Senator Tammy Duckworth, reacting to the death of George Floyd, writes that we need legislation that encourages every state to establish a transparent system where an independent prosecutor reviews police uses of force and prosecutes officers who break the very laws they were entrusted to enforce.
Tammy Duckworth, a democrat, is a Senator from Illinois. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely her own. View more opinion articles on CNN.
First, he said “I can’t breathe.”
Then, he called out “mama” for his late mother.
Last Monday, in Minneapolis during broad daylight, George Floyd was slowly, publicly killed by someone whose responsibility was to “protect and serve.” Then-Officer Derek Chauvin, who has since been rightly fired, spent at about three minutes ignoring Floyd’s cries of pain—refusing to move his knee from Floyd’s neck, refusing to let up even as the man under him begged for life and lost consciousness. Then he spent roughly six minutes after Floyd had fallen silent ignoring the growing number of witnesses who begged for him to see the obvious: that the man under his knee was unresponsive, that he was dying.
Tammy Duckworth
As a mom, there aren’t words to describe the visceral, gut-wrenching feeling of hearing someone cry out for their mother in a moment of such desperation. George Floyd’s death was unnecessary and heartbreaking. It was a tragedy — but horrifyingly, it was not an anomaly.
From Eric Garner who told us six years ago that he, too, couldn’t breathe, to Tamir Rice who never made it to his thirteenth birthday, the senseless killing of unarmed black Americans at the hands of law enforcement has become an all-too-common occurrence. The horror of the moment, the outrage and sadness and anger that follow have turned into a pattern that too many people have come to believe is normal.
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It’s not — and we cannot, must not, let ourselves become numb to the reality in front of us.
George Floyd was someone’s son, who with his dying breath called out for his mother who previously passed away. He had a 6-year-old daughter, who will not only grow up without a father, but knowing that she, too, could face the same danger every day just because of the color of her skin.
