How do we understand the attempted murder of Derek Chauvin in federal prison?
The Minneapolis cop convicted of murdering George Floyd was stabbed 22 times
Duly noted in the liberal media but hardly their great concern was the shocking news that an alleged racist policeman was attacked in an Arizona federal prison on December 1 by a member of the Mexican mafia. For days, there was no explanation from the reportedly poorly run facility, punctuated by the strange revelation that his assailant used an “improvised knife,” whatever that is. Clever to make things happen in the absence of handy weapons.
Naturally, given the bad vibes that accompany people thought beyond the pale, one cannot help but recall the murders of actual malefactors, such as people eater Jeffery Dahmer, who was beaten to death in a Wisconsin prison in 1994. Surely, that news struck more than a few people as poetic—indeed, genuine—justice. The mere fact that Chauvin was a victim of a horrendous crime justifies suspicion that disliked high-profile inmates are at risk in our prison system.
Recently, a reporter once employed by a Minneapolis television station released a video reviewing the famous Floyd case, which added missing background information. Just as the career criminal had resisted arrest in 2020, having to be dragged from his car and held down in his drugged state, so he was arrested in practically identical circumstances just the year before. Indeed, according to Google, “Between 1997 and 2005, Floyd served eight jail terms on various charges, including drug possession, theft and trespass.” Elsewhere, it included aggravated robbery.
Chauvin and his fellow policemen were dealing with a powerful man with a history of crime and resisting arrest, testing their capacity to gain control and bring him to justice. It parallels the equally challenging case of Rodney King in 1991 who resisted arrest following a high-speed chase while he was intoxicated with PCP. Forbidden by police rules against taking any stronger measures, the officers systematically beat him until he finally relented. The images of those beatings were construed as an abuse of police authority but they served the purpose of arrest.
The Google accounts of both Floyd and King’s arrests demonstrate none of this nuance, both of them portrayed as victims of police brutality and worse. After 32 years or three, we are obliged to understand these incidents in the harsh light that “woke” commentators and politicians impose on it.
That being said, the orgy of violence that followed in cities and towns across the nation not surprisingly got a free pass. Despite alleged but insincere concern about violence, we were told that what we saw on our television screens was not what we had every reason to believe was lawlessness. Famously, CNN’s on the spot “reporter,” watching a fire burning a building, declared that the “demonstration”
was “mostly peaceful.” That’s right, just one building, not every building in the area, was destroyed. That’s what “mostly” means.
Democrat Party Vice Presidential 2020 candidate Kamala (Ka mal a—got that?) even supported raising bail money for the many miscreants acting on behalf of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, neither of which had any scruples about how many people they hurt, both police and civilians, and extensive property damage they caused. The rioting went on for weeks on end, causing costly damage to mostly Democrat-ruled cities inclined to demonize the police in the absence of any evidence of widespread abuses of their authority.
Such are the phantasies that culminate in Critical Race Theory, a pseudo-academic nostrum that seeks to perpetuate the false narrative that racism has defined America from its colonial days and continues to do so. The passage of landmark Civil Rights Acts in 1964, 1965 and 1968 is disregarded completely, and no less the real progress in race relations that they brought and the increased opportunities for people of color.
If the gains have been less than they should have, we can blame the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson which undermined black families by making fathers absent from their families as a condition for receiving financial assistance, and the racial spoils handed out under the guise of “affirmative action” (aka reverse racism) to far too many unqualified college students and employees and deceitful contractors.
At this time, there are no reports of moving Derek Chauvin to a more secure prison, or of his assailant being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. This is not surprising as Chauvin’s family was kept in the dark for several days, if not out of malice certainly of embarrassment. But that is hardly defensible. A well-run prison system does not behave in such a disreputable fashion.
That Mexican mafia would-be killer is no stranger to that grisly business. In 1990, he committed a homicide at Folsom State Prison. Eight years later, he took various steps to authorize the murder of another man. Chauvin, a man who did not commit murder but rather a suspect died in his custody, was placed within reach of an actual murderer who told authorities that he planned the killing for a month before he struck.
According to CBS Minnesota, “Chauvin's attorney Greg Erickson, who complained over the weekend that his family was not notified of the stabbing until well after the news broke, told WCCO Friday that they were ‘extremely disappointed they allowed this to happen’ and that it was ‘not shocking’ that someone would target Chauvin. Erickson reiterated that the prison should have done more to prevent it from happening.”
The latest report echoed the first that Chauvin is in “stable condition” following the severe knife attack. We certainly hope he is recovering, although the same cannot be said for those intent on prosecuting and persecuting the police for doing their duty. They are in the throes of a delusion.