Maeve Higgins: Two years since George Floyd’s murder, and police keep killing people

Protesters clash with police in Chicago on May 30, 2020, during a protest against the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died while being arrested and pinned to the ground by the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. 

LAST week in this paper, I wrote about something that happened on a New York street. One man was chasing another man, the latter was screaming and seemed very frightened, and the former had what looked like a gun in his pocket. But maybe it wasn’t a gun; I’m not sure. They ran past me into a store, and I moved on quickly myself. I called my friend and warned her not to leave her house, and then I got on the train. I didn’t call the police, and that’s the part that has left some readers confused. I was confused, too, and still am, about what the correct action is in such a situation.

Lucky me, right? I wasn’t the one being chased, and I get to reflect calmly on it now. I didn’t call the police because they are armed and can sometimes escalate the violence in a situation like that. By involving them, there was a chance I was endangering others. I had not seen any actual violence or any actual weapon.