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[Editor's note: This is a follow-on to the story George Floyd Dead - Officers Fired and Charged - Discuss it Here that we ran on June 2, 2020. With 385 comments, it was the 5th-most-discussed story in the history of SoylentNews. All four of the officers involved were fired from the police force and are facing charges for the death.
New body-cam footage has come to light, exclusively on DailyMail.com. The two videos there fill in gaps from the previously-released footage.
In light of the interest when we first ran the story, the continuing "Black Lives Matter" protests, and the information this brings to light, I have decided to run this story.
NOTE: Each news organization has their own "take" on the killing. This coverage from DailyMail.com is no exception; read it with a heaping helping of the proverbial "grain of salt". It has been excerpted here without elision so as to not add any additional "spin".
WARNING: Please be aware the video content is disturbing; viewer discretion is advised. --martyb]
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1234
Police Bodycam Footage Shows George Floyd Arrest In Detail:
WARNING: DISTURBING CONTENT. DailyMail.com has obtained video from the body cameras of two officers involved in the arrest of George Floyd that ultimately led to his death on May 25 in Minneapolis.
[...] Bodycam footage from two cops accused in the murder of George Floyd is revealed exclusively by DailyMail.com today — and it shows a rookie officer terrifying Floyd by pointing a handgun at his head and another callously picking a pebble from the squad car tire just inches from the dying man and seconds before he draws his last breath.
The tapes show in minute detail how a very distressed Floyd begs 'Mr. Officer, please don't shoot me. Please man,' before the struggle that ended with his death on May 25.
It also shows how belligerent cops cursed at and manhandled the sobbing suspect, ignoring his pleas for compassion.
Floyd resisted as the cops tried to force him into the back of the car, telling them he suffers from claustrophobia and anxiety and how Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, leading to his death, ignoring Floyd's repeated cries of 'I can't breathe.'
Floyd is even heard predicting his own death. 'I'll probably just die this way,' he says.
Transcripts from the videos were released in mid-July but a judge in Minneapolis had ruled the video could only be viewed in the courthouse, meaning few people have had the chance to watch the powerful images.
But the footage has now been leaked to DailyMail.com so the world can finally see the tragedy of Floyd's last minutes as the cops were mindless of Floyd's anguish.
The footage includes more than 18 minutes from Officer Alex Kueng's bodycam and 10 minutes from Officer Thomas Lane. They were the first two cops to arrive on the scene after a complaint that Floyd had attempted to pass a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at Cup Foods, a store in the Powderhorn Park section of Minneapolis.
(Score: 1, Troll) by looorg on Wednesday August 05 2020, @04:13PM (12 children)
I do live in a civilized European country.
No they wouldn't. Stop making things up just cause you have an issue with authority and the police.
Also don't apply UK law enforcement techniques to other nations, it's not the same. Holding a gun at someone for nine minutes is a long time and I would be more afraid of that then being held down. There is way to many things that can happen then, one sudden move on his part and they might have shot him instead. This was way safer in that regard since they didn't know he was going to die on them.
There is a reason that they restrained him, it's for their safety and for his own safety. Controlling a person is just easiest done at neck level and according to the coroner it's not what actually killed him -- where do you even get this crushed throat idea from? The amount of people that have been subdued in the same fashion is massive and they have not died. That he died from it is a statistical outlier that they could not have accounted for.
Antsy people, people with mental issues and people on drugs do the craziest things you ever seen sometimes. You control them via force for your safety and their own safety. There is no intent to murder anyone how hard is that to understand?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 05 2020, @05:26PM (2 children)
For his own safety, you say? Yet somehow he ended up dead, not safe. If the officer didn't have murderous intent, that is at the least incredibly incompetent policing. They already had him restrained. He was cuffed, on the ground, and outnumbered 4 to 1. Police are supposed to know how to restrain someone without doing them unnecessary harm.
