Editor:

There seems to be no one, regardless of political stripe or racial creed, who is OK with the actions of police officer Derek Chauvin as they relate to the death of George Floyd on May 25. We all see it as a human behavior that was despicably cruel and unjust under the moral standards that we expect from a police officer. We see it as a behavioral dilemma that should never be accepted.

And we wonder what could have been going on in Mr. Chauvin's mind as the event transitioned from arrest and submission to tragic death. What could have justified such behavior? Was it racial hatred, mental imbalance or simply some very poor judgment regarding human frailty?

As always, there will be questions about why it happened and what should be done to prevent a recurrence. Further investigation and police reform currently lead the list of efforts needed to prevent such tragedies but bad apples are a part of human nature as were the ethos and mindset of Derek Chauvin and others like him.

Of the 800,000 police officers in the United States, the overwhelming majority are considerate, well trained and professional. There's another one tenth of one percent that are sometimes inconsiderate and unprofessional but unfortunately that may never change because human nature is not a constant. Human nature is different for each individual and it changes constantly. There are and always will be a few bad apples among us even as they seem to be like everyone else.

I sincerely hope that laws are passed by Congress and that changes are made within police training facilities to weed out the bad apples and further enhance the services provided by police departments across America. With police reform and continued oversight, policing services, which are vital to the security of all Americans, should improve, but I doubt that we will ever see the perfection we expect simply because of the dilemma we call human nature.

Leroy Donald, Stephens City

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Letter to the Editor: The human nature dilemma - Northern Virginia Daily