New tragedy exposes accomplice of the evil: China Daily editorial

The message US President Joe Biden expressed in his latest remarks on the death of Tyre Nichols on Friday after a conversation with the mother of the 29-year-old African American, who died on Jan 10, three days after five Memphis Police Department officers beat him during a traffic stop, is unequivocally clear: "I can only do so much".

He called on Congress to send the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to his desk. When Senate Republicans blocked that bill, he signed an executive order that mandated stricter use of force standards and accountability provisions for federal law enforcement, as well as measures to strengthen accountability at the state and local levels.

But the way Nichols was brutally beaten by police officers, as the released video shows, naturally begs the question of whether it is an issue that can be addressed by such institutional patchwork measures, even if they are at the federal level.

The brutal and fatal beating of Nichols, and other incidents, clearly show that even if police officers are found guilty of using excessive force receive strict punishment according to the law — Floyd's murderer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in prison — that's not enough to act as a deterrent to other police officers.

On June 27 last year, Akron, Ohio, police officers killed 25-year-old Jayland Walker following a traffic stop and car chase. The police officers fired more than 90 times at the African American when he was not carrying a weapon, and the autopsy results showed he was hit by 46 bullets.

Biden was correct in pointing out such tragedies have a lot to say and do with the image of the US, on "whether or not we are the country we say we are". But he was also telling the people that he would be no different from other presidents in evading the root causes of the problem, because addressing them would necessarily move the cheese of vested interests as it would incur fundamental changes in national wealth distribution pattern so as to grant African Americans fair development opportunities. Therefore, he will do what most of his predecessors have done, which is to try and prevent the pot from boiling over by giving it a gentle stir.

By doing so, the US president as well as the whole political system of the country have become an accomplice of the evil, which has, to Biden's disappointment, become a defining feature of the country.