Our View: Justice and the American experiment, by the numbers

Times Editorial Board
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9½ minutes.

Those numbers are part of the latest stark accounting of an American crisis, one that has left a huge proportion of our citizens wondering where they get justice. 

George Floyd's death, because it was recorded for all to see, brought that question out of communities of color and into the entirety of society. If citizens cannot get justice from agents of the law, where does justice live, exactly?


396 days. 

270 months.

15 years.

After 396 days, the answer — the tenuous possibility of a beginning of an answer, to be more accurate — is in two other numbers: 270 months, and 15 years. 

It took the court system 396 days to arrive at 15 — the number of years former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin will presumably spend in prison on his murder conviction. And that 15 years is two-thirds of the official 270 month sentence handed down Friday afternoon, a typical split of incarceration and probation under Minnesota law.

Flowers and messages in memorial to George Floyd are positioned near the Cup Foods store at the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue Thursday, June 4, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minn.

Those numbers represent the state's penalty for the 9½ minutes Derek Chauvin's knee was crushing life from George Floyd's body.

All for $20.

That's what started it all — all the debate and protests and burning; all the childish arguments over which lives matter. $20 launched all the footage of old men being pushed down in the street by other men sworn to protect and serve, as well as all of the footage of police officers facing huge groups of angry citizens. It set off marches worldwide and deepened divisions that were already cavernous. 

A suspected counterfeit $20 bill.

It really is the little things, apparently.


Some other numbers to ponder:

60: Chauvin's age when he finishes his presumptive prison sentence and returns to freedom, barring extended incarceration from pending federal cases against him.  

46: The number of years George Floyd spent alive. 

22: His daughter Gianna Floyd's age when Derek Chauvin is due to be released from state prison.

(If you're thinking "George Floyd was not a hero!" right now, stop. A life need not be perfect to be significant. If being flawed justifies homicide at the hands of a state agent, the American experiment is over and failed.)

3: The number of former Minneapolis police officers still awaiting trial for their roles in that repugnant 9½ minutes.

And there is also 158. That's how many years have passed since Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation— about five generations. Five is a shockingly small number, in that context.

And there is 57: The number of years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, about one-quarter of our nation's history.

Finally, there are 17 and 28. That is how many states this year have made it harder to vote, 17, by way of 28 new laws.

Some of these numbers are tragic, others maddening. Some — the significant and unprecedented prison sentence for a criminal police officer — offer a small glimmer of hard-fought hope.

But still, there's 17.

And 28.

The numbers that are the measure of our weakness and fear of one another.

They prove exactly how much more work we have to do to kindle that glimmer of hope into solid, reliable justice for all. 

17. 28. 

— This is the opinion of the St. Cloud Times Editorial Board, which consists of News Director Lisa Schwarz and Content Coach Anna Haecherl. Send letters to the editor to letters@stcloudtimes.com.

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