It means “we screwed up BIG TIME.”
“We” refers to the four cops, the police department that failed to properly supervise them, and the city government that failed to properly oversee the police department.
It also says, “We’re sorry,” but no apology can be adequate (e.g., if Hitler had survived and apologized, you’d hang him anyway).
This isn’t one of those cases where the liable party settles without admitting fault. Nor is a $27 million wrongful death settlement an ordinary admission of fault; it’s an admission of Burn-In-Hell fault. You have to really screw up to owe someone $27 million for taking a life. Most wrongful-death cases are worth $2-4 million in civil courts.
George Floyd was tortured to death. That ups the damages. It was done in the name of the law, by an officer of the law, and that exponentially amplifies the wrong, because it was an abuse of government power — in this case, the worst conceivable abuse of the most ultimate government power (i.e., life-and-death power over its subjects). That calls for towering recompense.
The $27 million settlement doesn’t guarantee this will never happen again. Nor would a billion, or trillion, dollar settlement. Making the Floyd family richer than Jeff Bezos would have no deterrent effect at all. That’s because it costs the perpetrator nothing. It comes out of the taxpayers’ pockets, not his pocket. And under our existing system, the taxpayers can’t even fire killer cops. Because of qualified immunity laws. And police unions.
Cops and their unions should have no power to arbitrate their own wrongs. That power belongs to whoever foots the bill for their deeds: The taxpayers. Law enforcement collective bargaining agreements everywhere in the country should be stripped of provisions enabling cops and their unions to influence disciplinary proceedings, and limit unions to representing their members in impartial due process disciplinary proceedings, with no decision-making power left in their hands.
Murderers in the ranks rarely lose their jobs, and never lose their pensions. That makes the risk of criminal conviction the only deterrent there is. Without deterrence, citizens’ lives — especially black citizens’ lives — will continue to be cheaply taken.
All four cops involved in George Floyd’s killing were fired. This probably will ruin their lives, and it should. Derek Chauvin, the cop who strangled George Floyd to death, must be given a fair trial. If he is not guilty of the charges against him as the law is written, he must be acquitted. If he is convicted of the most serious charges against him, he could get 40 years in prison, and should, and should never get parole. Not just to deter other rogue cops, but because he deserves harsh punishment.
Under the current system, black lives don’t matter. In over 11,000 peaceful protests, millions of Americans of all races have demanded change, that from now on, black lives will be valued the same as white lives in this country.
Republicans in general are awful people who have done awful things recently. One of the awful things they’ve done is call peaceful Black Lives Matters protesters criminals and terrorists, vandalize their signs, and deliberately attack them with cars. They’re worse than that, they’ve also tried to violently overthrow our government, kill its elected leaders, and install as a dictator a vile man of low character who has promoted and encouraged that awfulness.
I won’t say the jury must convict Derke Chauvin. That would be wrong and against our nation’s core principles. The jury must give Chauvin due process. The rest of us should be patient, let the trial run it course, and accept the verdict, whatever it is. There should be no celebrations of a guilty verdict, and no riots if he’s acquitted. It’s very important that we protect this system of fair trial, due process, and rule of law.
The entire American nation should go on strike against the Republican Party. Not all Republicans are bad people, but the party as a whole is bad enough to warrant a total electoral embargo on Republican candidates until the party cleans up its act. Voters have an alternative; Democrats are not Satanists, communists, socialists, or people who drink baby blood (no matter what stupid QAnon followers believe; reminder: believing something doesn’t make it true).
I recognize that many Americans, approximately half of them, have real disagreements with Democrats over matters of ideology and policies. But Democrats don’t conspire to kidnap governors who are only trying to protect our health and save our lives, don’t try to run the other party’s campaign buses off the road, don’t use American flags as spears with which to attack police officers, don’t hate people who argue that black lives should matter. Republicans do all of those things. In addition, they try to keep us from voting, and refuse to accept election results when we’re unwilling to put people like them in charge of our society.
Saying “black lives matter” doesn’t mean white lives matter less. No one is arguing that. Respecting the value of black peoples’ lives takes nothing away from white people. But saying “white lives matter” or “all lives matter” does argue that black lives matter less than white lives, or not at all. It’s not explicitly there, but it’s implicit. Meanings of words are always affected by context, and the context of these latter phrases is that they’re always a retort to “black lives matter” and the person saying them always means, “No, they don’t.”
A hundred years ago, the Ku Klux Klan waged a campaign of terror against black people. Today, police departments are the Ku Klux Klan. Using the official power of badge and gun, racist cops are waging a campaign of terror against black people. George Floyd was lynched. His lyncher, and others like him, have sought license and cover in a blue uniform. When people go around saying “blue lives matter,” it doesn’t mean what it seems to say; rather, it means “that’s okey.”
We are a large nation of 330 million people. We have fought together against fascism and communism on many battlefields, as comrades in arms, sometimes dying in each other’s arms. America, when aroused, can be a might and united force against evil. But within our body politic, we struggle with our own demons. Some among us are racists and white nationalists.
They’re tried to discredit the phrase, “black lives matter,” whose plain meaning is unimpeachable, and unlike those other phrases, there are no hidden meanings lurking there. In doing so, all they’ve accomplished is to make those other phrases disreputable.
The City of Minneapolis’ payment of $27 million to George Floyd’s family, above all, is a statement affirming that his life mattered, an affirmation of the validity of the Black Lives Matter movement, which only seeks an end to gratuitous police violence against black people, and stands as a powerful rebuke of those so bitterly opposing that goal.