George Floyd’s murder requires action. How can Sacramento turn protest into progress?

Like COVID-19, deadly police violence often robs people of their breath. In the United States, epidemic police violence is a leading cause of death for African American men. This deadly plague has given rise to a terrible motto: “I can’t breathe.”

The phrase has become a rallying cry for people exhausted by the continual killings of black men by law enforcement. In 2014, Eric Garner repeated the phrase 11 times as a police officer choked him in New York. In 2020, George Floyd repeated the phrase 15 times as a Minneapolis police office knelt on his neck for over eight minutes.

“I can’t breathe.”

It has both literal and figurative meanings. You can’t breathe when someone is choking you or crushing you with their full body weight. You also can’t breathe when you must live in constant fear that today might be the day a police officer kills you – or your son, daughter, your brother, your sister, your father or your mother – for no good reason. Such oppression can suffocate the hopes, dreams and joy out of people.

The viral video of Floyd’s murder has outraged the world. The horrific images were shocking, but not surprising. The sight of Floyd gasping for air opened up painful wounds in Sacramento. The 2018 killing of Stephon Clark, an unarmed man shot to death by Sacramento police officers in his grandparents’ backyard, drew national attention to our city.

Ten months earlier, in 2017, Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies shot a mentally disturbed black man named Mikel McIntyre to death on the side of Highway 50. This week, as protests against Floyd’s killing sprang up around the nation, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones finally released videos of McIntyre’s killing.

Deputies fired 28 bullets at McIntyre, hitting him seven times. Six bullets hit his back. McIntyre had attacked officers earlier, but he was unarmed and running away when they killed him.

An investigation by the sheriff’s inspector general found the deputies’ actions “excessive” and “unnecessary.” Sheriff Jones responded by locking inspector general, Rick Braziel, out of county offices and pushing him out of his post. Jones then defended his deputies, calling their actions “appropriate, justified and within policy.” Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert also approved, deeming McIntyre’s death “justified.” The county paid $1.75 million to settle a lawsuit filed by McIntyre’s family without admitting any wrongdoing.

But Jones fought for years to hide videos of the killing from public view. This seemed like a clear indication that he feared what they might reveal. The Sacramento Bee successfully sued Jones to force him to turn over the evidence.

This week, Sheriff Jones finally released the McIntyre videos. They show deputies executing an unarmed, fleeing black man who might still be alive today if they had used non-lethal means to arrest him. A man who might still be alive if he were white instead of black.

Race plays a key role in determining who survives a police encounter in America.

“Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police,” according to a 2019 study led by Rutgers University sociologist Frank Edwards. The study found that black men and boys are 2.5 more likely than white men and boys to die during an encounter with law enforcement.

National protests have risen up to express anger and sorrow at a system that consistently produces this criminal and racist result. Some of the protests have been violent. In Sacramento, police said nine officers were injured by flying objects during Friday night’s protests. On Saturday, police hit protesters with batons as they tried to march onto Highway 50 in West Sacramento. A handful of protesters also smashed windows and looted stores.

Participation in the protests is especially dangerous during a global coronavirus pandemic where large gatherings provide the best opportunity for the deadly diseases to spread. The violence is wrong, as is the lack of social distancing. And some of these actions are also anguished responses to an unrelenting epidemic of police violence against black and brown bodies.

“Black blood stains the sidewalks of America,” said Sen. Kamala Harris, herself a former prosecutor. “Folks are in pain and have been for a long time.”

None of us can breathe easy until all of us can breathe free. We need further action to halt state violence – including the violence of mass incarceration – against people of color. The question is: How?

Anger often seeks to be destructive. But the Sacramento community showed the power of constructive action when, after the death of Clark, a movement sprang up to change state laws that govern when police can use deadly force. We marched, we lobbied and we advocated to defeat opposition from law enforcement. And Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 392 into law last year.

The unjustified death of Mikel McIntyre – like the those of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott and too many others to list here – deserves an equally powerful and permanent response.

This story was originally published May 31, 2020 at 5:00 AM.