Prickett: Taking a Knee

Ed. Note: Greg Prickett is former police officer and supervisor who went to law school, hung out a shingle, and now practices criminal defense and family law in Fort Worth, Texas. While he was a police officer, he was a police firearms instructor, and routinely taught armed tactics to other officers.

Colin Kaepernick started a trend back in 2016 of taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem in protest of police treatment of blacks and the lack of accountability when there are incidents of police brutality or misconduct. Many people spoke out about Kaepernick’s protest, saying that it went to far, and he paid a price for taking a stand.

Then on Memorial Day, 2020, while arresting George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, veteran Officer Derek Chauvin took a knee too. This knee was on the neck of George Floyd, who complained that he wasn’t able to breathe, and then Floyd passed out. Chauvin didn’t relent, however, and kept his knee in place, applying pressure to Floyd’s neck. Floyd died.

Kaepernick is trying to bring attention to the fact that there are two standards in American as to policing. You have one standard on how whites are treated, and another standard as to how people of color are treated. This is perceived due to what happens to white subjects compared to black subjects, and white officers compared to black officers. And the perfect example of that is in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area.

In 2016, Saint Anthony, Minnesota[1] Police Officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop. He was tried and acquitted of manslaughter in the death. Yanez was a white Hispanic officer, while Castile was black. In 2017, Justine Diamond was shot and killed by Mohammed Noor, Minneapolis Police officer. Noor was tried and convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 12-1/2 years in prison. Noor was black, Diamond was white.

And now police officers wonder why blacks are rioting in the streets of Minneapolis?[2] And even now, the same thing is happening, a disparity between how blacks are treated and how whites are treated. A black CNN journalist, Omar Jimenez, with a cameraman and producer, was arrested by Minnesota State Police even though he identified himself as media and said that he would move where ever the police wanted him to go. Just a block away or so, a white CNN journalist, Josh Campbell, was also contacted by authorities. They identified Campbell as media, did not arrest him, and when needed, told him where to move to.

At PoliceOne.com, the articles covering this are overwhelmingly against the media.

“the media should be arrested every time they false report something or put out fake news.  the media are nothing but a menace and need to be put in there place.  booo hooo”

“I don’t give two sh*ts and a giggle about the media. You wanna get all up into a bad scene and risk gettin’ yer stuff jacked or even worse get injured or seriously killed? [Handle redacted] is all good with it. I have no duty nor the inclination to protect you from yourself or anyone else [a**hat].”

“[F**k] journalists!   I once arrested a reporter and his cameraman for interference with the fire department trying to dig a guy out of his car. Of course we were ordered to let them go after it got back to the higher ups. The reporter kept yelling law suits and the rest. Never happened!”

While that was the majority of comments, there were occasional rational comments.

“This was simply a very bad arrest. Glad the governor intervened and they were released an hour later. What was the State Patrol thinking?”

What the police aren’t realizing is that this is widely perceived to be a problem. You have two idiots in Georgia try to make a citizens arrest of Ahmaud Aubrey, a black man who had apparently committed no crime, and then kill him. One of the two idiots was a retired white cop. Months went by with no arrest until a video came out, at which point the Georgia Bureau of Investigation made arrests.

You have the case of Breonna Taylor, a black EMT, who was shot and killed when the Louisville Metro Police in Kentucky apparently executed a no-knock search warrant in the middle of the night. The police are surprised that the boyfriend of Taylor shoots at the entering officers, thinking that he and Taylor are the victims of a home invasion.

I could go on and on, but the protests over the Floyd killing are popping up all over the nation. The minority community is getting tired of being killed without accountability. There is no reason that the arrest of Chauvin couldn’t have occurred when he was fired. All you need is probable cause to make an arrest, and they had that.

It’s time our leaders get in front of this, and demand that people be held accountable for their actions.

[1] Saint Anthony is a suburb just north of the twin cities, slightly closer to Minneapolis.

[2] Just to make clear, I’m opposed to the riots, those who are destroying property, or looting, etc. should, if they can be identified, be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.