The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jelani Cobb on Derek Chauvin’s Conviction and the Future of Police Reform

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

The murder of George Floyd galvanized the public and led to the largest protests in American history. Even Donald Trump said of the videos of Floyd’s killing, “It doesn't get any more obvious or it doesn't get any worse than that,” presumably referring to the use of force by police. America waited anxiously for the outcome of the murder trial of the former police officer Derek Chauvin. The prosecution’s case was notable for the unusually candid and definitive statements against Chauvin’s actions that were made by senior figures in the Minneapolis Police Department. The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb covered the trial and says that this testimony sends a message to law enforcement. “There are now circumstances where public scrutiny and public outrage and egregious offenses that come to light can actually generate enough outrage that you actually will not be defended by your fellow-officers,” he tells David Remnick. “It may seem like a low bar. But, given what we’ve seen previously, that’s a pretty astounding development.”  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Today, a jury in Minnesota found former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, guilty on all counts in the murder of George Floyd last May. It was a murder in the full light of day and it ripped the blinders off. for the whole world to see the systemic racism the vice president just referred to. America was holding its breath waiting for the outcome of this trial.

But the jury's verdict doesn't settle the larger question that is still before us. Was Derek Chauvin a bad officer doing terrible policing, an outlier, or bad apple, as they say? Or as President Biden and Vice President Harris have intimated, is the problem much deeper?

Is it systemic, systemic race? institutional racism, was George Floyd the victim of a law enforcement system that is biased against and geared toward committing violence against black and brown Americans. Hey, Jolani, how you doing? Good. Are you in Minneapolis? I'm in St. Paul. I'm in the hotel. Oh, right.

Last week I called up Jelani Cobb, a staff writer, and a historian. He covered Floyd's death, the protests that followed, and the trial in Minneapolis. Jelani, let's start with the most essential thing. What is the meaning really in the political sense of this conviction for murder of a police officer in Minneapolis for the killing of George Floyd? I think if we talk in the most strict definition of political,

then we'd say that there are lots of elected officials who were breathing easier than they would have been had there been an acquittal. It's visible here because there are thousands of National Guard who'd been called up. There were National Guard stationed on the building itself, on the courthouse kind of overlook. And so people were very much prepared for there to be serious and significant unrest. And so I think there's that. If we talk about political in a broader sense and just the kind of power relations in the community and in the country,

it really means that this movement has momentum, that when we saw the phrase Black Lives Matter, which now has been almost a decade since we first heard it, it has amassed a significant amount of political might that the organizing that people did, the calculations that people made, the fact that there have been people on the ground protesting about everything that's happened,

has been the constant backdrop of, you know, the developments here. And so, you know, you see something that you would not normally see, a police officer who was convicted of killing an unarmed African-American man in the course of duty. We don't see that very often, even in egregious instances. And the activism that's out on the street is partly responsible for it. Jolani, we were speaking Tuesday night. You were on the lawn outside the county government building. where the courthouse is, and the reaction in the crowds

of several hundred people was both, I would say, as you described it, euphoria and relief at the same time. But in political terms, there are some people that take this as a mandate for, that's very limited. In other words, no chokeholds,

reform on the edges of police behavior and police departments, but the people who are at the center of the Black Lives Matter movement see it in a moment. much deeper way. How would you describe that? Well, I mean, if we're talking about the national legislation, yeah, you know, it seems like this should not have to be a gigantic wave to push people for things like a national database for police misbehavior or the absence of chokeholds

in national policing or the kind of most fundamental beginning of national standards for policing. I think that it may look different on the state and local level. You heard Governor Walls talk about the need for there that be changes and reforms. And then on the local level, there's still this big question about whether or not the police force will be disbanded in Minneapolis. That remains an open question. It will likely be resolved or at least the beginning of a resolution will take place in November, when they will have a ballot initiative about whether or not the city charter

can be amended to say that you do not have to have a police force as it exists right now. One thing that's kind of indicative, it seems to me, is the nature of the prosecution against Derek Chauvin. It was a pro-cop prosecution in a sense, and they made that very plain,

