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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: 5, Informative) by TheRaven on Wednesday June 03 2020, @02:04PM (3 children)
The media does report it, frequently, but they normalise their data. Let's look at last year's data from that chart. A total of 802 people with recorded ethnicity were killed by the police:
Now, let's compare those numbers to the total population of the USA:
So, black people make up 12.7% of the population, but 29% of the people who are killed by police. If you are black, you are more than twice as likely to be killed by police.
Comparing the absolute numbers and ignoring the distribution tells me that you are either really bad at statistics or you're intentionally misusing statistics for racist reasons. Which is it?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday June 03 2020, @04:26PM (2 children)
Clearly you're not bothered that twice as many white people are killed by cops as are black people. Is it because you think the white people are all guilty and bad, while all the black people are all innocent and good? Are you really bad at statistics or are you intentionally misusing statistics for racist reasons?
I'm making this point for a reason, because to support your unstated premise, that the cops are arresting (or attempting to arrest and unlawfully killing suspects) black people disproportionately because they are racist, you have to ignore the other statistics that black people commit crimes at a higher rate than white people. You are picking and choosing which statistics you trust, and which you discount. I am pretty sure you're going to immediately declare that the statistics you don't like are racist, too.
I said what I said because I have been seeing clips of the anchors of major news networks declaring that white people are categorically racist. I have been watching them say things that would instantly get them fired if they said the same of Jews, or LGBT people, or any other group. It's bigoted, and wrong.
The cops should not be killing any suspects no matter what color they are. Their job is to arrest them and bring them to the courts, not to summarily execute them.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday June 03 2020, @05:17PM
Well, they shouldn't be using excessive force. Which is exactly what they did in the George Floyd case. They should definitely be using deadly force, in certain situations. Not when dealing with an unruly suspect, who might have used a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Is counterfeit currency even that big of a problem nowadays? The officers in question had a serious lapse in judgment, if they weren't actually trying to kill him.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2020, @03:46PM
You're *deliberately* taking the numbers out of context. Non-hispanic whites make up ~61% of the US population. Blacks make up ~13% of the population. [wikipedia.org]
If there's no bias among cops, whites should be ~4.5 times *more* likely to be killed by police than blacks. If ~2,450 whites were killed by cops (source: https://www.statista.com/chart/21857/people-killed-in-police-shootings-in-the-us/ [statista.com] ), you'd expect that ~550 blacks would be killed by cops.
Except that since 2015, ~4600 people have been killed by cops in the US. OF those, ~2450 were white and ~1300 were black.
Given the differences in population between blacks and whites, that means that blacks are more than twice as likely to be killed by cops than whites.
Why don't you go walk over to the other side of Grand Army Plaza and try running this bullshit on those folks? Or even better, the other side of Prospect Park. They'll love you over on Eastern Parkway!