This article is Part 1 of a three-part series. You can read Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

I cried last night

I watched the video of George Floyd having his life squeezed out of him over an agonizing eight minutes and forty-six seconds.

This was done by a psychopathic police officer who has clearly gotten so comfortable violating the civil rights of black people over his career that, WITH HIS HANDS IN HIS POCKETS, he cavalierly knelt on a black man's neck until that man died.

And he did so with the direct assistance of three other supposed officers of the law.

But that's the thing...it wasn't just those three officers who assisted him.

It was the entire police department.

It was the police union that defends these bad actors, no matter what.

It was the criminal justice system that allows police officers to write up any kind of police report they want and be believed, no matter what.

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

This is not Derek Chauvin's first bad deed as a police officer.

You don't go from Officer Friendly one day to kneeling on someone's neck with your hands in your pockets until they die.

That act took some pretty pronounced sadism and that kind of sickness doesn't just appear one day with no prior indications.

How sick do you have to be to kneel on somebody’s neck for ten fucking minutes as that person and bystanders beg for his life???!!!

Just as there are career criminals, there are career civil rights violators in every police department in every large city.

It's just a numbers game. If you have enough apples, some of them are going to be bad.

There's absolutely no way the Internal Affairs departments, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the state bureaus of investigation don't know who these people are.

But nothing is ever done until one of these bad apples kills somebody ON CAMERA and civil unrest forces action.

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

We have to risk our lives against COVID-19 to mass-gather to protest police killings because we know that those charged with enforcing law and order will do no such thing, unless pressured.

To hear the police tell it, there are no bad apples on the force.

No police officers ever demonstrate a pattern of behavior that could lead to something like this.

No police officers are coming to work and violating black people's civil rights on damn near every shift, if not every shift.

None of those police exist, if you let the police tell it.

All police are noble, honorable civil servants who risk their lives every day to protect us.

No police are out here victimizing black people in some manner on every shift.

The Derek Chauvin's of the world just magically appear one day, out of nowhere.

They just drop out of the sky and do something horrible that none of their coworkers could have ever seen coming.

The police officers that they work with every day have never observed them do anything like whatever bad act they engaged in that resulted in some black person's death.

We are to believe that none of the people who Derek Chauvin worked with—people who investigate crimes for a living—none of these people have ever observed anything that would indicate that he is unfit to have police powers.

This whole incident just came out of nowhere. It was completely out of character.

Bullshit.

Complete, total bullshit.

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

When the good apples stand by and watch the bad apples run amok in our communities, is it really that hard to understand why all we see is bad apples?

Y'all all wear the same uniform. I don't know if you're here to help, or if you're a psychopath in a uniform who will execute me on the street because you know you can get away with it.

What does it say that this officer would do something like this knowing full well that cameras are everywhere, including the body cameras that the police are wearing themselves?

That demonstrates a pretty profound sense of immunity from consequences.

If George Floyd had not died, Derek Chauvin would still be a police officer.

If this happened 20 years ago and George Floyd did not die on camera, Derek Chauvin would still be a police officer because there's absolutely NO WAY the police report would have reflected what actually happened.

None of those “good apples” who were present and aided and abetted would have done anything to get him removed from the police force.

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

If we can't trust you to protect us from the Derek Chauvins of the world by policing your own ranks and getting rid of people WHO YOU KNOW are unfit to have police powers, then how in the world are we supposed to trust you?

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

There are police officers on duty right now who are just as bad or worse than Derek Chauvin and you know who they are.

Just as is the case with Derek Chauvin, those bad officers have already demonstrated a pattern of violating the civil rights of black people.

What are you “good police” going to do about it?

Things will never improve if the “good police” continue to watch the bad apples go about their sick and depraved mischief everyday and do nothing.

There are some evil officers operating in every police department. If all the other officers choose to be “see no evil” officers, then who the fuck are we to trust?

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

Why does it always take forever for the body cam footage to be released when it shows officers engaged in wrongdoing, but it comes out immediately when it shows a citizen doing something wrong that justified the officer's actions?

Because delays are built into the system so that bad apples have plenty of time to get their lies straight.

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

George Floyd and Amy Cooper, BOTH ON THE SAME DAY!

Or, more accurately, both caught on camera on the same day. This stuff is happening all the time and it has been for literally hundreds of years.

And us Black folk still gotta find a way to show up for work

I have a business to run.

It's a marketing business, at that, so I have to always be doing outreach.

That was already a challenge with everyone in crisis due to COVID-19.

How do I do outreach about my business without appearing oblivious to what's going on right now?...when I am absolutely not oblivious to it?!

The people most likely to hire me, look like me. And we're all in trauma right now.

How long do I wait before it's okay to get back to my normal marketing message?

How long do I have to wait before I can just operate my business in pursuit of the American Dream?

1620, 1720, 1820, 1920, 2020...when will we get to the point where black men like me are not being murdered by police or lynch mobs set in motion by Amy Coopers?

You’ll notice that no one is wearing masks in any of these images.

That’s because these photos are from a protest march in 2014.

And here we are again, in 2020, marching under a dying black man’s last words at the hands of the police: “I can’t breathe.”