But I think the officer did have murderous intent. Perhaps you don't know that police in America have a long history of racism? That racist groups such as the KKK encourage their members to become police officers, so that they can abuse the power to practice their racism with greater effect? There is even a name for the kind of cop who puts racism ahead of duty, who is a KKK member 1st and a public servant 2nd: ghostskin.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Wednesday August 05 2020, @05:40PM (1 child)
They do know and they applied that, his death seems to mostly been attributed to other medical conditions according to the coroner. Which they couldnt know about.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 06 2020, @06:23PM
If someone's repeatedly pleading that they cannot breathe then even if that alone wouldn't directly kill them, it should be obvious that they are undergoing extreme amounts of stress and / or panic which carries a significant risk of death in many individuals. If they didn't know his medical history then they should act cautiously and not assume that he would survive it. Prolonged pressure on the neck was unnecessary, dangerous and wrong.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 06 2020, @04:54AM (8 children)
Keep in mind conflict of interest. The coroner had strong incentive to be less than truthful with the cause of death. An independent autopsy claims [eonline.com] that Floyd died of asphyxiation. Note from the link that the independent autopsy was released first. They only released the coroner's autopsy in response, hours later. Plenty of time to tailor the message to reduce liability for the death.
They had four people on the scene, ready to control Floyd. There's no excuse for this alleged "easy" way. And what was the point of holding Floyd to the ground for 9 minutes anyway? They have nothing better to do that night?
Unless, of course, they intended to kill him. Kneeling on Floyd's neck for nine minutes is much easier to explain, if they were trying to kill him rather than merely "control" him.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday August 06 2020, @12:21PM (7 children)
Is this the independent autopsy that was ordered by his family and friends? Doesn't it sort of then fall for the same reasons and conflicts of interest? It's not like they are without an agenda. Just cause they released it first doesn't mean the real autopsy wasn't done and filed. But it's a nice backstory for a conspiracy. So if anything all this "independent" autopsy did was to really muddy the water.
They could have done other things but it wouldn't have been procedure and the image of the situation would have been just as bad or worse. Then we would have images of 2-4 police officers piling on top of him or holding him down. You would have had the same screams of police brutality and outrage as there would have been images of four officers holding him down to the ground. The same as if they had put pressure on him somewhat lower down, it's not like the neck is the only point, then they would be mad cause the police had their foot on his back -- and he could have died from that to. So there is just no pleasing the crowd, or mob, here really.
I gather that they where waiting for the ambulance that they had summoned. As noted previously people that get put on the ground usually doesn't want to stay on the ground, certainly not when they are on drugs and agitated like he was.
While I can't rule that out I'm not a big fan of conspiracies. Unless it can be proven I would dismiss this whole killer-cop-theory. But under normal circumstances he, or anyone, isn't supposed to die from that. They would have had to know all about his underlying medical conditions, his drug abuse etc. So the conspiracy grows.
If they wanted to kill him one gathers there would have been easier ways to do it, away from the public eye or just when in his agitated and aggressive state they could have created a scenario where they had to use their guns and shot him.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 06 2020, @01:48PM (3 children)
Or maybe it was the original autopsy that did that. Both autopsies were real autopsies, BTW.
It wasn't procedure in the first place. What happened to the procedure of handcuff Floyd, stuff him in the back of a cruiser, and then deliver him to a local police precinct for processing.
He was dead when the ambulance arrived, not agitated. Something is wrong with your narrative.
Unless, of course, Floyd was supposed to die from that. Then it doesn't matter if he had underlying medical conditions or not before dying of asphyxiation. There is this unwarranted assumption that these were normal conditions.
In front of video cameras?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday August 06 2020, @02:21PM (1 child)
I'm not saying their autopsy wasn't real. I'm saying it's not the official autopsy, which is really the only one that matters. It's not a first to leak/release that becomes the first or the official one. I note here that you skate on the issue of that the family (or independent) autopsy might also be flawed. So it's only the one made for the police that is bad and manipulated to suit some agenda?
