kneel­ing on the back and neck of a man who was already hand­cuffed and was on the ground.
Ironically, that man was arrest­ed for hav­ing sup­pos­ed­ly passed a fake $20 bill at the same cup-of foods con­ve­nience store.

Young Darnella did not know the impact the video she record­ed that fate­ful day and uploaded to Facebook would have in bring­ing some sem­blance of jus­tice to anoth­er iter­a­tion of police mur­der, that pre­vi­ous­ly would­n’t even be investigated.
But it was impactful.
Darnella was one of 18 pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied at the tri­al of now-con­vict­ed killer cop Derek Chauvin.
Ms. Frazier is 18 now, she wept uncon­trol­lably as she tes­ti­fied at the tri­al of Derek Chauvin, trau­ma­tized, “I regret not phys­i­cal­ly engag­ing the four offi­cers at the scene, but they were the ones ulti­mate­ly at fault.”
“It’s been nights I stayed up apol­o­giz­ing and apol­o­giz­ing to George Floyd for not doing more and not phys­i­cal­ly inter­act­ing and not sav­ing his life,” Darnella tes­ti­fied through her tears.

If ever there was an image that summed up the African-American expe­ri­ence at the hands of white peo­ple, this has got to be it.
Nevertheless, all is not lost; the young off-duty fire­fight­er who tes­ti­fied that she want­ed to help the dying man but was pre­vent­ed from doing so.…..she is white. Several mem­bers of the jury that deliv­ered the deci­sive ver­dict that will send Derek Chauvin to prison, they too are white.
The defense attor­ney for Dereck Chauvin posit­ed to the jury a pha­lanx of lies and racist tropes, but in the end, they just believed what they saw with their eyes, as the pros­e­cu­tors asked them to.
The mur­der was one of the most shock­ing things that I have ever wit­nessed in my life­time, and I imag­ine it will be for most of all who have wit­nessed it.

After the Republicans lost the Presidential elec­tions in 2020, Donald Trump incit­ed his min­ions to storm the capi­tol build­ing. They did so, intend­ing to kill the Speaker of the House and his own vice pres­i­dent, Mike Pence.
But that was not all they did; in Georgia, they imme­di­ate­ly passed a dra­con­ian anti-vot­ing law that even crim­i­nal­izes any­one offer­ing a drink of water to a poten­tial vot­er stand­ing in line.
The law also ensures that the infra­struc­ture that expe­dites vot­ing be dis­man­tled in African-American com­mu­ni­ties, effec­tive­ly ensur­ing that African-Americans will be forced to stand in line expo­nen­tial­ly longer with­out any­one being able to give them a drink of water lawfully.
It is a despi­ca­ble and rep­re­hen­si­ble law that shows the evil, degen­er­a­tive men­tal­i­ty of its sub­hu­man sponsors.
Thank you, Justice John Roberts; your life­long cam­paign to undo the vot­ing Rights act has tru­ly paid off for you; you must be proud.
And oh, Justice Roberts, you knew exact­ly what would hap­pen in 2013 when you vot­ed with your Republican cronies on the court to strike down sec­tion 4 (b) of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for absolute­ly no reason.
I fear that in the same way that Republicans are work­ing fever­ish­ly against vot­ing rights, they will now begin to crim­i­nal­ize pho­tograph­ing police crimes.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.