I’m feel like I’m less ideologically captured than most people when dealing with Floyd. First off, yes he was a scum bag who victimized people on multiple occasions, the police were fully justified in arresting him, and there’s a very high chance he had already overdosed on fentanyl and was going to die pretty shortly after the arrest, regardless of the cop’s behavior.
However, Chauvin blatantly used excessive force in the arrest. If he had knelt on Floyd for 1-2 minutes while cuffing him, and then Floyd died, there wouldn’t be much of an argument. However, he knelt on him for nearly 10 minutes while mocking the crowd around him; even several minutes after Floyd stopped moving and even several minutes after he stopped breathing. It’s impossible to prove that Floyd would’ve died even if he hadn’t been knelt on, and even if he would’ve, torturing him on the way out is not something we should find at all acceptable in police. I truly believe in giving police the benefit of the doubt but I just can’t understand why so many people don’t see that Chauvin was waaaaay past that line
TLDR: Floyd was a scumbag and likely would’ve died anyways, but Chauvin clearly wanted to hurt him and his actions with the crowd indicates that he saw the citizenry as enemy combatants, not to even mention the fact that Chauvin had a record in that police department for more abuse accusations than anyone else
People not being able to separate the message/moral of the story from the man involved is a big reason why we are where we are today. Lack of critical comprehension and vilifying/worshipping people because of who they are instead of what the message being taught by the situations they’re involved in.
He left out that Floyd was already in the cop car, begged to be let out for air, kept saying he couldn't breathe, was let out of the car, tried to escape, and did resist being held. I believe he was already cuffed before chauvin put him on the ground, but chauvin couldn't get him back in the car. He cried wolf by saying he can't breathe and then trying to escape.
It's easy to say that he shouldn't have been kneeling on his neck that long, and you're right. I do think it still makes sense to keep in mind that the cop is dealing with a known dangerous criminal that is high as a kite and trying to fight him. If you watch the video, you can see that chauvin is trying to be helpful in the beginning, but stops when Floyd tries to escape and the crowd begins to get involved. He did seem to let him out of the car because he thought he was claustrophobic or having a panic attack.
On a related note, I saw a video where a guy played dead when tazed, and then kicked the officers knee backwards when he let his guard down. There's one where a guy pretends a tazer worked on him and then surprised the cop with a pipe. One guy called the cops for help, hid in the bushes at his house and mowed them down with an automatic rifle. You can actually find a lot of similar videos of you actually wanted to. Not trying to justify police brutality here. Just pointing out that things are very gray.
it's tough being a cop, you never know when someone might fight back.
i don't see anyone lionizing George Floyd, just using him as an example of how police can go too far. when you've got the guy pinned, how unsafe do you feel? you make a good point about there being plenty of evidence of people abusing callouts and then using them as an excuse to run or fight back - there are plenty of videos showing how quickly a knife wielder can close a distance of 20 feet and how a single bullet or two may not stop their adrenaline fueled charge.
but when the guy is cuffed, there's no Pipe, no Rifle, no Knife. when he's on the ground there's no kicking. you can control the guy without kneeling on his neck. even pulling back to kneel on his chest is preferable. do a little bjj or even a little judo, and you'll see that getting a guy who's lifting his chest off the ground back to the ground takes the simplest of moves. Chauvin was entirely in control and all the "other clips" in the world have nothing to do with the actions taken to murder Floyd.
If you'd actually done any ground fighting you'd know putting your weight on someone's upper back, like Chauvin did, is literally the most effective way to keep him in place. The lower you go, the more movement someone has with their torso, which means the easier for them to get up. The goal is that someone who's observedly high on unknown substances and acting erratic is not getting up.
PS. If he was actually kneeling on Floyd's neck, he wouldn't have been moving his head. It's extremely painful and does not allow you to pick up your head like Floyd was doing.
Chauvin murdered noone. The jury even publicly stated on TV that he didn't. They convicted him on the premise that they thought he could have done more to help Floyd.
