A Word about George Floyd
At the time of this writing, more than a week has elapsed since Derek Chauvin was convicted on all three counts for the murder of George Floyd. Everyone has an opinion, and to some extent I am hesitant to give mine. On the other hand, my posts remain on my blog for a very long time, and so I am not looking to throw another branch on the fire, or alternatively, douse it. My view is like a leather jacket, intended to show wear from the very beginning, maybe looking different (or even better) after it is well broken in.
Reactions to the verdict, which was a very rare instance where a jury found against a white police officer for killing a black person in the line of duty, were varied and complex. Some people were relieved. A few quickly hardened and said this was just the beginning, the first step on the long path to racial justice. Others were insistent that this could not be called justice, because justice would have required that George Floyd did not die, and since he did, a better word might be social restitution, or even revenge. And a very few argued this was a strike against police officers, who have a difficult job and have to make life-and-death decisions every day, and that the verdict is a victory for the forces of mayhem against the forces of order.
I have no sympathy for this last argument whatsoever. As a medical doctor I, too, have to make life-and-death decisions daily. It never would occur to me that I should not be held accountable for my mistakes because my job is “hard.” If a job does not entail accountability, it can’t be very hard. What makes it hard is precisely that the decisions that are made must be accounted for.
I know police put their lives on the line, so to speak, every day at work. I appreciate that. But, and here I speak with long experience because I must face angry, fearful, and mentally disturbed people for a living as well, the trick to dealing with problematic people, be they patients or citizens on the street, is not to escalate the situation. Most dangerous situations present multiple opportunities to escalate or de-escalate. Some one yells, at you, and you can step forward or back. Someone makes an unexpected move, and you can reach for your gun or put your hands in front of you. Don’t get me wrong — I fully understand that sometimes putting your hand on your gun is necessary. But to do so is a willful escalation.
Twenty years of dealing with patients tells me that I have a distinct advantage — the patient has never been in this situation before, but I have. So I know when a moment of escalation is coming. Most of the time, my approach is to let the patient have his say, yelling and all, all the way to the end, then allow a break before I say anything. Doesn’t work every time, but it works often enough. As any doctor can tell you, it takes only a modicum of skill to write a prescription, manage a ventilator, or do a spinal tap. The real skill comes in knowing when to act — and when not to act.
Most police officers know this. But it seems that some do not. Those that don’t should not be police; they need to do something else. Getting rid of officers who don’t recognize a moment when things can be escalated or de-escalated is the job of every chief of police. Somehow I doubt the death of George Floyd was the first time Derek Chauvin demonstrated that he did not understand how and when to back down. It is the fault of his superiors that in the past they chose not to notice.
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Angry patients are a part of my job. As the person most responsible for the direction of a hospitalized patient’s medical care, it is my responsibility to deal with upset patients.
I could write a book about this, but let me make a simple point. In the past, I have been greatly apprehensive about conflict with patients. I can’t say all that apprehension has gone away, but here is the most important thing: When I enter into a situation where there may be a conflict, I have found that my biggest fear is not that the patient will lose control, but that I will. My fear is that I will “lose it,” that is, that I will become so angry or fearful that I will abandon my professional dignity and lose control of the situation.
But I have no control over the patient. Anger, fear, sadness on the patient’s part — that is entirely out of my control. What is in my control is me. So before I go into a conflict, I tell myself that no matter what happens, I will not start yelling. I will not become defensive. I will listen, and if things get too heated, I will excuse myself and leave. It is my right to back away from any situation. Patients and their families do not have the right, in any circumstances, to keep applying pressure on me without limit. Calmly backing away is always an option, and is always my undisputed right. The day someone tells me otherwise is the last day I practice medicine.
It should be a rare instance where a police officer has to step into a dangerous situation without the option of backing out. Backing out is not weak. It shows good judgment. It shows an individual who has recognized a moment when things could escalate and has chosen to de-escalate. How often is it necessary for a police officer to violently intervene in a situation to prevent harm to someone? Not very often. Most of the time, when a potentially volatile situation erupts the better options are to call for backup and seal off the area, back away and keep talking, or collect information that can be used to track down the person later.
I cannot claim to be an expert in policing. But I deal with alcoholics, drug addicts, people with criminal records, manipulative people, and people with mental disorders every day of my life. My patients don’t assault me because they know I am there to help them. If citizens felt the same about police, police would have fewer problems as well.
No, I am neither an expert on policing nor a person of color. But I have as much a stake in community safety as anyone else. And know more than most about what makes stressed-out people tick.
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The most striking thing about the Chauvin trial is that it happened in the first place. Derek Chauvin was responsible for the death of a man that he had placed under arrest, and he got his trial and had every opportunity to make his case. The justice system worked for him, in the sense that once he was accused, the rules of the system protected his right to defend himself up to the moment of the verdict.
Some have said that the trial may have been biased. This, they say, is because the jury was afraid riots would ensue if they dared to issue a verdict of acquittal.
This is nonsense. Anyone looking at the video of Chauvin with his knee on the neck of George Floyd has to agree that it is reasonable to assume this action caused his death. As a medical doctor myself, I would say that it likely did. While it is possible there were other contributing causes, such as drug intoxication and underlying medical conditions, it is reasonable to conclude that putting your knee on a man’s neck for nine minutes would cause him to die of asphyxiation.
One could argue that there may have been other causes. One cannot argue Derek Chauvin could not have killed George Floyd. The verdict is completely reasonable.
The other argument, that a police officer has a right to use discretionary lethal force in an arrest, and that the verdict will have “a chilling effect” on police nationwide, is both racist and stupid. I don’t know of a job where the job holder has the right to use lethal force without accountability. What does this say about our police if they feel they should not have to answer for killing someone during an arrest? It should be a given that any time an arrested person dies, the officers involved will have to account for themselves. And it should be a given that any time a citizen is killed, regardless of the circumstances, the person doing the killing should have to answer for it to the legal system. This is not a very high professional standard. If the police are not required to take responsibility for their actions, they are no longer police. They are our rulers.
The fact is, Derek Chauvin had a trial and the verdict was reasonable. Do you know for whom the same cannot be said? George Floyd. George Floyd reportedly passed a counterfeit $20 bill. He allegedly was using Fentanyl, an illegal drug. But none of that was proven in a court of law, because George Floyd didn’t live long enough to stand trial. Even if Chauvin’s trial was unfair — and I believe that it was fair — he still had a trial, a trial whose verdict can be debated, appealed, and possibly even pardoned.
George Floyd never got that far.
This is the central complaint Black Lives Matter has with the case. It isn’t that Floyd was a saint, or even that he was innocent. It was that his verdict was rendered without him being able to say a single mumbling word in his own defense.
This is really what racism is about. The claim of racism isn’t that everything doesn’t turn out perfectly fair at the end. It is the complaint that people of color don’t get an equal opportunity — in this case, an opportunity for equal legal rights at the moment of arrest — from the very beginning.
There is something in science called Bayes’ Theorem, which in its simplest formulation says that the outcome of a situation is determined primarily by the conditions that exist at the very beginning. What happens during the process is important, but not as important as what scientists call the “pre-test conditions.”
What happened to George Floyd as soon as he was accused of a crime? He was subdued and killed. What happened to Derek Chauvin? He got to speak to a lawyer. No violence, no knee to the neck. These are your pre-test conditions. One got the presumption of innocence and legal rights under the law, and the other did not.
What happened in this case may not be a typical example of race relations in America. But it certainly rhymes with it.
