A crumbling empire : The world's sole superpower, Derek Chauvin and the tragedy of a broken system

Insensitivity personified : Police Officer Derek Chauvin, 44, kneeling on Floyd's neck during his arrest

George Floyd was filmed Monday begging the Minneapolis cop to stop and telling him he could not breathe before he lost consciousness and later died


First and foremost, it would not be right to say that all white Americans are racist. This becomes clear as one peruses images of protesters made up of both black and white people as they all decry the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

However, it would also not be wrong to describe America as a nation that has refused to confront her own problems head-on and tell herself the truth. It is a historical fact that empires rise and fall. Ultimately, all empires end up the same way. Sadly, history often repeats itself principally because humans don't learn from history.

For example, some of the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire were : government corruption, internal division ascentuated by civil strife, jettisoning of conservative values and, extreme cruelty. Concerning cruelty, you may recall that members of the VISIGOTH tribe eventually crossed into the safety of Roman territory in the late fourth century. However, these people were very badly treated. In brutalising the Goths, the Romans were creating a dangerous enemy within their own borders. The oppression became so unbearable that the Goths rose up in revolt. This contributed, in no small way, to the fall of the empire.

From all indications, it would appear that America, as a nation, has collapsed internally. This is despite all the trappings of superpowerdom on display. Let us consider, for a moment, policing in America. The career history of Derek Chauvin, the policeman who killed George Floyd, provides an insight into the state of policing in the most powerful nation on earth.

It had emerged Wednesday that Chauvin was involved in a series of other use-of-force incidents, including being investigated for his role in three separate police shootings - one of which was fatal.


In 2011, 23-year-old Leroy Martinez was shot and injured during a chase given by officers including Chauvin.


This followed an investigation in 2008 over Chauvin's involvement in the shooting of Ira Latrell Toles during a domestic assault call. Toles was wounded after police said he went for an officer's gun and Chauvin shot him.

Two years earlier, 2006, Chauvin was one of six cops investigated when Wayne Reyes, 42 was killed by officers. According to the account of the police, Reyes had allegedly pulled a shotgun on the officers.

In a sane society operating a sane system, Derek Chauvin ought to have been fired in 2006 due to his involvement in the fatal shooting of Wayne Reyes. Tragically, by some strange rites of political sorcery, Chauvin's bosses spared him. He was thus given an additional fourteen years to continue using his stone-age methods of policing. America was the worse for it. Painfully, America's atavistic police departments have refused to wake up to the realisation that we are in the 21st century.


Without a doubt, during his 19 years of sadistic exploits in the Police Force, Chauvin must have been asked to mentor others. Thus he would have reproduced himself in several other officers.

Sadly, there must be thousands of Derek Chauvins, products of a broken system, running amok in hundreds of American cities in the name of carrying out police duties.

It should not surprise anyone that similar acts of unexplained and unexplainable killings by police continue to take place all over United States. One then begins to wonder what moral right a self-declared Christian America has to lecture third world countries on how to treat citizens.