Derek Chauvin signed my yearbook

I am very much an introvert, worse, one with anxiety. So the smallest and quietest I could be was always best. I would hide and draw under the bleachers and in the library as long as I could get away with. Only about four people signed my Senior yearbook. One of them was another quiet kid, Derek Chauvin.

Reporters have contacted me over the years and I just block them. I didn't know him well enough to give any accurate context as to his character. I could have included this as something enticing in my biography, but this is not and was not the main focus of my life.

Thinking of what I remember of him is not how he is portrayed. I think thats true of anyone who. know someone in real life. If you see someone, no matter how heinous the act, you still have a sense of understanding of the environment and conditions created the crossroads from what their bodies were in contact with the real world, different time, place, people, etc and you have entirely different outcomes.

I saw a documentary on Jeffery Dahmer in which those who knew him cried while the world cheered at the news of his death. There was the Party Monster in NY that killed Angel 'his indebted dealer' did his prison time and got out but couldn't sell his art. He had one friend that helped him do a YouTube show and supported him and I was angry at his friend for doing that but when he died his friend said something deep and I don't remember the exact phrasing but it was something like "Even the worst person, especially the worst person that hse nobody needs at least one person to notice them and recognize them" I haven't and wont be that for Derek because I don't really know him and this national attention probably has many people looking out for him (for the wrong reasons) But I have helped others that seemed to have nobody else, for that reason.

So I include this anecdote, not as substance to my memoir but at a part of history and reflection.

If you would allow me to have one opinion in this matter. To me, it feels like a (face) was needed to represent a system that was not doing its job and this was a tragedy that didn't have to happen to George Floyd or Derek Chauvin. I believe that defunding the police is meant to address the demilitarization and allocation of trained crisis counselors and other outreach (better spent) not eliminated entirely.

I worked as an orderly at a Minnesota State institution in Cambridge MN. We were taught holds like the one Derek was doing, we did them often. A couple years after I left Cambridge, a resident was held and passed away. The institution was closed and there were new laws written about this type of engagement with vulnerable adults. 

https://www.dhs.state.mn