The Murder of George Floyd and the Response To It

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Didn't see this coming, but it is welcome news.

Four current, former Louisville police officers federally charged in Breonna Taylor's death

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is important to remember.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

New York City has settled with more than 1,300 people who filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that police violated their rights during civil rights protests in May-June 2020 at eighteen locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The city will pay each of them nearly $10,000, for a total cost of $13.7 million.

Here is one of the examples cited in the lawsuit:

On the evening of June 2, 2020, Sabrina Zurkuhlen joined a protest march on the West Side Highway that was spurred by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis eight days earlier.

When marchers were confronted by a line of police officers that stretched across the highway near Vesey Street, Ms. Zurkuhlen, 33, began walking backward while recording with her phone, according to a class-action lawsuit in which she was a plaintiff. An officer pointed at her, the lawsuit said, lunged at her, knocked the phone from her hands and began striking her with a baton as he tackled her.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said other officers beat and kicked Ms. Zurkuhlen and that she was handcuffed and held in custody for about eight and a half hours before being issued a summons for a curfew violation. That summons was later dismissed, the suit said, adding that she never recovered her phone.

Earlier this year, the city settled another lawsuit filed by protesters, agreeing to pay $21,500 each to 320 protesters who were subject to abusive police tactics in the Bronx on June 4, 2020, for a total of $6.9 million.

[RoseMorninStar]

Not George Floyd but another murder some felt would never see resolution/justice: Tupac Shakur Murder: Police took items from home of witness to shooting, warrant shows

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking of the NYC police, I missed this story a couple weeks ago:

New York Mayor Eric Adams "claimed he carried around a photo of an officer friend who died in the line of duty in 1987. It turns out the picture was printed off Google by aides in the wake of the mayor's claim and stained with coffee to make it look older."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Speaking of the NYC police, I missed this story a couple weeks ago:

New York Mayor Eric Adams "claimed he carried around a photo of an officer friend who died in the line of duty in 1987. It turns out the picture was printed off Google by aides in the wake of the mayor's claim and stained with coffee to make it look older."

I saw that story, but I'm not sure what has to do with the subject of this thread, other than that Adams is black.

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking of the NYC police, I missed this story a couple weeks ago:

New York Mayor Eric Adams "claimed he carried around a photo of an officer friend who died in the line of duty in 1987. It turns out the picture was printed off Google by aides in the wake of the mayor's claim and stained with coffee to make it look older."

I saw that story, but I'm not sure what has to do with the subject of this thread, other than that Adams is black.

Nothing to do with Adams's race. I had just posted yesterday about New York City having settled two lawsuits this year for more than $20 million with 1,600 people whose rights were violated by New York City police during 2020 protests that followed upon the murder of George Floyd. He's not only the mayor who presumably had to approve those payouts (to be clear: he was not the mayor at the time of the protests), but he's also a former New York police officer himself, and he regularly burnishes his law-and-order credentials. I have suggested repeatedly since he was running for the mayoralty in 2022 that he's a bit of a fraud and fabulist. I wished to contrast New York essentially admitting to police brutality with New York's mayor going so far to praise police that he apparently made up a story about a dead former colleague on the force. The New York Times wrote in 2021 that Adams's relationship with the police department is "complicated"; I wonder how much of that article is even true. Did he really have a higher GPA in the police academy than the man who beat him out of the class valedictorian position, as he claims? Although the most striking part of that article may be this:

As he skewered the Police Department, Mr. Adams was also investigated four times by it.

Investigators examined his relationships with the boxer Mike Tyson, who was convicted of rape in 1992, and Omowale Clay, a Black activist who had been convicted of federal firearms violations. Police officers are forbidden from knowingly associating with people involved in crime.

The department also investigated a Black police officer’s report that Mr. Adams and others in 100 Blacks had harassed him. Investigators could not prove Mr. Adams violated department rules.

Mr. Adams and the group sued the department, accusing it of violating their civil rights by using wiretaps during the Clay and the harassment investigations. The suit was dismissed by a judge who called the wiretapping accusations “baseless.” (The department had obtained telephone records.)

“You do an analysis of my Internal Affairs Bureau investigations, you’ll see they all come out with the same thing,” Mr. Adams said. “Eric did nothing wrong.”

Huh. Someone in government wrongly accusing law enforcement of tapping his phones. It's not a perfect parallel, but who does that remind you of?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[RoseMorninStar]

What a horrible, horrible thing. I'm glad the officers have been charged but I wish such things would never happen in the first place.

[N.E. Brigand]

Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison today.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/derek- ... 7f4de58e06

As we all know, Derek Chauvin, a police officer, was convicted of murdering George Floyd on the street (with the assistance of three other officers).

In light of that fact: would bystanders had been acting legally if they had intervened to pull Chauvin and his criminal accomplices away from Floyd? (Does it depend on whether or not the jurisdiction has a Good Samaritan law?) If the officers had attempted to stop such intervening bystanders, would the officers be breaking the law?

And in general, if you see a police officer murdering someone, do you have a moral obligation to intervene?

[RoseMorninStar]

And in general, if you see a police officer murdering someone, do you have a moral obligation to intervene?

Tough call. Self preservation comes to mind. If said police officer is willing to kill one person, might they be willing to kill another so that their actions go unreported?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison today.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/derek- ... 7f4de58e06

As we all know, Derek Chauvin, a police officer, was convicted of murdering George Floyd on the street (with the assistance of three other officers).

In light of that fact: would bystanders had been acting legally if they had intervened to pull Chauvin and his criminal accomplices away from Floyd? (Does it depend on whether or not the jurisdiction has a Good Samaritan law?) If the officers had attempted to stop such intervening bystanders, would the officers be breaking the law?.

As I am sure you are aware, there were many bystanders who watched in horror and were held at bay by the some of the other officers. Should they have tried harder to stop Chauvin? I honestly don't see how they could have under the circumstances.

[N.E. Brigand]

Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison today.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/derek- ... 7f4de58e06

As we all know, Derek Chauvin, a police officer, was convicted of murdering George Floyd on the street (with the assistance of three other officers).

In light of that fact: would bystanders had been acting legally if they had intervened to pull Chauvin and his criminal accomplices away from Floyd? (Does it depend on whether or not the jurisdiction has a Good Samaritan law?) If the officers had attempted to stop such intervening bystanders, would the officers be breaking the law?.

As I am sure you are aware, there were many bystanders who watched in horror and were held at bay by the some of the other officers. Should they have tried harder to stop Chauvin? I honestly don't see how they could have under the circumstances.

Well, anyone who tried harder would have been beaten or shot. What I'm asking is if a bystander who did try harder would be legally in the right to do so and whether any police officer who tried to stop an intervening bystander would have been legally in the wrong to do so.

Let me more explicit. If I were there and legally carrying a gun, would I be in the right if, like Kyle Rittenhouse in Wisconsin later that year, I had shot Officer Derek Chauvin to stop him from killing George Floyd? (FYI, I've never touched much less fired a gun.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's a good question, that I don't really have a good answer to. Depending on the specific laws in the jurisdiction where it took place, I would think that a good argument could be made that you were legally justified. Whether it succeeded is another question. And as is so often the case when it comes to legal questions, a lot depends on who is interpreting the law (e.g., who the judge is) and who the trier of fact is (either the jury if it is a jury trial, or the judge if it is a bench trial).