– Ida B. Wells

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The casual brutality of a white officer’s knee squeezing the life from a helpless Black man in handcuffs, caught on a gruesome video, underlies Amy Cooper’s smug tone as she announces her intention to lodge a false police complaint against a Black man who’d inconvenienced her.

Her certainty that a Black man’s guilt will be presumed, and white lies accepted, was shared by the Minneapolis police officer who taunted George Floyd while he crushed his neck beneath his knee for eight long minutes.

It has long been the agonizing truth that, without video evidence to the contrary, police who shoot unarmed Black people will always be given the benefit of the doubt.

Some white officers – and self-appointed vigilantes –  are so accustomed to the benefit of the doubt that even their knowledge of video evidence does not faze them.

The officers who participated in the deadly assault of George Floyd were fired within 24 hours, and shortly after the National Urban League and the Urban League of the Twin Cities demanded their names, have been identified.