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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @09:23AM
I've been reading the reddit threads on this the past few days, as well as twitter and a lot of conservative types are asking 'Where is the sympathy for white men murdered by police.'
Check out /r/2020PoliceBrutality and /r/PoliceBrutality Both of which make mention of murdered white men, black men, and native americans, as well as the mentally ill. What we see looking into these cases is no long term changes, most of the officers back on the force, and institutionalized incompetence on the parts of the law enforcement leadership leading to the deaths of individuals, many of which weren't considered clear and immediate threats (ie no weapons and no actually aggressive actions towards cops.) Our Military Police have a higher standard of engagement than our Civilan Law Enforcement do. OUR SOLDIERS have a higher burden of proof with foreign civilians, even among groups that might be utilizing asymmetric warefare using disguised assets. But our civilian cops are getting away with it, often with backpay and few or no effects on their advancement. Even of the ones who are permanently discharged from their positions at a particuar department, around 1/4 to 1/2 of them are later found working at another police department with a new list of complaints or official actions against them. And yet they just keep working. That should tell you something about the systemic issues in American law enforcement, as well as the responses of some members of the community who think this behavior is appropriate. Maybe if they were treated the same way by law enforcement we could see how they felt about that treatment afterwards.