Police reform

Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd in a Minneapolis courthouse on Tuesday. Jurors deliberated for 10 hours before returning a guilty verdict on all counts: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Floyd's death on May 25 last year was witnessed by several bystanders outside of the Cup Foods deli in northern Minneapolis. A video showing the final minutes of Floyd's life, shot by teenager Darnella Frazier, went viral and prompted a wave of summer protests and riots in American cities and worldwide. In the clip, Officer Chauvin restrained Floyd with his knee, pinning his head to the tarmac alongside a car. Floyd had initially been apprehended for use of a counterfeit banknote in the deli.

Americans now know to expect riots. Minnesota has been dreading more carnage for weeks as the Derek Chauvin trial approaches its climax. For people intent on violence, the facts of any case are by the by. All that matters is the race of the victim. In the Minneapolis suburbs the rage broke out early, after Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old African American man, was shot by police officer Kimberly Potter. The video went inevitably viral — and everybody knew what was coming. The protests started instantly and haven’t stopped. A man carried a severed pig’s head on a stake. By the sixth day, Little Trees air fresheners hung from the police department's chain link fence — a nod to the alleged reason Wright was pulled over.

One of the best rules of thumb to emerge from systems theory is Stafford Beer’s famous statement: the purpose of a system is what it does. It doesn’t matter what the designer intended, or what the individual participants think they’re doing; the end result is all that matters. It’s a useful thing to bear in mind when we consider the objectives of the Black Lives Matter protesters, because right now the movement is beginning to look an awful lot like a machine for the abolition of police departments. It is frankly dizzying how rapidly the aims of the movement seem to have shifted from reform to destruction.