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African-American George Floyd's death has led to marches, demonstrations, acts of violence, and looting across the USA and in other parts of the world. Emotions are running high. We will not attempt to accuse or defend anyone here. Just attempt to lay out the information we have and offer it up for the community to discuss. Many comments about this incident have been posted to unrelated stories on this site. This is, therefore, an attempt to provide one place on SoylentNews where people are encouraged to discuss it. So as to not derail other stories on the site, I kindly ask you focus those comments here.
Wikipedia has a page about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd (permanent link to the page as it appeared at the time of writing):
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was killed in the Powderhorn community of Minneapolis, Minnesota. While Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white American Minneapolis police officer, kept his knee on the right side of Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds; according to the criminal complaint against Chauvin, 2 minutes and 53 seconds of that time occurred after Floyd became unresponsive.[3][4][5][6][7] Officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane participated in Floyd's arrest, with Kueng holding Floyd's back, Lane holding his legs, and Thao looking on and preventing intervention by an onlooker as he stood nearby.[8]:6:24[9][10]
The arrest was made after Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill at a market.[11] Police said Floyd physically resisted arrest.[12][13] Some media organizations commented that a security camera from a nearby business did not show Floyd resisting.[14][15] The criminal complaint filed later said that based on body camera footage, Floyd repeatedly said he couldn't breathe while standing outside the police car, resisted getting in the car and intentionally fell down.[16][17][18][19] Several bystanders recorded the event on their smartphones, with one video showing Floyd repeating "Please", "I can't breathe", "Mama", and "Don't kill me" being widely circulated on social media platforms and broadcast by the media.[20] While knee-to-neck restraints are allowed in Minnesota under certain circumstances, Chauvin's usage of the technique has been widely criticized by law enforcement experts as excessive.[21][22][23] All four officers were fired the day after the incident.[24]
[...] Charges: Third-degree murder (Chauvin) Second-degree manslaughter (Chauvin)
This has been extensively covered by the media. Some outlets attempt to put their own interpretations on their coverage with their selection of video footage and with their commentary. It is difficult to find a simple video of the incident. Here is one that has coverage from the time of initial encounter of the police the officers with George Floyd up through his being taken away by ambulance. The video is a composite of shots from a restaurant's surveillance camera (Dragon Wok), Officer body cam, and bystander cell phones. YouTube footage: Full George Floyd Available Footage (21:12). If anyone has more complete footage of the arrest, please mention it clearly (with a link) in the comments.
Lastly, this is a hard time for everybody. Pandemic. Lock-down. Unemployment. Fears. Please be mindful of others' circumstances when commenting. We are a community sprung from a time of challenge. Let us continue to be here for one-another during this difficult time. SoylentNews is People.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:33PM (52 children)
Simple question.
I don't entirely understand what the protesters hope to achieve. Justice was already served in this case, extremely rapidly. And these sort of cases are becoming increasingly rare. You're never going to see a 0% incident rate anymore than you could protest your way to a 0% murder rate. So what is success, exactly, and how do these protests get you there?
I always see people say things like "raise awareness" but I think that's not a very compelling response for two reasons. The first is that the vast majority of all people are already quite well informed, like it or not, on this issue. The second is probably an even bigger issue. These protests are mostly just giving way to bad actors who have successfully turned them into riots. Whatever awareness is being raised here is more about folks running around hurting, looting, and destroying others' property. And I think that is almost certainly having the exact opposite sort of 'awareness' being raised.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:45PM (7 children)
Abolish all policing:
https://www.city-journal.org/abolish-police-call-to-action [city-journal.org]
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/police-abolish-criminal-justice-reform-20200102.html [inquirer.com]
https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/george-floyd-protests-police-abolition/Content?oid=80349691 [chicagoreader.com]
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-abolition-george-floyd/ [motherjones.com]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/opinion/george-floyd-police-funding.html [nytimes.com]
Legalize guns too:
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/10/738493491/with-a-growing-membership-since-trump-black-gun-group-considers-getting-politica [npr.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:31PM (6 children)
Are you advocating the abolition of police, or arguing against it? Your first link does the latter, at least two of the others are on the other side.
