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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: 3, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:47PM (6 children)
There really are some technical aspects of this mess that could be discussed.
Watching some of the protesting/rioting on broadcast TV the other day when they first announced a curfew, it just seemed strange to me that they could not seem to get the message across to the protesters. I think there were some police with bullhorns, but this was over a wide enough area, that was not effective. One of the talking heads was lamenting that the protesters couldn't see their broadcast. Even 10 years ago, many people would have at least carried FM radios. Back in the late 80s and 90s there were even pocket televisions.
But instead everyone is waving around their toy cell phones. Apparently not interrupted by any kind of jamming. Probably not receiving any kind of alert unless they were already "signed up" for crap. And all probably using wildly different streaming, video, or web services. (If it were me, I would have knocked out all of their cell phones, that would have taken most of their fun out of recording people doing stupid shit).
Alternately, that would have been a good place for drones with loudspeakers. (Or just put blinking blue LEDs on them, and everyone would just follow them in to a river :P ).
If they were hoping for the de-militarization of police that kind of backfired.
There has been a lot of talk now about facial recognition. (running it through the DMV my ass, we all know they have massive databases from all kinds of other sources). After all of this, I fully expect a huge push for facial recognition in every nook and cranny of our lives.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:11PM (2 children)
The protesters knew about the curfew and were ignoring it.
(Score: 1) by charon on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:34AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @12:41PM
By flouting the curfew, the "peaceful protestors" were giving cover to the rioters with their numbers. The "peaceful protestors" are ENABLING the rioters and preventing the police from stopping them. They are complicit. Go home, fucking morons.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:50PM
I got a curfew notice on my cellphone - like an Amber alert (which, I thought I had turned all those off, I guess this one was higher priority) - at 4pm and again at 7:30pm for the 8pm curfew.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:52PM
That shook a few neurons up about the Presidential Alert system [independent.co.uk], (no, not Twitter :-). I guess nobody reminded him about that before he decided to send the military/National Guard everywhere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:53PM
Must be 10 years ago now, we were studying "psy ops" drone tech, beepers, loudspeakers, etc. to use for crowd control. Surprised we haven't seen any of that.
🌻🌻 [google.com]