Yeah, and Chris, yesterday after the guilty verdict, Minnesota’s attorney general said that he wouldn’t call the murder conviction of Derek Chauvin justice. He says justice implies true restoration. He says it’s accountability, which is a first step toward justice. Your thoughts on that?
I agree completely. And I think language is important. You know, justice is about the entire system. There’s nothing just about watching a murder on tape and having police officers testify against their brother in blue and still have to hold your breath and hope for the best. There’s nothing just about a system that allows officers like Derek Chauvin to get away with this time after time after time. So this particular verdict was about accountability. What we want to get to is a system of justice, which is fairness and reasonable.
Yeah, and that takes a lot of work. We’ll talk about that in a moment. Now, the work that you do day in/day out really taps into a lot of local voices and conversations about race and policing. Who are you hearing from about the verdict? What are they saying?
Over the last 24 hours, I guess hasn’t even really been 24 hours yet. But I’ve heard from a lot of different people. I’ve heard from the former chief public defender in Philadelphia who was jubilant but also adamant that we need and have more to do. I talked to my buddy Ikey Raw, founder of the Justice for David Jones Coalition, who said, you know, “I feel good, but I’m incomplete.” You know, I heard from a brother of mine who’s a criminologist who said, you know, “We shouldn’t get too excited that the system works, that a guilty verdict is what’s supposed to happen. It wasn’t a favor to Black people.” And I’ve heard from people who were just so thanking God that they just expected the worst but was surprised with the best.
Yeah, and Philadelphia has a long history of police brutality. There are cases in this city that have yet to be resolved. You mentioned David Jones. I believe that was the person who was on the ATV and was shot. What effect could the conviction of Derek Chauvin have on such cases?
Honestly, I think the only effect is hope. And hope is a big deal, especially to people who have been accustomed to living without it. There’s now a greater hope that when Ryan Pownall gets his day in court for the murder of David Jones, who, as you alluded to, was killed during a traffic stop in June of 2017, that he will be held accountable. There’s a greater hope that we will soon hear about the prosecution of Sean Matarazzo and Thomas Munz, the still-employed cops who killed Walter Wallace last fall. There’s now a greater hope that Eric Ruch Jr., who fatally shot 25-year-old Dennis Plowden on an East Germantown sidewalk and who had been charged with murder, will be held accountable when he has his day in court. So we have hope, and that’s more than we had yesterday.