Regardless, many people who have not experienced violence first hand, but have only seen it on TV, tend to think of it as fictional. They are not personally violent, so they can't imagine that other people are; it must be somebody else's fault that those people are violent. So they think that if everybody is spoken to gently and are allowed to have their way, even if it's to somebody else's detriment, that there will be no violence in the world and police won't be necessary. Somehow, a psychopath or a person hopped up on drugs or alcohol or who intends to do violence to control or intimidate, can be stopped with a well-reasoned argument and a caring attitude.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 03 2020, @08:30PM (3 children)
It's an answer to the question "what do the protesters hope to achieve?" That's probably what it would take to satisfy the protesters (immediately). Advocacy for police abolition predates the protests and has been gaining slight traction. Probably a lot more in the past week.
If you turn it into a numbers game, it might work. Abolish police entirely, and you get zero police brutality and deaths by police. Redirect the funds into helpful programs. See what happens. Maybe the assumed rise in crime is offset by other factors. One way to modify the strategy is to make sure lots of people have access to guns, which is the position of the National African American Gun Association.
As NRA membership wanes, America's largest black gun group is thriving [cbsnews.com]
This can be tried out in a single community.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @12:55AM (1 child)
English common law emerged from natural law because of the killing and blood feuds. The US was founded on common law principles and police were a development meant to deter crime. I'm all for holding the police to account but abolition would result in a huge increase in deaths from self-defense, it's not realistic.
Gun sales are hitting record highs BTW.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 04 2020, @05:06AM
There could also be a partial reduction:
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/l-a-city-council-members-introduce-motion-to-reduce-police-funding-as-calls-to-defund-the-lapd-echoed-in-protests/ [ktla.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 04 2020, @02:22PM
The only thing that you get in the absence of police is a rise of vigilantism and a general dissolution in law & order. Organized crime will explode, and we'll have Mexican drug cartels beheading entire towns in the American heartland, because there's nobody there to stop them. No shop owner will dare to open his doors because looters will descend and take what they want. It's lunacy. The world's sole superpower would instantly become Somalia.
But we don't have to speculate about what would happen. We know. The "Wild, Wild West" was wild because there was no effective police force. If you had a feud with someone, you shot them or rounded up your buddies and cousins and hanged them.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday June 04 2020, @12:42PM (1 child)
Could it be that when the psychopaths grow up in poverty, in a neglected area, violence is the easiest way to get what they want. If they're given more opportunities in life, they could wind up as a CEO instead, and subjugate thousands instead! Or run for president... When you're powerful enough, other people will do the violence for you and it will be dressed up as right and proper.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 04 2020, @02:06PM
The people pushing these policies, which will be catastrophically disastrous, believe that, contrary to all of human history and other available evidence, that humanity is perfectible, and that some day everybody will greet each other with happy smiles and sit down to tea to work out their differences. It's fantasy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tizan on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:57PM (1 child)
Protests is the mark of a boiling point...
talking of other context
The French or revolution for e.g was not just organized rebellion ....it was the building up of frustration and lack of any hope and not seeing any improvement in ones life...
if you are hungry and there is no food and you see the royalty enjoying riches and you have no hope of improving your life...
Now some people can build on that frustration to build a better tomorrow for those that are suffering or not....Liberte, Egalite et Fraternite may give some hope...whether they achieved it in the end ...but it changed thing from "Meh the poor can die who cares".
If this leads to better economic, educational opportunities to poor black neighborhoods and better education for cops to treat humans as humans and respect the law...that wiil be good
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:42PM
The French more or less got there eventually, but they had to go through the Robespierre Terror, Napoleonic Wars, Restoration of the old Monarchy, Napoleon again, a second restoration of the monarchy, and a series of see-saw lurches from a republic to monarchy and back again for the better part of a century.
It was not a case of:
Step 1. Storm the Bastille
Step 2. Freedom!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:04PM
Actually, the number of people killed by police has remained pretty stable [fivethirtyeight.com], although urban areas are seeing a drop off and suburban/rural areas are seeing an increase in people killed by police.
