My grandmother always said, when a man closes his eyes, his debts are paid. And in the case of George Floyd, his death was the ultimate price paid for the advancement of African Americans for years to come. Now, as repayment – even though there could never really be one – the world owes him the honor of allowing him to rest in peace.
Unfortunately, certain people still living in their version of a racist AmeriKKKa are adamant on trying to dishonor his legacy.
First, the family has to rely on Gov. Greg Abbott to grant Floyd clemency on what could possibly be a bogus drug conviction initiated by a crooked cop.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended Monday that Floyd receive a posthumous full pardon for a 2004 drug charge he received in Houston.
The 7-0 decision comes five months after Houston public defender Allison Mathis sent in an application for clemency for Floyd, whose 2020 death during an arrest in Minneapolis set off national protests about police violence.
Mathis claims that the officer who arrested Floyd in 2004 fabricated evidence in the case.
Now here’s the bizarre backstory…
In 2004, Floyd was arrested by former Houston police officer Gerald Goines for selling $10 worth of crack cocaine.
Officer Goines has since been indicted for murder and other misconduct charges after he led a “no-knock” raid in 2019 that resulted in the death of Houston couple Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. Prosecutors have accused Goines of lying to obtain the warrant for the raid.
As a result of the criminal investigation into Goines, his arrest cases were reviewed, and more than 160 of his convictions have been dismissed.
If anyone has been following the Goines case, you will remember that he and his partner are labeled in the streets as the “crooked cop duo” called “Batman and Robin.” A social media search will pull up a laundry list of accusations and stories from people who claimed to have encountered them.
As for Floyd, Gov. Abbott must either approve or reject the state board’s decision.
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg released a statement saying her office “laments the loss of former Houstonian George Floyd and hope that his family finds comfort in Monday’s decision…. and the DA is urging Governor Abbott to follow the Board’s recommendation and grant clemency.”
Adding more insult to Floyd’s legacy.
This week, a 10-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Floyd stood prominently in New York City’s Union Square for just two days before a vandal splattered grayish-blue paint down the bust.
This is the second time the artwork has been defaced. On June 24, five days after it was displayed in Brooklyn, the sculpture was vandalized with black paint and tagged with an alleged logo for a White supremacist group.
Chris Carnabuci, the artist, said the latest malicious act, while upsetting and disappointing, “didn’t come as a complete surprise.”
As outlined in the Washington Post, security footage shows a man holding a skateboard and loitering behind the statue last Sunday. At about 10:15 a.m., the man is seen mixing paint behind the bust, getting on his skateboard and throwing it onto the structure as he skates away. Bystanders immediately jumped into action. By the time Confront Art co-founder Andrew Cohen arrived, five people were already restoring it.
Several other Floyd murals and tributes have been vandalized since the 46-year-old Black man was killed. Murals in Rochester, Minn.; Minneapolis; Houston; and Portland, Ore., as well as several other cities, have been defaced. At Duke University in March, someone printed out the toxicology report from Floyd’s autopsy and posted it next to a mural on campus.
