The Chauvin Conviction Doesn't Fix Anything
Our law enforcement problems are varied and systemic.
1. Police Unions Are Bad
On May 25, 2020 Derek Chauvin woke up and went to work. He had no idea that a few hours later his life would change, forever.
But anyone who looked closely at Chauvinās record would have knownāshould have knownāthat one day something bad was likely to happen while he was on the job.
Chauvin had 18 official complaints against him in his fileāthese are only the ones that citizens actually got up and followed through on registering. Two of these complaints earned him discipline from the department and letters of reprimand. He also had received two āmedals of valorā from the departmentāeach of these medals were linked to Chauvin having shot someone. (In one case, fatally.)
The complaints against Chauvin are heavily redacted and the only one we have details about is a 2007 incident. He pulled a woman over for speeding 10 mph above the posted limit. For some reason, he pulled her out of her car, frisked her, and then put her in the back of his cruiser. Andāhere is the keyāhis squad car camera was disabled for the entire incident.
This is a portrait of a bad cop. Not the worst cop to ever walk a beat, to be sure. But a guy without the intelligence, composure, or judgment to be given a badge, a gun, and the state-sanctioned ability to use deadly force.
And I suspect that his union went to bat for him every time. We canāt know that for sure, of course. But we do know that in the immediate aftermath of Floydās murder, the union sure as short went to bat for Chauvin:
Thatās right: According to the union the protests were āa terrorist movement.ā The politicians and the department leadership had āfailed.ā The governor was āincompetent.ā And the unionāthe brave unionāwas trying to get the word out about George Floydās criminal history while āfightingā for the jobs of Derek Chauvin and his brother officers who were unconscionably āterminated without due process.ā
Can you imagine what sort of person you have to be to hold such a funhouse view of the world?
Kroll eventually climbed down and went into damage control mode. But the point is this:
If you are a police officer who is bad at your job, your union isnāt doing you favors in the long term by preventing you from getting fired.
Because maybe you make it to your pension without getting convicted of murder. Or maybe you donāt.
As the philosopher Chris Rock puts it, police should be analogous to airline pilots.
Here is a question: If you were a pilot, and you were a very, very bad pilot who was a danger to yourself and others, would you want your union to prevent you from losing your job? Or would you rather be forced to do something else for a livingābecome a CPA, work in real estate, whatever?
Because maybe you donāt enjoy being a CPA as much as you like flying. But also: Being a CPA instead of a bad pilot will prevent you from killing yourself (and a plane full of people).
Police unions spend enormous sums of money defending their members from criminal complaints. They engage in brass-knuckled fights against management to keep members from being fired for poor performance. And the end result of this is that they help keep the barrel stocked with ābad apples.ā
Maybe if the police union hadnāt gone to bat for Derek Chauvin, then George Floyd would be alive today. And Derek Chauvin wouldnāt be a cop, but heād be a free man.
Trying to prevent a person who is bad at their job from the consequences of their failure doesnāt help anyone.
2. The System Is the Problem
It is nice that the justice system finally got Derek Chauvinās badge taken away from him. It would have been nicer if this had happened without Floyd being killed and Chauvin being sent to jail.
But this single small āsuccessā should not mask the fact that we have multiple systemic problems in criminal justice.
Iām not sure if you remember this, but the entire George Floyd case only became a national issue because bystanders took video. The police departmentās initial account of what happenedābased on the reporting from all four officers on sceneāwas this:
The corruption evidenced in that statement is staggering because it did not involve a split-second judgment call. No officer was being actively threatened. It is the product of multiple law enforcement officers telling premeditated lies and the department accepting them without question.
That culture doesnāt go away because Derek Chauvin is in jail.
We see these systemic problems in many cases of the police response to the George Floyd protests last summer.
We see the systemic problems with the killing of Adam Toledo which only came to light after a prosecutor lied about the events in court.
We see the systemic problems in how prosecutors continue to rely on the testimony of cops they know are dirty and hide this information from defendants in contravention of the law.
In the Mother Jones piece I linked to above thereās a legal form of corruption: The police unions and their associated organs give campaign donations to elected prosecutors.
Look: If an oil company gives money to a politician because it wants a certain policy passed, thatās corruption and itās bad but whatever. Itās the corrupt act of a private actor.
If a union representing agents of the state gives money to a politician because it wants that politician to not prosecute rogue agents, thatās something very different. Itās basically the government bribing itself in an attempt to avoid accountability for what it does to the citizenry.
All of which is to say that problems we have with law enforcement in America donāt go away with Derek Chauvin.
The only way we solve them is with policy, legislation, and votes.
3. Soft Serve
This Wired story about the ice cream machines at McDonaldās is fantastic:
Of all the mysteries and injustices of the McDonaldās ice cream machine, the one that Jeremy OāSullivan insists you understand first is its secret passcode.
Press the cone icon on the screen of the Taylor C602 digital ice cream machine, he explains, then tap the buttons that show a snowflake and a milkshake to set the digits on the screen to 5, then 2, then 3, then 1. After that precise series of no fewer than 16 button presses, a menu magically unlocks. Only with this cheat code can you access the machineās vital signs: everything from the viscosity setting for its milk and sugar ingredients to the temperature of the glycol flowing through its heating element to the meanings of its many sphinxlike error messages.
āNo one at McDonaldās or Taylor will explain why thereās a secret, undisclosed menu," OāSullivan wrote in one of the first, cryptic text messages I received from him earlier this year.
As OāSullivan says, this menu isnāt documented in any ownerās manual for the Taylor digital ice cream machines that are standard equipment in more than 13,000 McDonaldās restaurants across the US and tens of thousands more worldwide. And this opaque user-unfriendliness is far from the only problem with the machines, which have gained a reputation for being absurdly fickle and fragile. Thanks to a multitude of questionable engineering decisions, theyāre so often out of order in McDonaldās restaurants around the world that theyāve become a full-blown social media meme. (Take a moment now to search Twitter for ābroken McDonaldās ice cream machineā and witness thousands of voices crying out in despair.)
But after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, OāSullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the food-equipment giant Taylor sells the McFlurry-squirting devices to McDonaldās restaurant owners for about $18,000 each, and yet it keeps the machinesā inner workings secret from them. What's more, Taylor maintains a network of approved distributors that charge franchisees thousands of dollars a year for pricey maintenance contracts, with technicians on call to come and tap that secret passcode into the devices sitting on their counters.
The secret menu reveals a business model that goes beyond a right-to-repair issue, OāSullivan argues. It represents, as he describes it, nothing short of a milkshake shakedown: Sell franchisees a complicated and fragile machine. Prevent them from figuring out why it constantly breaks. Take a cut of the distributorsā profit from the repairs.