If you actually pay attention to what the protestors are saying, they don't have a unified message -- mostly because this is a grassroots effort that doesn't have a single leader. Most will first say that they want to see the other three involved officers charged as well. Beyond that, you get a lot of different goals, with the primary one being "stop killing us."
"Stop killing us." Hmm...That seems a worthy goal. And the George Floyd *murder* is a stark reminder that the police are indeed, still "killing us."
And for any of you who brush this off with "he was just a criminal who got what he deserved," I'd say that he was *alleged* to have committed a non-violent offense (passing a counterfeit bill) and was never formally charged or tried.
Is murdering someone accused of a crime the hallmark of a free society? No. It's not. And it's not the kind of society I want to live in.
Sadly, this sort of thing is far too common. It needs to stop. Now. Claiming that peaceful protests are somehow wrong further moves us away from the ideals of a constitutional republic. That's not the country I wish to live in.
For those who *purport* to love liberty, this should be a wake-up call to you. And not just because that could just as easily have been you or someone you love.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:07PM (5 children)
There have been too many cases of white cops and black corpses, and the cops getting away with it. Plus, everyone has been cooped up, seething, feeling bad about themselves and situation, etc. It all reached critical mass and boom.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:00AM (4 children)
Statistically, there are more cops vs white corpses (4 per 100,000 incidents, vs 3 for blacks). And black cops are more likely to shoot a black perp than are white cops. You can look it up on the FBI's crime stats pages. Meanwhile, blacks commit about 5x more serious crimes, so should they not expect more problems with cops? Maybe getting their fathers back would fix the culture; certainly coddling has not.
But you're right that it was the wrong thing at the wrong time, and BOOM. Except even so, why are we letting these destructive mobs get away with it? how does burning down your own city help anyone?? And how will it change racial perceptions? Not for the better. :(
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:01PM (3 children)
See, martyb and other admins? This Reziac guy is ruining this perfectly good insanity with actual facts. He's trying to steal the discussion's mojo!
Jesting aside, you constantly hear in the news how the percentage of incarcerated blacks is so much higher than for whites. And the few times that someone mentions that blacks commit more crimes by percentage, it's always the whites' faults for oppressing them.
In college in the '80s I was very underfunded, and kept trying to get the financial aid people to, well, aid me financially (crazy of me, I know). They got to know me so well that one day they said, and I'll never forget this: "if you were black or Hispanic, all kinds of money would be available to you."
So please remind me, what does "oppression" mean?
As to the destructive mobs, well, my take is simple: humans exhibit a very wide-range of personalities and behaviors. Some are very reserved, controlled, polite (well, few anymore), and some are very demonstrative, boisterous, act out. I think the coronavirus lockdowns are causing people to brood and seethe, and some are already predisposed to violence. So within the demonstrators are a contingent of anti-social people and they just did their thing. I won't write what I would do, but I'm glad to see some citizen groups have formed various guards of some stores and other establishments. I saw in the news where one Philly gun store owner, whose store had been looted the night before, guarded his store and killed someone the 2nd night. I have to say, a store full of guns amid looting is a very bad thing. At the first sign of social unrest that store should have been emptied into an armored vehicle with many national guard and taken far away. Or something else, but not left to be looted.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 03 2020, @04:18PM (2 children)
I've been somewhere below the poverty line my entire life, yet never eligible for any sort of aid. And being in the wrong profession in the wrong state, I found myself actively oppressed and my livelihood slowly destroyed. But somehow I never took to the streets, looting and torching and killing. If I had, I'd have been summarily shot.... cuz whitey should know better. These other folks, they need to vent.
It's obvious that the majority out there had no intention of 'peaceful' protest; if they had, the first time a paid agitator threw an inciting brick, instead of monkey-see, monkey-do, the crowd would have tackled him and handed him over to police. Did you see that, anywhere a riot started? No?? whatever could be the reason??
Agreed it would be smart to haul off and lock away any potential arms, but in a riot, guns are the least of it. Any solid object suffices for a weapon, and gasoline is everywhere, and pretty much anything is flammable. Better to stop the rioters in their tracks.
