No.Nonsense.

Six years ago this week we watched a black man being restrained on the ground with a white police officer’s knee on his neck. We heard him plea that he couldn’t breathe. We watched him die.

His name was George Floyd and he became the symbol of a movement. Black Lives Matter swept across the county, bringing protests against the “racist” police who were inordinately targeting young black men. Even I bought into the story, defending Floyd and calling out the injustice of Officer Derek Chauvin’s actions.

What we learned in the aftermath is that Floyd had indeed been acting erratic at the time of his detention. He did have an underlying heart condition that was exacerbated by the combination of marijuana, methamphetamine, and fentanyl in his system. With that said, Chauvin did not take appropriate action to prevent his death and, in my opinion, did go beyond the required use of force. He was rightly held accountable for his actions when he was convicted of second degree murder.

The death of George Floyd and the rise of the mantra Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry that led to protests across the country. Some were calm. Many were not. The narrative from the media held up the peaceful protests even as police cars burned in the background. In Minneapolis where Floyd was killed, the damage from the subsequent unrest was $500 million with 60% of the businesses that were looted and vandalized not having insurance to cover their losses. One police precinct had to be evacuated after it was burned to the ground.

Protesters took control of the downtown area of Seattle and established CHOP, a zone of lawlessness.

Looting and violence and vandalism occurred in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, among others. Even in my small city hometown, we had defacing of businesses, rocks thrown through windows, and extensive damage in our downtown.

Overall, the total cost of the BLM protests across the country was between, low estimate, $1 billion and, high estimate, $2 billion. 14,000 people were arrested. Nine hundred police officers were injured. Nineteen people died.

The most significant impact came in the defunding of police departments across the country due to the perception that there was widespread racism among law enforcement. The proponents took the action of one officer and created a narrative that painted all of them with the broad brush of prejudice.

And those that paid the price were the innocents in the lower socioeconomic parts of the cities that benefit from community policing to deter criminal activity and make their neighborhoods safer.

Community leaders took the easy route of solving the problems in policing with a hacksaw when a scalpel was the better instrument.

What we learned in subsequent years was that, yes, improvements were needed in training and protocols within law enforcement. There has been an increase in the use of body cams. There has been increased training in de-escalation techniques and restraint methods. There were updates in standard operating procedures. There were positive changes that occurred when the powers that be stopped trying to blow up the institution and focused on fixing it. Even now, though, departments continue to struggle with recruiting due to the denigration of the profession.

We further learned that overall statistics showed that while individuals within law enforcement might show racist inclinations, the narrative of widespread racism across the country was not borne out by the numbers.

There is a square in Minneapolis named for George Floyd in which Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and former VP candidate, danced in celebration on Memorial Day while ignoring the tens of thousands of soldiers who died in battle to protect the right of those BLM protesters to march back in 2020.

The events of that day were the catalyst for necessary change but to elevate a flawed figure and a misguided movement to an iconic stature is a destructive path to walk. Riots only serve to cheapen the message that not only do Black Lives Matter, every life matters. Let that be the lesson we have learned in these subsequent years.