What do George Floyd protesters in Texas, elsewhere want? NAACP agenda is good start

The national outrage over the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer while three fellow officers stood by and did nothing is certainly understandable. Count me among millions who have shared in the sense of the needless loss of his innocent life.

I also find myself aligned with former employer, President George W. Bush, who said he and wife Laura are “anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country.”

Some may have missed that he also reminded us that “lasting justice will only come by peaceful means” and that “looting is not liberation, and destruction is not progress.”

I suppose his words rang so true to me as a confirmation of a question I have been hoping could be answered amid the lawlessness that has swept across our cities, including my own of Arlington and neighbors Fort Worth and Dallas.

That question — and I’m sure I’m not the only person asking it — is what the protesters and demonstrators want to see happen in response to the criminal acts of those four Minneapolis cops.

Not just that they are prosecuted for their lethal behavior, but what kind of reforms are being sought to ensure such a thing never happens again?

What needs to be done to achieve the safety and protection we expect from those in uniform without subjecting any person to abuse and to especially ensure that non-white people face no form of discrimination because of the color of their skin?

A black female college student with whom my wife and I share a multi-year acquaintance offered an answer in a social media post.

“My race is being slaughtered by the masses,” she declared after objecting to those whom she thought responded inadequately to the horror of the Floyd death.

She also said that police officers were “not legally required to protect citizens.”

Her broadly generalized and mistaken expressions made my question even more urgent.

Another friend of ours who is married to a career police officer later shared precisely how the NAACP answered my question with the authority of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

Here’s a summary of the NAACP demands: a ban on the use of knee and choke holds; six levels of the use of force continuum for any police department, with clear rules on escalation; each state’s open records laws ensuring that officer misconduct information and disciplinary histories are not shielded from the public; and the implementation of citizen review boards to hold police departments accountable and build public confidence.

The president of the Buffalo, N.Y., branch of the NAACP, confirmed these initiatives in the midst of the tragedy and subsequent violence.

Now, we have a starting point. In fact, we are beyond just the beginning of achieving these outcomes; many police departments have apparently already adopted some, if not all, of these proposals.

Maybe a step back from the kind of mayhem that has resulted in further loss of life, such as the retired St. Louis police captain fatally shot by looters, is in order.

We have witnessed the reality of something else Martin Luther King Jr. once declared: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

The choice is ours — brothers or fools. I’m betting on the American family in all its diversity.