Well, I guess now we've got one heck of an urban renewal project, shovel-ready, to make up for all the jobs that no longer exist cuz the employers got torched. I say let them who destroyed it rebuild it, on their own dime.... what? still rubble, 30 years later??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:32PM (1 child)
Great post. Yeah, it's very complicated. Wide-variety of personalities, motivations, etc. Group/mob psychology is an interesting study, and is evolving. Certainly there's a "hey, he did it, so it must be okay to do" thing happening. I even remember as a kid being "egged on", or just being with a friend and feeling it was okay to do something I would never have done on my own. It all dovetails into lynchings, Salem witch trials, countless examples of govt. brutality including genocides, etc., and really any form of government, including democratic voting. It's why the US Founding Fathers chose a representative form of govt., with a president, and you know the rest. Even before mass media existed, wise people realized that the mass public might have a mob mentality and be very wrong about something.
Like you, I've never resorted to anything illegal. It might be somewhat due to pride, the good kind, that I don't need to resort to anti-social behavior, that I can somehow make ends meet.
A couple of days ago I saw on the news where in a major US city there were many people out early in the day cleaning up the mess caused by the rioter/looter/arsonists, and it certainly included many black people, some of whom pointed out that they were concerned that blacks would be associated with, or blamed for the looting / arson. And there have been stories, unconfirmed of course, about whites instigating destruction, trying to encourage the mostly black crowd to join in. It'd be awesome if everyone stood back pointing fingers at the instigator. Not everything is about color.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday June 04 2020, @02:16AM
'Zac'ly so. It's painful to watch.
Being weird, I've never done well at the mob thing; someone tries to stampede me, my reaction is to back up and take another look at what they really want. And I have that flock guardian instinct, and am more likely to be the one trying to halt the stupidity or run off an attacker.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by martyb on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:23PM (14 children)
I don't see riots as being a "path to success". There's likely no forethought about it.
I see it as an expression of long-standing suffering and frustration.
Have you ever worked hard towards a goal (say a promotion) and someone else who was not as well qualified got it instead of you? How did that feel?
How about just trying to get a job? Submit countless applications and get an equal number of rejections.
As for "Justice was already served in this case, extremely rapidly", I have to disagree. How many times have we learned of police being charged, put on administrative leave, and ultimately found not guilty? I will withhold judgement until the facts have been presented, the case argued, and the verdict read.
As for "raising awareness", that the foregoing still happens suggests that more than just awareness is needed.
Yes, rioting does nothing to advance their cause. I see this as misdirected, pent-up frustration and anger that is finally finding release. Like road rage for getting cut off on the highway, and chasing down the person who cut you off. It's not rational. Neither is this, but neither are these circumstances.
I do not condone the rioting, but I can understand the circumstances that lead to it.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:28PM (7 children)
A lot of the riots are being instigated by opportunistic groups like anarchists and white supremacists, not the people organizing the protests.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:38PM (1 child)
A lot of black politicians and other black leaders are coming out saying that, and appropriately worried that blacks will continue to be labeled as criminals, violent, etc.
I say, shoot the looters and arsonists. There are really only a few that instigate, and many marginal sheep that follow. Just shoot them. It'll all end quick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:44PM
And that is why you are regularly called a fascist and a racist.
Found the perfect mate for you! Knows how to lie through her teeth and everything!
https://reddit.com/r/MurderedByWords/comments/gvc0m9/good_old_meghan_mccain_i_assume_shes_a_staple_on/ [reddit.com]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:40PM
Please give any evidence that any significant fraction at all are white supremacists. It's all anarchists, Antifa, daughters and sons of the commie mayors presiding over this dumpster fire. Why can't the left own it?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 03 2020, @01:12AM
And there's also a long history of agents provocateur, who are undercover police and/or the FBI sent in to start trouble in crowds to create an excuse for the cops to attack that crowd.
