The Murder of George Floyd and the Response To It

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Frelga]

We also can't call ourselves a civilized society if we apply the higher standards to petty criminals than to police forces.

[Sunsilver]

Someone on FB put it pretty succinctly the other day. They said, "When I get pulled over by the police, I don't have to worry about surviving the encounter. That's white privilege."

[yovargas]

If you want to rigorously understand a problem, you need a full review of all data. For the few attempts that have been done to do this, the results of the data don't fit the narrative being pushed by the loudest people on either the left or the right. (As is usually the case.)

Anybody can selectively pick videos that support their preconceived notions. Cherry picked videos shouldn't be part of an honest discussion about broad social patterns.

By and large, nobody cares about any of this.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If by "data" you are talking about statistics about the racial disparity in police shootings, that kind of data only tells part of the story. However, the part that it tells is pretty stark.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/112 ... nicity-us/

[Frelga]

By and large, nobody cares about any of this.

Yes, that's point #3. Civilized societies care about extrajudicial killings.

[yovargas]

By and large, nobody cares about any of this.

Yes, that's point #3. Civilized societies care about extrajudicial killings.

If that was what this was truly about, we would discuss all police shootings of unarmed people, not exclusively those that happen to black people. When was the last time you got upset by a police officer killing a white person?

[elengil]

If that was what this was truly about, we would discuss all police shootings of unarmed people, not exclusively those that happen to black people. When was the last time you got upset by a police officer killing a white person?

We do.

Remember the white Australian woman killed in the alley while talking to police about what she heard the previous night? That was protested.

What about the elderly white man pushed down by police and left to bleed from the head on the street?

How about the white Navy vet who was beaten and maced by police?

The homeless guy shot in Arizona?

Here's another
https://www.nola.com/opinions/article_4 ... cacf2.html

The problem is it's way too easy to simply ignore all these in favor of the prevailing narrative that BLM and similar only care about Black victims. There are protests against police brutality that happen because the police brutality is the problem. It may be a bigger problem for Black people, but they aren't looking to just stop brutality against Black people, but against ALL people.


The only police shooting I've ever seen the "All Lives Matter" crowd protest was the woman shot by capital police while climbing through a barricaded door with the window broken in while hundreds of angry mob stormed the US capital. That, apparently, was the only example of unjust police use of force they've ever seen outside of the Feds telling them where they can't graze their cattle.

[Frelga]

By and large, nobody cares about any of this.

Yes, that's point #3. Civilized societies care about extrajudicial killings.

If that was what this was truly about, we would discuss all police shootings of unarmed people, not exclusively those that happen to black people. When was the last time you got upset by a police officer killing a white person?

Every time.

I can't imagine the thought process that led you to ask that question.

[yovargas]

I'm sorry, I phrased that poorly. I should have said when was the last time one got widespread media attention that brought widespread outrage. Because "you" (royal you, I didn't mean to imply you personally) can't care if you never hear about it.


As an aside, I would like to point out that I try to avoid posting here and almost always regret it when I do and it is almost entirely because of comments like that, V-man.

And with that, I'm out of here.

[River]

It gets lost in the shuffle, perhaps by design in some quarters, how universal a problem police brutality is. Like it got lost in the shuffle that in the days before the Voting Rights Act and the 24th Amendment, poor whites were also pretty hosed (in fact, MLK Jr was just starting to get to work on the plight of poor people in general when he got assassinated). It may be Black people leading the charge but they certainly aren't the only victims. They're just refusing to be quiet about it anymore. Society accepted a relative amount of brutality from LEO's in exchange for something. Not sure what. I think a lot of people aren't sure what. I think people got less sure of what they got in exchange for their silence with each passing year since BLM sprang into being after Michael Brown's bleeding body got left in the street for four hours following his death at the hands of the police. And one thing I did notice last summer was that cities where police departments have more collegial relations with the communities they work in didn't have the same violence that others did. Seattle and it's police force, for example, have a long history of distrust and the things that happened there this summer were pretty much inevitable.

Anyway, as far as where we are now...my BiL the cop pointed out last summer that LEO's are supposed to be executing the will of the elected officials. I kept that in mind when I elected officials this past fall.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's true, River, but the reason why no one over talks about situations happening to white people comparable to what happened to George Floyd, or Lt. Nazario, or Duante Wright, is not that people aren't paying attention, it is that almost never happen. And when incidents do happen involving while people, while tragic, they are not part of an extended pattern stemming from a systemic problem in our society. As Sunny pointed out above, when I get pulled over by the police, I don't have to worry about surviving the encounter. Every single one of my African-American friends, regardless of their socio-economic circumstances, do.

