By Sean Yoes
AFRO Baltimore Editor
syoes@afro.com
Brother George Floyd was laid to rest by his family in Houston on June 11. But, the massive movement of protest against systemic American racism sparked by his murder in Minneapolis continues to burn bright.
Among the issues America is being forced to confront in the rolling aftermath of Floyd’s murder is the deadly urgent need to holistically reform law enforcement policies, procedures, practices and agencies across the nation.
However, the debate over law enforcement reform doesn’t just hinge on the images of the heinous public execution of George Floyd on Memorial Day.
Sean Yoes
Five days after Floyd’s murder, on May 30, in the heat of the protests triggered globally by his death, two Atlanta police officers brutally attacked two Black college students in a car. The officers, who were subsequently fired, pointed their hand guns at the students, used stun guns on them both, broke the car windows and violently yanked the young man and woman from the car. The two, who are students at Atlanta area HBCU’s, were caught in a traffic jam caused by the protests.
There is the case of Breonna Taylor, whose sleeping body was riddled with bullets in her own home On March 13. Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician was murdered by Louisville Metro Police Department officers, who busted into her apartment under the authority of a so-called, no-knock warrant.
In February, Ahmaud Arbey, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man out for a jog in Brunswick, Georgia was essentially hunted and gunned down by a White father and son. The father was a former law enforcement officer. Initially, the pair was never arrested because apparently in the eyes of the Brunswick police department the two did nothing wrong. It was only after the release of the video of Arbery’s murder were the killers arrested and charged, as well as the man who filmed the incident.
And five years ago in Baltimore it was Freddie Carlos Gray.
When Gray succumbed to his injuries, including a severed spine, at the hands of members of the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) on April 19, his death ruled a homicide set off a series of events, which led to the Baltimore Uprising on April 27, the day of Gray’s funeral. A few days later on May 1, as the city smoldered Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged all six officers connected to Gray’s death.
From that day, she has been virulently ridiculed by law enforcement leaders, individual police officers, police unions and members of the media almost non-stop. There has been a consistent and copious amount of attacks via social media.
Mosby still gets “dear ni–er” emails regarding her decision to charge the six officrers connected to Gray’s death. But, at the end of the day her actions created space for the discussion over law enforcement reform in America to move forward more plausibly. The universal condemnation we have witnessed on the part of many law enforcement agencies across the country in response to the murder of George Floyd is something I’ve never seen before.
Just in the days since Floyd’s murder and the arrest and charging of the four officers involved, we’ve seen the actions of bad cops brought to light with a ferocity never witnessed before in this country. We’ve seen bad cops get fired with an alacrity never witnessed before in this country. And we’ve seen cops put handcuffs on bad cops, take them to jail and they are being charged with murder and other crimes.
Mosby’s actions on May 1, 2015, helped clear the way for this current unprecedented surge in the law enforcement reform movement in America.
Sean Yoes is the AFRO’s Baltimore editor and the author of Baltimore After Freddie Gray: Real Stories From One of America’s Great Imperiled Cities
