Counterpoint: We are proving the system cannot be reformed

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

In a gut-wrenching one-two punch, the Oct. 24 Star Tribune put on full display the failure of Minnesota to be the change we told the world we would be ("Judge throws out no-prison plea deal" and "Ex-cop gets 15 days in workhouse").

Rehabilitation for a 15-year-old accomplice Husayn Braveheart is rejected by a judge, for a white family. A native child cannot continue his road to redemption. He has had some troubles adjusting to a new reality of taking care of himself, controlling his anger, and behaving rationally at all times, all at the ripe age of 19. It doesn't sound like his life prepared him in any way to be "perfect" post-anger management and therapy, and still in custody. It does not appear the judge can comprehend what internal fortitude it takes for anyone to change, let alone a hormonal young man from an impoverished background.

Steven Markey's family says his life hasn't been given the full weight it deserves based on the plea deal offered to Braveheart. Meanwhile, Markey's killer is serving time in prison.

Jaleel Stalling's horrendous treatment by the Minneapolis Police Department is not redeemed. Instead, an armed white man, surrounded by other armed law enforcement offices, who slammed an unarmed Black man's head into a concrete curb and continued to beat him and lied about it, receives a plea deal of 15 days in the workhouse, and a couple years probation. Justin Stetson is a grown man who not only knew better, but had a sworn duty to uphold the law. Apparently he can pay for that crime at home.

So ... if you commit crimes when you're older and white, you don't need prison to hammer home the moral lessons Stetson somehow missed in the extensive education and life experience he has had compared to Braveheart.

It is hard to live out our ideals. I live in Longfellow. I see the burned out Third Precinct daily. It reminds me that while some are hard at work bringing about the change they wish to see in the world, the rest of Minnesota would prefer we remain stuck, prefer that my neighborhood would remain a hollow shell of itself, to be punished for the grief and rage that poured out of a community begging for someone, anyone in the system, to stop killing them.

It seems as if the status quo is back — slaps on the wrist for law enforcement, the whole book for juveniles. Context and nuance, level of brain development be damned. The uneven playing field has not been leveled, nor even considered. The system that promised reform is reneging in real time.

Absolute shout out to Mary Moriarty and her office for trying to put into place the reforms the community asked for — the ability to offer treatment to children without full brain development and give them a fighting chance at rehabilitation and change. We see you. We appreciate what you're trying to do.

But we are showing the world the system just cannot be reformed.