Re-imagining law enforcement in the United States

By Kent R. Kroeger (Source: NuQum.com, April 21, 2021)

“We need to re-imagine policing and public safety in this country”

— Barack Obama, April 12, 2021

Today, as many people are expressing a sigh of relief at the conviction of Minneapolis police office Derek Chauvin in the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, I was reminded of an essay I wrote a year ago about the too common use of excessive force by police in the enforcement of minor civil violations.

Many journalists and commentators have emphasized that the reason Minneapolis police engaged with George Floyd on May 25,2020 in the first place was over Floyd allegedly passing of a counterfeit $20 bill at a local convenience store — the presumption being that had this happened in an affluent community, the police never would have been called or, if they were called, would not have acted as they did towards Floyd.

“This man lost his life over a $20 bill?” singer-songwriter Tom Prasada-Rao lamented to a local Portsmouth, Virginia reporter.

But it is not just the Floyd incident. Here are other cases where the police used excessive (and sometimes deadly) force in the course of investigating a minor crime:

On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner was killed after a New York…