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As your Attorney General, I will have no more important job than ensuring justice is done in Missouri.
George Floyd was murdered by four police officers. His murder happened in Minnesota, but so many of us watching know that same scene could have played out just about anywhere in America.
There are some differences between what we're witnessing now and what we've seen over the last six years, like other police leaders calling for swift action.
But so much is the same. Officers with substantial complaints are left on the job to harm more Americans. We arrested reporters before we arrested the murderers. The destruction of protests reflects the destruction we have let continue in so many of our communities. A black man lay dead in the street.
I've been working on these issues my entire life: Teaching in St. Louis City, attending funerals of children and community members, running an emergency school program in Ferguson, participating heavily in the efforts to reform Missouri after, volunteering as a Special Public Defender and freeing an innocent black teenage girl from the Workhouse, protecting our civil rights in court. I know the importance justice has in making America work, and I have seen how the lack of justice breaks us.
There's a difference between agreeing on how our system needs to be fixed and being overwhelmed with the urgency of our failures. There's a difference between feeling sad about another tragic death and feeling the pang in your heart and the free fall in your stomach when you can't help but imagine your child or your sibling or your parent or your friend under an officer's knee, slowly slipping away with the world as a witness and a world that permitted that death.
That's the difference that keeps us from addressing our systemic failures with the seriousness and urgency they deserve.
George Floyd was murdered. He was murdered by police. He was murdered by a justice system that far too often does not hold people accountable. He was murdered by the lack of real leadership in our country. He was murdered because America did not respect his life enough to prevent this from happening.
Nothing we do can bring back the many lives unjustly taken, but nothing can bring us more shame than refusing to act.
I am committed to building that true justice system with you, to bringing accountability to our state, to doing everything I can to prevent this senseless violence that is destroying our country. Those plans will include:
- Holding murderers accountable;
- Upholding our civil rights;
- Instituting accountability in policing, prohibiting corrupt officers from continuing their employment; and ensuring that officers are supported in standing up and blowing the whistle;
- Emphasizing deescalation and anti-bias training;
- Increasing mental health awareness and supports;
- Ending the practices that make justice available only to those who can afford it;
- Investing in all of our communities and our state's people;
- Combating the racism that has delegitimized so many of our institutions;
- Empowering every Missourian to have a voice in solving this crisis.
I am working with folks from every corner of our state, from every part of our justice system, from every connection to this issue to bring real, positive, lasting change to Missouri.
We must commit to making America work for all of us.
That's my commitment to you.
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