I wonder what prison is like for Derek Chauvin. He's in maximum security in Minnesota, and since Minnesota is where he was a cop, it's possible some of his fellow inmates were sent there because of his arrests. I wonder how the black prisoners, especially, regard him. Do the guards think of him as having been on their team because he also wore a uniform? Or do they enjoy being in a position of power over a cop?
Does he feel any regret for killing George Floyd? Does he feel he was justified and so unjustifiably found guilty? Is he bitter and angry that he was sent to prison? If so, angry at whom? The bystanders who took the videos which were part of the evidence against him? At Floyd for dying? At the whole world? Something turned him into a person capable of the ghastly, torturous killing of Floyd. Did being a cop and dealing with lawbreakers and troublemakers all day turn him bitter, or did he bring that bitterness to the job? According to Wikipedia, Chauvin's wife had filed for divorce the day before the murder of Floyd, and after only a year of marriage. I have to think that that must have contributed to whatever force of emotion Chauvin brought to the moment of Floyd's arrest.
I am intensely curious about this, and about people's behavior in general. I suppose that's why I'm a writer. I want to know people's stories, and since in most cases that's not possible, I make up stories for them, try to imagine what their lives are like, how they became who they are. I just can't help myself. Derek Chauvin is a person, after all. Nazis were people. Trump is a person. Jeffrey Dahmer was a person. Were they all born clean and whole and the circumstances of their lives turned them into the beasts they became, or were their souls twisted at birth and before? What I'm most curious about is: What do (did) they think of themselves?
From my point of view, Chauvin only regrets that he was convicted. I looked in his eyes on Darnela Frazier's video and saw hatred and arrogance. I'm guessing he thought he could and would get away with squeezing the life out of another human being--a Black man.
ReplyDeleteYes, there may be circumstances in his life, in his growing up years that made him into what he is. But he did what he did and must pay the consequences. Thank goodness. xoA <3