Some justice! Some peace!
Derek Chauvin is guilty.
As guilty as sin.
Many of us suspected that before he went on trial.
But, of course, he was entitled to a fair trial.
Nothing short of a Perry Mason ending would have changed the outcome.
Perry Mason never showed up!
Instead, Chauvin鈥檚 defense counsel had the unenviable task of trying to make people forget the image they鈥檝e seen hundreds of times since last May 鈥� that of a white cop slowly squeezing the life out of a Black man.
Chauvin鈥檚 cruel, dead-eyed nonchalance was on full display.
A nine-minute, 29-second videotaped murder did him in.
There was never any guarantee that a jury would interpret that murder as the murder it really was.
America has a tarnished history of juries failing to convict white cops who鈥檝e manhandled Black suspects.
On March 3, 1991 (30 long years, one month and 17 days ago) another Black victim was brutally beaten on the streets of Los Angeles.
There was a videotape of that incident, too.
Ironically, it was just seven seconds short of the one that showed Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd 鈥� 9:20.
The brutal beating of Rodney King made international news.
Rightly so.
King had been beaten with a nightstick, punched and kicked by four L.A. cops as many as 56 times, while a civilian caught the entire, sordid thing on camera.
The real shock came a few months later when a jury failed to convict any of those cops.
The shadow of that Rodney King case hung precariously over Minneapolis during the Chauvin trial.
Supposing with all of the visual evidence, the jury would have still felt that the victim deserved to be a victim?
That鈥檚 not what happened this time, though.
After just over 10 hours of deliberations, the jury signaled it had a verdict.
It only took the judge a little over five minutes to read the three guilty verdicts and to send Chauvin off to prison.
This outcome won鈥檛 completely change the racial inequities in this nation鈥檚 legal system.
A lot more has to be done in that area.
But I do caution those spirited young liberals in Congress not to continue with that 鈥渄efund the police鈥� nonsense.
Or, as Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan recently said, 鈥渘o more policing, incarceration, and militarization.鈥�
Sorry, but I鈥檝e seen 鈥渘o more policing鈥� up close.
It鈥檚 frightening.
Nobody wants to experience that.
Here鈥檚 why.
I was a young reporter, working for the NBC-owned television station in Cleveland in June 1978.
Cleveland鈥檚 鈥淏oy Mayor,鈥� Dennis Kucinich, had directly challenged the authority of the city鈥檚 police union.
The union refused to budge.
A weeklong confrontation followed.
After five days, it came to a head.
I was at Cleveland City Hall that Thursday night at 11 o鈥檆lock when Kucinich publicly made good on his promise to fire 13 officers who refused to carry out one of his orders.
Cleveland was immediately thrown into chaos.
The entire police force went on strike. Two thousand men and women simply walked off their jobs.
Within minutes of Kucinich鈥檚 order, I had to walk the two blocks from City Hall to my TV station (WKYC-TV), so that I could continue to cover what had become a national news story.
As I walked, I saw scenes that I thought I鈥檇 never see in America.
With no police on duty throughout the entire city, hooligans struck 鈥� and they struck hard.
I witnessed people being pulled from their cars and all manner of lawlessness within minutes of Kucinich鈥檚 order.
To me, that stands as a direct repudiation of Rep. Tlaib鈥檚 call for 鈥渘o more policing, incarceration, and militarization.鈥�
That, to me, is foolishness.
What I saw in Cleveland, Ohio, for the 48 hours in which that strike lasted was a stark example of what could happen if there鈥檚 nobody available to keep law-abiding citizens safe from lawbreakers.
We need those people.
We should be able to depend on them.
We just can鈥檛 allow them to act as judges and juries while we depend on them.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight, and 40-year TV news and newspaper veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.