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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.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:14PM (5 children)
I don't understand why there isn't more agreement among people on this issue. The data suggest that black people are more likely to vote for Democrats than a lot of white people. This corresponds somewhat to liberal and conservative attitudes. But it seems like liberals and conservatives should have some common ground on this issue.
Black people rightly distrust law enforcement. There are enough police who disproportionately target minorities, yet many of the police seem to get away with even egregiously wrong behaviors. There are related issues like civil asset forfeiture and the militarization of police. And I'd be remiss not to mention the growing demands by law enforcement to weaken encryption, which will harm everyone's privacy and security. The war on drugs has increased violent crime, needlessly sent non-violent criminals to prison where they may become violent, and hasn't been successful at all.
Law enforcement is totally out of control. Whether you're a black person who is frustrated with police behavior in your community or a white libertarian who distrusts law enforcement on the basis of your underlying principles, there should be agreement on this matter. Surely this should be a point of common ground.
Why, then, have we been polarized on this issue? If anything, there should be a lot of common ground here between the left and a good portion of the right. This shouldn't be a divisive issue.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:36PM (2 children)
I completely agree. There are any number of folks around here who normally are screaming about government overreach and authoritarianism.
With the murder of George Floyd, I see most of those people (with some exceptions -- Khallow and Sulla) giving a shrug or trying to blame their perceived political enemies and/or turn peaceful protesting into some sort of continuous riot (which isn't supported by the facts).
Why aren't pretty much all of those people up in arms over the blatant abuse of governmental power? I'm sure there are a number of explanations:
1. They're taking their cues from Trump, who wants to roll out troops in the street -- yeah, that's the Libertarian way -- riiiight;
2. They being opportunistic (like the small groups of looters) in trying to use this as a political cudgel against their perceived enemies (other Americans);
3. They think that by trying to paint the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protestors as rioters/looters, even though they're clearly different groups, they can scare middle-class white people into Trump's arms in November.
I'm sure there are other reasons too, especially since they figure, "well, it was just a darkie. He must have deserved it." and other, perhaps darker motives.
So if you *really* believe in limited government and support individual rights, you should be just as horrified and angry about George Floyd's intentional murder as any progressive. If you're not, you might want to reconsider what liberty is really all about.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @04:00PM (1 child)
You are quite glossing over the differentiation even figures like khallow have done in this very thread between peaceful protest, which should be protected, and police violence, which should be condemned, and looters, vandals, and assailants, who are committing crimes and must be prosecuted.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @04:23PM
Which is what I said. And Sulla too. Or that may have been in one of the journals.
My point was that aside from Khallow and Sulla most of the others are using misinformation and outright lies to conflate the peaceful protestors with rioters/looters to advance their racist/authoritarian/Trump cock gobbling agenda.
Kind of like you Phoenix.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday June 02 2020, @09:58PM
The reason you have to ask this question is a good part of the reason this is all blowing up now. For the most part, the police simply enforce the status quo. The status quo differs a lot for different people though, and politicians have brainwashed a large part of their base that this benefits them.
Your typical conservative might look at the Floyd incident and think "this is awful", but at the same time they think it isn't anything that might affect them, and instead of being outraged at the killing, become outraged at the reaction to it. Peaceful protest apparently is not going to raise awareness, just ask Colin Kaepernick how that worked, it is far more likely to be hijacked by opponents to be about something it is not about.
Something else that concerns me, how do we let police officers become so dehumanized that they can kneel on the neck of someone who isn't resisting arrest and think that is in any way, shape or form a right thing to do? Perhaps we need far more frequent mandatory psychological evaluations in that job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @03:31AM
Racism is alive and well. It's the only explanation.