[Sunsilver]

This happened in Toronto, and I definitely think the police officer should have received a harsher sentence than he did. How can you shoot someone NINE times and get charged with 'attempted murder'?
The young man shot had allowed everyone to leave the street car, and was just standing in the doorway when he was shot. He had a knife in his hand but as seen on video, was not threatening the officers with it when Forcillo opened fire. If the officers had tried to de-escalate the situation, or waited until another officer with a taser had arrived on the scene, he would likely still be alive.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/former-toron ... -1.4776770

[Túrin Turambar]

There does seem to be an entirely random element which causes one event to blow up in the media while a similar event doesn't. For various reasons - perhaps the particular brutality of George Floyd's death, the fact that he was being arrested for a minor offence he may have been committing unknowingly, the video, the chilling "I can't breathe" - it made for a very high-impact story.

[Sunsilver]

Here's a very good article that gives the low-down on police shootings. It clearly shows the need for police to be better equipped to de-escalate encounters with people who have mental health issues, as well as knowing how to cope with non-violent offenders: https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/we-nee ... yths-about

And yes, Blacks are disproportionately targeted by police.

Edit: as of just a few minutes ago, both the officer responsible for shooting Daunte Wright, and her police chief have resigned. https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissahol ... 56826957d1

[River]

Police get trained in de-escalation tactics in police academies. However, the cops who took those lessons to heart aren't necessarily the ones that get hired by some police departments (oh yeah, Seattle, I'm looking at you). Also, cops are further trained by the departments that hire them, so if the department is generally weak in an area, that'll get passed along. And police departments are an executive arm of the local government and that's going to be reflected in their priorities. This is why I think that discussions of police reform need to be nuanced and need to be had at a local level. Not all departments have the same problems and even when the problems look similar they might not be rooted in the same place. Some towns use police to raise revenue through fines and citizens will feel those consequences. Some departments prefer to hire the less cerebral types and citizens will feel those consequences. And other departments, like the quiet suburban one my BiL works for, want officers who can de-escalate situations because the alternative is unappealing to the town leadership and they hire and promote accordingly.

[Frelga]

Meanwhile, NYPD spent 75K on a Mechanical Hound, either because no one in charge read Bradbury, or because they *did*.

[N.E. Brigand]

There was a lot of chatter online this morning about the judge warning prosecutors that if their rebuttal witness to the defense witness who claimed that George Floyd might have died from carbon monoxide poisoning mentioned tests showing Floyd didn't have high levels of CO in his blood, then the judge would declare a mistrial.

It seems like a flaw in the judicial system if one side can make a claim that the other side can't rebut with actual facts.

Mind you, I imagine that most of the time this sort of systemic flaw works in favor of prosecutors.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

They were able to rebut the claim with actual facts; they just needed to use the right actual facts. They were able to have their rebuttal witness testify to that Mr. Floyd's oxygen saturation was 98% when he died, thus proving categorically that the defense expert witness's claim that Mr. Floyd's carbon monoxide levels in his blood could have increased by 10% to 15% was categorically impossible. What the judge ruled that the prosecution could not use was test results of carbon dioxide in Mr. Floyd's blood that had not been previously revealed to the defense. It was absolutely the right call by the judge. I don't even have a niggling doubt about that.

[N.E. Brigand]

They were able to rebut the claim with actual facts; they just needed to use the right actual facts. They were able to have their rebuttal witness testify to that Mr. Floyd's oxygen saturation was 98% when he died, thus proving categorically that the defense expert witness's claim that Mr. Floyd's carbon monoxide levels in his blood could have increased by 10% to 15% was categorically impossible. What the judge ruled that the prosecution could not use was test results of carbon dioxide in Mr. Floyd's blood that had not been previously revealed to the defense. It was absolutely the right call by the judge. I don't even have a niggling doubt about that.

This reminds me of complaints about how the media often operates. One person says it's raining. Another person says it's sunny. The truth can be determined by actually looking out the window, but the media instead draws the blinds and presents you with the two contradictory statements and lets you choose which person you find more believable. In this case, it's the difference between what's legally true and what's actually true. The prosecution totally should have made these test results available sooner. If they had done so, I imagine the defense would never have let their witness present this argument in the first place. On the other hand, the defense witness's argument was so outlandish that maybe the prosecution never even thought of it.

Here's a hypothetical outcome that doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility. One or more of the jurors believes the carbon monoxide theory, and the jury deadlocks Afterward one of those jurors who voted to acquit Chauvin says that for her, the CO theory came down to the prosecution witness vs. the defense witness, and she believed the latter. Then she's told that there was a test proving the defense witness was wrong. She says that knowing that, she would have voted the other way. Oops!

I know, I know: any legal system will created by flawed people and will therefore be flawed. Ours is (rightly) intended to err on the side of the accused. (And even so, too often it gives prosecutors an unfair advantage.) Better that ten guilty men go free and all that. Not going to belabor the point. All I'm saying is that what the law determines is not necessarily what's true.