As an example: One hypothesis for why the Kent State shootings happened a little over 50 years ago is that an FBI informant was on the scene with a pistol, fired a shot at nothing in particular, and the National Guard returned fire into the crowd.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:50PM (2 children)
That may well be the case. Then again, it might not. Can you please provide supporting evidence of that? Being able to support that assertion would give it much more weight.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @01:21AM
Article [thehill.com] Moltov girl [twitter.com] NYC lawyer (Moltov girl 2) [swarajyamag.com]
This guy [knoxnews.com] apparently has a III%er [wikipedia.org] tattoo. Something and nothing because it's a constitutionalist group although one that attracts complete wingnuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @01:41AM
Representing the boogaloo brigade [justice.gov] or just dodgy taste in Hawaiin shirts? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:54PM (2 children)
Maybe or maybe not.
But protests have been extremely effective at times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March [wikipedia.org] among others.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:34PM
Yes and no.
From your link, the Salt March was based on Satyagraha [wikipedia.org]:
The riots here (at least the ones that get the media coverage) are not what I consider peaceful.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:34PM
As another user pointed out Gandhi engaged in peaceful protest, but even that I think is rarely productive. 'But India gained their freedom!' I hear you say, and that's absolutely true. But was it because of the protests? After World War 2 Britain was basically bankrupt and did not have the money to maintain their empire. Keep in mind that this was before the time of countries so overtly 'printing' money. If you wanted to maintain your empire you needed real money to do that, and the British Empire simply didn't have that money anymore. This [wikipedia.org] is a list of territories of the British Empire and when they gained their independence.
You might notice that shortly after World War 2 the entire British Empire collapsed. And many of the countries that were granted their independence had no meaningful independence movement. More importantly however, you'll also find that the Brits started mass liberating properties in order of profitability. They tried to hold onto their more valuable properties in the West Indies/Caribbean/etc though those were also eventually were granted freedom. India was historically a very rich nation but by the 20th century it was certainly not lucrative [stackexchange.com], at the minimum, for the Brits.
Ghandi may have helped roll the timeline ahead for India by some small amount, but the main reason India gained their independence is because the British Empire went bankrupt at a time when money meant something. It was certainly not because of protests, civil or otherwise.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:47PM (2 children)
Prior to the coronavirus, employment numbers for black men were the strongest they've ever been since they began keeping labor statistics. Once the virus hit, the shutdowns instantly erased most of those jobs.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:16PM (1 child)
That's good to hear. Do you have a link to that by chance? There's a saying "A rising tide lifts all boats", so I wonder how close their improved numbers got them to parity with (1) the overall rate and (2) the rate for whites?
In other words, "strongest...ever" could conceivably be still far behind. Not saying it is/was, but only that the quoted statement allows for that. I'd like to know the real numbers.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 04 2020, @02:58PM
I had trouble finding a historical plot of unemployment rates for black men apart from black women from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), but I found one for men from the Federal Reserve Bank that follows the trend of the aggregate for black workers from the BLS [stlouisfed.org]:
St. Louis Fed [stlouisfed.org], note the low point in 2019, and the spike in 2020 for the pandemic lockdowns.
I have not been able to find what the comparison was explicitly for blacks vs. whites in 2019. The closest I've come is this article [stlouisfed.org] from CNBC in 2018 that stated 5.9% unemployment for blacks. That was double the white unemployment at that time, but still the best black workers have ever done; when Barack Obama was president, unemployment for black men topped out at 19.3%, so 5.1% is a significant improvement.
But the data, and the huge spike at the end for the pandemic lockdowns, suggests there is a significant economic component to the unrest. To me it looks like the mayors of cities like New York and the governors of states like Michigan will have destroyed black economic progress for a generation. That is what racism looks like.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:25PM
Disagree.
1) Only one of the four cops was charged. Shouldn't the other three be help accountable, though on lesser charges?
2) There's a toxic culture in law enforcement if it's more important to have your partner's back than to intervene when your partner is clearly in the wrong. There's also the issue with disproportionate targeting of minorities and the use of force against them.
3) It's not certain the one cop who was charged will actually be convicted. Merely charging someone with a crime is not sufficient to carry out justice.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:45PM (4 children)
Release of pent up emotional energy. They're bored, anxious, and have had waaaay too much time on their hands lately.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:25PM (3 children)
You're coming off as a real jackass in here. Attempts to explain why Chauvin HAD to murder Floyd because he was "resisting" and now protesters are just bored emotional people with too much time? There were similar protests in 2014 for Eric Garner, there have been similar protests happening for decades.
