I wear dresses pretty much 85% – 90% of the time. Short dresses, long dresses, frilly dresses and plain ones too. I can be outside in my garden, at work or just visiting friends and I will most likely be donning some sort of frock- a term my late grandmother used for dresses. And do you want to know what is my favorite feature on a dress is? Something that will make me squeal in the middle of a store when I discover a dress has one or two? You got it- Pockets!! I absolutely love pockets in a dress. They can hold lip gloss, keys and oh my goodness our super important phones we keep strapped to us at all times. It’s a good thing we do. I feel super cool and casual when I can just stick my hands in my pockets and chill out. Pockets just add that hey I’m cooling it factor that “no worries” vibe. So imagine the disgust, rage and heartache I felt when I watched (in part) a cell phone video of a police officer who happens to be white, keep his knee on the neck of an unarmed black man for I believe almost 9 minutes, with his hand in his pocket. His hand was in his pocket and he was looking around like he was sitting in a park bird watching…yeah I know be careful while bird watching. I digress.

This police officer wasn’t shaken, he didn’t appear to be afraid. Heck he didn’t even seem like he was having a hard time at all. Just casually murdering  Mr. George Floyd in the street in broad daylight with his other three police buddies. They may as well have been on a lunch break eating burgers the way they were just chilling out. How can you kneel on someone’s neck so long, while listening to them plead for their life and call for their mama with your hand in your pocket? That murder was not moved at all and killed Mr. George Floyd in cold blood.

I stopped writing and I set my phone timer 9 minutes just to see how long it felt. How many opportunities in that time period the kneeling officer or any of the other officers present could have said okay get up Mr. Floyd and taken him to jail like you are supposed to when you are so called arresting someone. How many opportunities were there in that time period for any one of the officers to say hey get up man you’re going to kill him? Or man this isn’t right? He’s had enough? Or they could have just gotten up, walked away, something.  For almost 9 minutes none of the officers told the murderer to get off this man’s neck? I guess the hand in the pocket of that murderer said it all. It said this doesn’t bother me at all. It said I am accustomed to inflicting harm on unarmed black men and I feel nothing for you. It said I am calmly killing you on purpose. It said Derek Chauvin is a murderer. It said Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas K. Lane are all accessories to murder of an unarmed, hand cuffed, black man.

I hope these senseless murders end. It’s honestly too many to write about. The list is so extensive of black people who have been murdered by white police officers and white citizens. And it seems they are never punished for it. They always get off. I can’t understand why it’s okay. I can’t understand how they think you can kill someone because of the skin God gave them. I don’t think I will ever understand that.