I Can’t Breathe

If you haven’t watched the video of George Floyd being executed in the streets of Minneapolis, you should. Even if it’s hard, even if it makes you sick. Because frankly, we all need to be sick over what happened on that street in the sight of God and a growing number of witnesses. I don’t generally speak out on contemporary crime, and when I do I prefer to wait until the facts of a case are widely known before speaking. But there is nothing which could come to light that would make this officer’s actions justifiable.

I understand that the suspect may have been under the influence. I understand that he may have been guilty of check forgery. I understand that he may have resisted arrest. And while it may not be popular at this moment (and I doubt it’s even legal), if a suspect resists arrest, I fully support a police officer roughing up that suspect in order to make it clear that resistance comes at a cost. But this was not that. This was that for maybe 15 seconds. Beyond that I can’t imagine any officer I know supporting that kind of torture of a person of any race.

There was a coldness to this officer, an indifference to the life or death of this human being that chills the soul. The roots of that coldness are in the heart of every single one of us; we aren’t different in that regard. But the callous way in which he taunted Floyd, in which he kept his knee on the victim’s neck well after the victim stopped squirming, the way he could simply tune out the bystander’s pleas to preserve Floyd’s life suggests a coldness not only rooted in our common human condition, but also exacerbated by the task of policing in the 21st century.

I love and thank God for the men and women in our church that I know personally who serve our community as police officers. Every day or night when they put on that uniform they put their lives on the line as they deal with some of the most problematic and dangerous people in our society. Our officers have to do this difficult job under the increasingly critical eye of a public more and more inclined to see every officer as a would-be killer just waiting for an opportunity. It’s simply not fair and it’s not true. And it makes my blood boil that the good officers I know have to pay the cost of the actions of the bad actors in this video.

Clearly something happened to this officer that made him a greater danger to society than the man he executed on the street. I can imagine how it happens, how one could become callous toward perpetrators and feel the need to show increasing levels of force to the suspects who make policing harder. But this rose above any norm. Somehow, someone has to recognize this callousness as it develops in a police officer. Someone has to notice this callousness developing beyond the “normal” level required to do this difficult job. Surely there are signs. Perhaps it’s joking about how they handled a recent suspect in an arrest. Perhaps it’s evident in the way they talk about particular classes or races of people. But it’s hard for me to imagine that a man who could kneel on the neck of a human being calling for his mother as his life was squeezed out of him did not show signs of this in advance. And those signs were missed. And another black man, another human made in the image of God, is unnecessarily dead. I believe the race factors involved here need to be addressed and I believe that black people should have the same reasonable expectation of safety while in custody (or on the street) as white people. I lament that this is not the case in many places today, and it certainly was not the case for George Floyd.

The officers on the scene may be charged with murder. Based on the video, at least the man kneeling on the victim should be. But even if he is tried, even if he is found guilty, there’s still a man dead. And as surely as that officer was calloused, so too are we. We hear about another murder on the streets, another mass shooting, another black person dead and we shrug our shoulders because “What else can we do?” We hear about the number of abortions occurring in our country each day and shrug our shoulders. “What can we do, it’s legal?” We hear about the COVID-19 death count and shrug our shoulders, “That’s political, and at least it’s only 100,000+.” We are callous to our culture of death. What can we do?

Here’s what we can do: we can weep. And we should. Because weeping in the face of evil, injustice, and even accidental death is an appropriate response. There will be a day for Christians where there are no more tears, but that day is not today. Perhaps in some way our tears now serve us and society by ripping open our callouses before they can harden on our hearts.

God put humans on the earth to reflect his glory, and no matter how broken each individual one might be, in some way each one still represents our Maker. George Floyd was made to represent the God who made me, and loved me, and gave himself for me. I don’t know George, but I know God. And when one who represents my God is killed on the street, if it doesn’t break my heart then I’m a lot closer to that officer than I think. And so are you.