A lot of people have been asking why Amy Klobuchar didn’t act sooner to hold Derek Chauvin to account. To my mind, there’s a more important question. How in the world did Chauvin become a cop in the first place?
It is simply beyond comprehension how any human being, let alone a cop, would not know that you don’t put your knee on someone’s head. It won’t surprise me in the least if we find out that Chauvin did something in the past that should have disqualified him from even being hired in the first place—and yet still got hired because the Minneapolis Police Department was desperate for getting warm bodies in uniform.
But even if that isn’t the case, it’s long past time to take a long hard look at how we vet potential cops. Most high-profile incidents in recent years of cops behaving badly involve people who absolutely, positively, have no business being on the force in the first place.
Take Tim Loehmann, Tamir Rice’s killer. He was hired in Cleveland despite disclosing that he worked “under-the-table jobs” in the six months after being forced to resign from the police department in nearby Independence. What police department, let alone a department in a major city, would think anyone who worked under the table was suitable to be a police officer?
And Antoinette Frank, the New Orleans cop who killed one of her fellow officers and two people working at a Vietnamese restaurant. According to THE book about her, “Killer With A Badge” by Chuck Hustmyre, Frank was caught red-handed lying about her employment history and failed two standard psychiatric evaluations.
And Cassie Barker, the Mississippi cop who is currently serving 20 years in prison for allowing her daughter to roast alive in a hot car while having a four-hour sex session with her supervisor. It turns out that Barker left her daughter in a hot car once before, in May 2015—not long after she was hired. It still mystifies me how she was not fired on the spot and arrested right then.
I asked this last year, and I ask it again—are police departments so desperate for warm bodies that they hire people who are not fit to be on the force? You can’t blame affirmative action for this. After all, Chauvin, Loehmann and Barker are all white.
The amount it would take to adequately vet officers probably isn’t even a fraction of the amount that cities and counties would have to pay out in wrongful-death suits when an officer’s negligence or criminal conduct leads to someone dying. Besides, you can’t put a price tag on public confidence in the police. And you can’t put a price tag on keeping the good cops safe.