Legit, the fact people will use Floyd's past as a catch all deflection for literally everything else is crazy. It's like they can't comprehend the basic concept that multiple things can be bad and wrong at the same time.
It’s always rare to see someone both acknowledge he wasn’t a model citizen but at the same also realize that legally only the present moment is the one in verdict in regards to the situation
Like I feel like the cop could have deserved something related to manslaughter but I do feel like it's iffy. We also can't really judge how he acted in the situation. Around that time there were people grabbing police officers guns for clout on vine or whatever the short video site was at that time. Like he may have used excessive force but getting yelled at by people passing by and all the stuff happening around can completely change the way things went down. Like you have to be in flight or fight mode when you have a crowd of people gathering around you, definitely would have warped a person's perception of time.
That’s why it was unintentional second and third degree murder that he got convicted of. That’s basically the charge you get in that state that says “you didn’t deliberately set-out to kill a guy but you did deliberately injure him until he died”
I thought overdosing on fentanyl gets you instantly... what do you mean "he would die later anyway"
aw and dont get me wrong im not from the usa I dont rly care for one side or the other.
Except there was no excessive force. Chauvin couldn't remove all of his weight from Floyd's back without causing a potentially dangerous situation as he was visibly on drugs of some sort and acting erratically. Second, despite what people keep saying, his knee was not on Floyd's neck. His shin was across Floyd's upper back, which is exactly where you need to put your weight to keep someone on the ground. If he would have actually been kneeling on Floyd's neck Floyd would not have been moving his head like he was.
In a situation like that, a rowdy crowd can literally become combatants in the blink of an eye, especially since emotions were clearly running high. It may not seem like it if you've never actually been in that situation, but it can change far faster than you think.
There's nothing that indicated Chauvin had any intent to hurt Floyd. He let Floyd lay on the ground when he asked instead of forcing him into the car. He called an ambulance almost immediately after doing so. He did nothing to continue to inflict pain on Floyd. Floyd's was clearly hyperventilating, saying he couldn't breathe before they even tried to put him in the squad car. He was clearly on drugs, which the officers discussed in the bodycam. Chauvin did nothing wrong, nor did he actually do anything to actively cause Floyd to die.
and there’s a very high chance he had already overdosed on fentanyl and was going to die pretty shortly after the arrest, regardless of the cop’s behavior.
Absolute bullshit. An opiate overdose looks like someone struggling to maintain consciousness with shallow breathing... not yelling for their mother and that they can't breathe.
The coroner did find a potentially lethal amount of fentanyl in his system. However, despite the conspiracy theories, the coroner did not agree that it was at all related to Floyd’s death. If Chauvin had not abused him, it’s very likely that Floyd would’ve been at least hospitalized very shortly after. Once again, I’m not saying “he was likely going to die anyways, so Chauvin’s behavior is irrelevant”.
I was just phrasing it the way I was to point out that, even with giving Chauvin the highest benefit of the doubt possible, given all the data possible, real or theorized, he’s still absolutely guilty and deserves to be in prison. I’ve found that starting off this argument with “maybe you’re right and he would’ve died anyways, but that doesn’t even remotely justify Chauvin’s actions” pauses the blue-line purists long enough to actually penetrate their delusion and have them consider what type of police they actually want running around out there
That’s the problem. He died of cardiovascular damage and asphyxiation.
Is it possible that he would’ve died without Chauvin standing on his neck for 10 minutes? Yes.
Is it also possible that the trauma relate to having his neck stood on is what pushed his body over the edge? Also yes
Since it’s impossible to prove otherwise, the jury decided that Chauvin’s behavior was at least mostly responsible. You can’t put a human body through extreme trauma and then argue that his death was due to him being more prone to death than average from that trauma
It's not about the circumstances of his death. It's about the fact that the guy was in fact a scum bag, and is held up as a hero by people on the left. Most people acknowledge that Chauvin crossed a line with his use of force, but that doesn't mean people should pretend Floyd was an absolute saint that didn't get what was coming to him in any way. If you fuck around you find out.
