I haven't watched the Derek Chauvin trial and I wasn't about to watch it. I'm not good watching apathy as a man literally choked the life out of a Black man named George Floyd while George was handcuffed and on the ground. It was too much.
It's too much trauma on video.
As a Black woman and a US Navy veteran who served during Desert Shield, it's even traumatizing to watch what happened to Lieutenant Caron Nazario in Windsor, Virginia. I think about the service members who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian or of a multicultural background having to travel to their duty stations and have to encounter to the police or the state troopers at a traffic stop by themselves.
It's truly traumatizing when you add family members as witnesses.
It's also infuriating to hear how much of these deaths from a traumatic law enforcement officer could have been prevented like Emantic Branford, Daunted Wright, Philando Castile, John C Edwards III, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd.
I'm even feeling doubtful about this bit of news in my state. I want to be hopeful; I also need the legislation to not be a "symbolic act", instead of doing the right thing.
Former Montgomery County Sheriff and now state representative Phil Plummer is pushing this bill.
Here's some information I found on him in Wikipedia.
He did fire deputies for racist social media posts; what was his response to an intoxicated woman being pepper sprayed by a sheriff while in a restraint chair and it's on video? What was his response to an inmate accusing the Sheriff's Office, mainly a sheriff in the county jail, of excessive force?
People are asking for accountability from the law enforcement officers. We are asking for accountability when a law enforcement officer does the unthinkable. We need legislation that helps police the police. We need legislation that makes stop and frisk unconstitutional. We need legislation that ends qualified immunity. We need a database for those officers that have discharged their weapons when it wasn't necessary to use them so that they don't apply for another job in law enforcement somewhere else and a database to flag officers for participating in white supremacy groups, extremist groups, and anti government movements.
We also need legislation for no knock warrants, no chokeholds, no traffic stops that lead into these deadly encounters with law enforcement officers.
We need legislation that addresses mental health issues and wellness checks.
It's time for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.