Yet still cops get away with very clear murder and we keep letting them use excuses to get away with it. I think we should remove firearms from police, let them use their riot shields and group tactics to subdue criminals. Also, any death of someone in custody is a minimum of 5 years in prison, if there was an underlying cause then it is on the police to seek medical aid immediately.
Stop downplaying these events please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:43PM (2 children)
No question Chauvin used excessive force, and had total disregard for Floyd's well being, but no way did Chauvin intend to kill Floyd. No way. Disregard for life to the point of criminality, yes, absolutely, but labeling intent is 1) insane and 2) zero chance of being upheld in court.
However, somewhere news said the 2 of them had worked together, so it'd be interesting to learn about their past interactions. That could shed light on intent, and must be investigated.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:57PM
He intended to apply force of lethal degree. Whether or not the actual death was intended, the infliction of lethal-degree harm clearly was intended. He was told George Floyd was bleeding from the nose and unconscious and he continued to apply force that he knew would likely lead to permanent brain damage.
If there had been no video he would've gotten away with literal murder.
Anyways, tl;dr you're a troll and lying.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 03 2020, @07:21PM
That's quite a coincidence and leads to the possibility that Chauvin may have had a motive for killing Floyd - such as Floyd owing money or being a witness to something. For example, consider this scenario: Chauvin and the rest have this good thing going - drugs, protection racket, theft of police resources, whatever; Floyd who gets in on this action becomes unreliable when he drinks; this group of cops hear the 911 operator call out about a drunk man causing trouble and figure it could be Floyd; they call in to become the first responders; then when they get there and rough him up a bit, they determine he's too dangerous to let live; and Chauvin kills him while pretending to merely engage in a bit of police brutality for the cameras. That's Murder One though it might be very hard to prove if the police aren't interested in investigating it. In another thread [soylentnews.org], I stated that I thought it likely that Chauvin merely intended serious harm to Floyd and accidentally killed him. But this could be a case of crooked cops and a problem that needed erasing. In which case, the murder may well be premeditated.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:08PM (9 children)
BZZZT! Wrong.
Hundreds of thousands of peaceful protestors *continue* to protest peacefully. While a few hundred bad actors attempt to use that as cover, whether to discredit the protestors (kind of like you're trying to do) or to use the cover of night (most looting is happening far from where protests are occurring) to engage in criminal activity.
Protestors != Rioters
Protestors != Looters
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:22PM (8 children)
Protesters need to #StayTheFuckHome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:27PM (6 children)
So you are against the First Amendment, then? How authoritarian of you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:39PM (2 children)
The pandemic trumps everything. Burn the Constitution. Shut it all down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:56PM
How even more authoritarian of you. I'm sure Der Fuhrer will be pleased with you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:07AM
It's too perfect.
We're so fucked.
It couldn't have happened to a better species.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:46PM (2 children)
1st Amendment gives right to speech, PEACEFULLY and legally demonstrate.
They've made their point, and now need to repay everything and everyone they destroyed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:55PM
Protestors != Rioters
Protestors != Looters
Fuck off, asshole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @02:17AM
Just as soon as the police give Floyd his life back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @10:38AM
"Protesters need to #StayTheFuckHome."
Interesting. I wonder what your take is on this story? [bbc.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 02 2020, @10:47PM
Not rapidly enough to keep the precinct building from burning down, I see. They could have had the guy arrested on lesser charges that night (like assault). Instead, they delayed as much as they could for four days.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Username on Wednesday June 03 2020, @12:07AM (2 children)
These aren't protesters. Anyway, antifa wants to overthrow the "capitalist" government and institute a communist dictatorship under Bernie Sanders. Those random gang members would steal and kill anyway. Should see the videos of them trying to go down streets controlled by the latin kings. Those mexicans shot them before they even got out of their car.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:09AM (1 child)
this is so misinformed i can't even
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @02:25AM
It is misinformed on the Bernie part. "Liberals get the bullet too." https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3otTkPVMAEBiEb.jpg [twimg.com]