What the media didn't tell you about the Chauvin case

George Floyd should not have died. The jury was fully justified in determining, as prosecutors forcefully argued, that in that encounter with police on May 25, he would not have died if it were not for the restraint tactics used by Chauvin, and that those tactics constituted excessive force. Nevertheless, the case does not stand as a totem of systemic racism. To the contrary, the evidence proves that Chauvin was individually culpable. Far from being emblematic of an inherently racist law-enforcement agency, Chauvin’s actions grossly violated the standards of a police department that is committed to even-handed enforcement of the law and, from the top down, to diversity and amicable relations with the community. The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are using the Chauvin murder conviction as the premise for claiming that policing in America must be transformed — by legislation and Justice Department monitoring — because it smacks of white racism against black people. This transformation, we are told, must begin with such steps as an official government assumption that racism explains why blacks are arrested at a disproportionately high rate (compared with their share of the overall population), and a categorical ban on choke holds.