Chauvin should be held accountable for his actions (and he has been), but so should Floyd. He's not a hero, and the message should be to avoid drug use and illegal activity, not FUCK ALL POLICE... BURN STEAL DESTROY. People on the left genuinely feel that all that rioting and looting was justified cause they think one black criminal was killed by a policeman in an unjust manner. Two wrongs don't make a right, and to suggest otherwise is just emotionally immature.
Ya and people on the right think it's ok to storm the capital and attack police because they lost an election. Extremists right or left are the problem in this country and the people who blindly follow them.
That wasn't right either. As I stated, two wrongs don't make a right, but the single event of Jan 6 is in no way equivalent to the weeks of looting and rioting that occurred all over the country that was literally encouraged by leaders on the left. The difference is that Jan 6 was almost universally condemned by everyone. Not the case with the BLM riots. The left thought it was fine and justified.
I’m left and I haven’t heard a single argument before today where anyone on left said Floyd was a hero or looting/stealing is fine. (If they did they are assholes)
Like WTF…
Interestingly agreed with most of your sentences besides your perception of left.
I think you are being victim to some narrative that is not happening.
Leftist members of Congress were literally preaching "Defund Police" for months after George Floyd. Also, the liberal legacy media was labeling the riots as "mostly peaceful" protests across the board. Leftist politicians also refused to denounce the radical BLM and ANTIFA groups when they were straight up encouraging and funding riots. Don't act like none of that happened.
Defunding police argument isn’t the same with what you wrote. Police getting too much money is something that can be debated.
Riot by word meaning doesn’t mean peaceful.
But indeed there were many peaceful protests and some riots. I lived through those times. 90% of the protests were peaceful.
Some members of BLM and Antifa supporting some riots don’t mean overall they didn’t support peaceful protests. So again if they should be denounced can be debated.
These we can debate and should be debated.
But I want you to realize. None of the things you just wrote are the same with the things you wrote earlier. So you moved the argument stick. No offense but This is either poor debate skills or you are not doing this in good faith.
He didn’t die of a drug overdose. He died from factors that can be associated with a drug overdose, but are also consistent with heavy pressure on a fat guy’s neck for an extended period of time
You can continue to argue from a place of ignorance and defend a blatant case of police brutality or you can contemplate how police should treat a suspect who has all the same rights you do and if you want to live in a country where overwhelming evidence of masochistic abuse is something you want to be ignored in police officers just because you dislike the person they’re hurting
He was already complaining about him not able to breath when we was detained in the police car, then he escaped and the policer officer restrained him. Was is too much? Probably. Cornerer found a lethal dose of fentanyl in his blood. This was a veteran criminal with a criminal record, not a one off. Threaten a pregnant woman while high on fent, wow what a hero! Would he have survived if he wasn't restrained? Maybe but we will never know.
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u/Big-Calligrapher4886 25d ago
I’m feel like I’m less ideologically captured than most people when dealing with Floyd. First off, yes he was a scum bag who victimized people on multiple occasions, the police were fully justified in arresting him, and there’s a very high chance he had already overdosed on fentanyl and was going to die pretty shortly after the arrest, regardless of the cop’s behavior.
However, Chauvin blatantly used excessive force in the arrest. If he had knelt on Floyd for 1-2 minutes while cuffing him, and then Floyd died, there wouldn’t be much of an argument. However, he knelt on him for nearly 10 minutes while mocking the crowd around him; even several minutes after Floyd stopped moving and even several minutes after he stopped breathing. It’s impossible to prove that Floyd would’ve died even if he hadn’t been knelt on, and even if he would’ve, torturing him on the way out is not something we should find at all acceptable in police. I truly believe in giving police the benefit of the doubt but I just can’t understand why so many people don’t see that Chauvin was waaaaay past that line
TLDR: Floyd was a scumbag and likely would’ve died anyways, but Chauvin clearly wanted to hurt him and his actions with the crowd indicates that he saw the citizenry as enemy combatants, not to even mention the fact that Chauvin had a record in that police department for more abuse accusations than anyone else