Since he complained about breathing problems they had to summon an ambulance. So they had to wait for that. If he had just said nothing, been cuffed, said nothing again when put in the police car and being taken to the station he would most likely still be alive and this wouldn't have been an issue at all. They didn't summon the ambulance cause they liked to, or is this part of your conspiracy to -- summon the ambulance to give them time to slowly asphyxiate him? They did summon it cause he complained about health issues. So they did indeed follow procedure. Just cause you summon the ambulance doesn't mean it instantly teleports onto the scene. This isn't sci-fi. While waiting for it to arrive they have to control him and the scene. Nothing weird with that.
Unless you can prove it wasn't then yes it was normal circumstances and conditions. But once again you believe there is some kind of conspiracy to murder him. The evidence for that seems thin at best. If they knew each other why didn't they call each other by name? If they (whomever they are in your conspiracy) had wanted him to die he could have just waited and let all the fentanyl take him. But apparently there was some kind of rush to murder him on the spot, for some unknown reason.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 07 2020, @05:01AM
They didn't have to kill Floyd while they were waiting. It's not standard procedure to hope your perp doesn't have a medical condition after calling an ambulance for it. If it was serious enough a concern to disrupt the arrest procedures to wait for an ambulance, it was a serious enough concern to modify how they controlled Floyd while they waited for that ambulance. Nor as repeatedly has been noted was that "control" any sort of proper procedure.
Chauvin will likely be facing a decade or more in jail and he will deserve that for callous disregard for human life.
The obvious rebuttal is that the death of Floyd proves circumstances and conditions were abnormal. It's possible for that abnormality to occur in a way that absolves involved police officers. But that's not the case here. We have
That is quite the rub, isn't it? My scenario would explain why. Because if they showed that they knew each other - in front of a video phone, then Chauvin and the other officers on the scene might get caught.
You clearly can't think about this, instead making dumbass assertions about procedure, "control", and normality, so I think we're about at the end of this discussion. To summarize my side, Chauvin killed a man which he could have easily saved merely by changing how he pinned Floyd to the ground. He wasn't following procedure with this dangerous hold. And there's been a vast amount of excuse making and victim-blaming - speaking of Floyd's alleged medical conditions, drug use, and mental state (the blanket excuse of "excited delirium"). Even in absence of any proof of intent to kill, we still have second degree murder.
But as I repeatedly point out, a reasonable explanation for Chauvin's actions is that he intended to kill Floyd, because Floyd was a dangerous loose cannon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @05:29PM
He hasn't seen the video. Most probably because he is afraid he will be proven wrong, 100% because his political affiliations require him to disagree with facts.
To expand, I not commenting on politics but rather how cults work. His behavior is pretty much how people are suckered into being a scientologist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 06 2020, @02:08PM (2 children)
Similarly, "underlying medical conditions" ignores that a lot of people, perhaps even most people, have them. Genuine procedure would already take that into account rather than assume everyone is in perfect health.
On a final point, the ambulance arrived six minutes [nypost.com] after it was called. Allegedly, Floyd was still breathing at the time - which I admit casts strong doubt on a first degree murder case. Given how fast they hustled him to the hospital, there wouldn't have been much time to conspire to cover it up.
That same link observes this:
What's the procedure for someone who receives 10 prior conduct complaints, hmmm? Given how blatantly Chauvin killed Floyd, it sounds like Chauvin wasn't expecting disciplinary action any time soon, no matter what he did.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday August 06 2020, @02:31PM (1 child)
A complaint is not the same thing as something wrong actually happened or took place. It's not uncommon for people to file complaints against officers just cause they can or they somehow feel slighted about something in regards to their arrests. That is not to say that some of the complaints can't be true. But if it's over a 19 year period getting a complaint every other year isn't that much. Over that time period they would also have been investigated and since he never faced any disciplinary actions those complaints were considered to be unfounded. Not necessarily evidence of a coverup of any kind.
A lot of the things that happened after the incident seem to be somewhat odd. I don't think anything at the scene was out of order tho. That they change the charges afterwards could just be a matter of new information being available. It is not exactly unheard of or something that doesn't happen in other cases to.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 07 2020, @04:10AM