“A man has a choice. That’s what makes him different from an animal,” Raymond Massey’s Adam tells James Dean’s Cain-like Cal in the 1954 film of John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden.”
But some men choose to act like animals. Derek Chauvin made a choice to murder George Floyd in cold blood. He did it, because he could do it. Power: The English historian Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But he had it backwards. Power doesn’t corrupt people. People corrupt power by the choices they make for selfishness and against responsibility and service.
With the conviction of Chauvin, there have been renewed calls to “defund” the police, an unfortunate verb. We don’t need to disengage from the police. Indeed we need more engagement, more training, more civilian review boards, more police presence in the community, more police living in the community. We need to see the police as human beings and for them to see us as human beings.
It can’t be easy being a police officer, never knowing if your next call will be your last. And the old saying, “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by six” applies.
But the number of high-profiled deaths of young Blacks at the hands of police and the number of complaints registered against Chauvin alone — 19, with several disciplinary actions — should give us pause. Where is the accountability, the leadership in policing?
It’s time to address not only systemic racism but the systemic failure to apply Alexandrian leadership — leadership from the front — which are damning this country.
“A man has a choice”: The jury that voted to convict Chauvin on three counts of murder and manslaughter made the right choice. It is incumbent on the rest of us to do the same.