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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: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 02 2020, @08:27PM (3 children)
We're already discussing this extensively.
Three of the four most recent journal entries on the front page are about this:
https://soylentnews.org/~c0lo/journal/ [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/~RandomFactor/journal/ [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/~exaeta/journal/ [soylentnews.org]
And those journal entries have a combined total of 223 comments.
It seems like Soylentils want to discuss this. As that's the case, why are you against such discussion?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by janrinok on Wednesday June 03 2020, @08:00AM (2 children)
Because this site was created to discuss STEM topics predominantly. We recognise that some might want to discuss other things and, as you have already pointed out, it is already being discussed in 3 different journals. What does a 4th discussion add to the matter? Do we have to cover every black murder in the USA now? How about white murders? Or perhaps we should report every car/auto accident because there are often human casualties in those events too? The subject is being covered by every MSM outline in the USA and Europe, there are plenty of sources to get your information available to you. I don't think we should be one of them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2020, @09:33AM (1 child)
Fair enough.
That said, I agree with martyb's reasoning [soylentnews.org].
Since folks were not only discussing this in journals, but also posting off-topic comments in other stories as well, doesn't it make sense to have a place to put those comments that's not stepping on other discussions?
What's more, SN does cover things that newsworthy that aren't STEM related. The recent "COVID Roundup" stories or the flurry of stories about Notre Dame after the fire.
Besides, this has become much, much bigger than a dead black man in Minneapolis. Hundreds of thousands of people on at least three continents (in at least 120 locations in the US alone) are out in the streets demonstrating. The President of the United States ordered peacefully protesting Americans to be tear-gassed and bludgeoned. That same President has threatened to use the US military on Americans. There have been numerous incidents of police brutality and whole neighborhoods have been looted and burned.
I'd say that was pretty newsworthy and certainly worth it's own front page article all by itself. Given that folks were posting about it in unrelated stories, it seems a no-brainer to me. And since this topic currently has 205 (206 once I post this) comments, I'm glad all those comments weren't in other, unrelated stories.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:37PM
So why didn't they put those comments into the journals that were discussing that event? And creating another story does not remove those comments from all the other stories where they remain off-topic, thus spoiling any chance of discussing the subject topic intelligently.
So this isn't about a 'dead black man' - your comment suggests that it is about politics and the person you currently have as your leader. This is just another opportunity for the Ds and Rs to throw names at each other. Take your political name-calling somewhere else please. I don't particularly care which side you are on, you as a nation put him in the Whitehouse, you sort it out. How many times have black people been killed and their death has sparked riots and protests? And then tell us all why nothing has ever changed.
That is because the community we once had and the one we have now are very different. Nowadays there are a fair number of ACs who just want to discuss their own brand of politics, and they come here because they can do so anonymously and without being censored. That is not to say that description fits all ACs but certainly a good proportion of them. But how many of them are prepared to step up and help run this site?
One of the topics that we do discuss is "Careers and Education". There can be now doubt that Covid-19 has affected both careers and education for millions of people around the world. The same cannot be said, in my opinion, for another attack by the police on a black person in the USA. As serious as that attack is, and despite how abhorrent the action is to most people, it does not meet any of our usual STEM topics. Tell me again in a few months time when the protests have ended and the name of George Floyd doesn't feature in any of the newspapers. When things change then that will be a story worth publishing by this site.
Go back and count them. There were other stories published by our community regarding the bees in Notre Dame, or actions by the alt-right who were blaming Muslims for the fire. They were stories about bees and the alt-right.
Just my $0.02 worth.