saying Derek Chauvin is an exception. He is the classic bad apple, the peripheral actor that would do something this horrible, and that that is not something that cops are either trained to do, inclined to do, or in 99 out of 100 cases, don't do. It was a way to assuage the anxieties of some jurors that they would be voting against the institution of the police as opposed to Derek Chauvin is a bad app. Am I right? I think that one of the notable things in the Chauvin case, when people have kind of tried to parse away his actions,

from the day-to-day actions of the Minneapolis Police Department. It's been complicated by a fact, which also, by the way, complicates the situation that we saw with the shooting of Dante Wright in the course of this trial. And that is that both Kim Potter and Derek Chauvin, and Potter is the officer who fired her weapon and fatally injured Dante Wright, but both Potter and Chauvin,

had been on the police force for a really long time. Chauvin for almost 20 years, Potter for 26 years, Chauvin was the senior officer on the scene. And so it's hard to say that a person who has been on the force for that long doesn't in some way embody or represent the policing, if not the ideals, if not the training, then certainly the way that policing actually, operates and is allowed to operate in that police department.

How do you make the argument that what occurred was, again, not an individual act or not even the act just of those officers, but an instance of an illustration of systemic racism? Well, I think one of the more notable things has been that right on the heels of this verdict, we saw Merrick Garland announce that the Department of Justice would be looking into exactly, that question. And so the prosecution's argument that there was nothing representative about Derek Chauvin's actions will be put to the test. We will see when the DOJ begins investigating and looking into old cases and examining if there was a pattern of abuse. If that was the case, then we'll see it in whatever report comes out of that investigation.

One really remarkable thing about this trial was seeing senior police, officers and officials, one after the other, from Chauvin's own force, testifying against him, saying, this was not protocol, this was not training. This was, in a sense, not irregular, but murder. Have you ever seen in your very vast experience reporting on criminal justice? Have you ever seen police speak out against a fellow officer like this before? I have not. I have not seen police speak out about this at this level. and publicly, you know, from the police chief down. And in the immediate moments after in George Floyd's death,

what was notable was that that line of defense that we typically see rolled out on behalf of the police really didn't show up. So I think it really raises now the question retroactively about how much police reticence to talk about bad behavior among other cops. may have impeded other prosecutions where we've seen similar kinds of dynamics. So if you're a police officer watching this trial, paying attention to this trial,

what's the message that these testimonies sent to you? What's the takeaway for an individual cop? I mean, I think it has to be that there are now, if there weren't in the past, there are now circumstances where public scrutiny and public outrage and a grievance. and egregious offenses that come to light can actually generate enough outrage that you actually will not be defended by your fellow officers or by the brass

or by the police hierarchy. And that in itself, it may seem like a low bar, but given what we've seen previously, that's a pretty astounding development. John, it was interesting. While we were talking on the evening of the verdict, and there was cheering in the background on your end of the phone, you were not completely over-the-moon happy or optimistic.

You were talking about just how painful this whole episode has been. Yeah, I think, you know, I think to have seen that video, as millions of us have, is to have been changed by it. And it's hard to imagine anything celebratory, I think, in the wake of it. Just kind of looking at all that it took to get here, there was another point that I think stayed with me. And I was reluctant to say it in the midst of all the exultation that was happening yesterday. But the bar for this was so low. You know, it's almost like a major league pitcher being happy.

that he figured out how to get a fastball over the plate. Just the one time. Just the one time. And it's like that is the most basic task that we ask of our justice system. And we got it right in this one case. And the indictment of how we typically function is the level of excitement that came with the verdict that we saw this time. Jelani Cobb is a professor of journalism at Columbia University.

and a staff writer at The New Yorker. He writes frequently about the criminal justice system and race, and you can find his work at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and thanks for being with us this week. Next week, critic Hilton Alls, with two shots of vaccine in him, goes to a museum for the first time since the pandemic started, and we'll get his report. See you next time.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed, by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carillo, Riannon Corby, David Krasnow, Gophane, and Puttubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, Annabelle Bacon, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Meng Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.