George Floyd died on 25 May 2020. The four policemen who apprehended him have been charged criminally for his death. One has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Cellphone footage shows him putting his knee on Floyd’s neck to subdue him. The other three policemen appear to be standing around doing nothing.
Consequently, public outrage claimed that Floyd was murdered due to aggressive and racist police action. The following day, Black Lives Matter (BLM) organised protests. Some of the anti-police and anti-‘the system’ protests turned into riots.
Conflagrations broke out all over America. People were killed and injured by rioters, and businesses were damaged or destroyed.
In Seattle and Portland, anarchy reigned, while protesters sealed off streets and declared them ‘free zones’.
Floyd became an icon and the various graphic representations of him had quasi-religious connotations. One memorable piece of street art has Floyd with angel wings and a light shining behind his head.
The protests masked BLM’s real agenda, which is to destroy capitalism and abolish the nuclear family. It is an unashamedly socialist agenda to radically restructure American society. BLM has not disputed this; it is stated on its website. In the view of documentary maker Eli Steele, BLM was waiting for an ‘incident’ around which it could mobilise.
The dominant narrative is that social hierarchy is determined by race; that blacks are always victims and that whites are always oppressors. The deaths of unarmed black people by the police have consistently been held up as systemic racism. BLM came to prominence when it launched a successful campaign over the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.
Floyd’s death exploded in media all over the world. Protesters in Britain, as in America, pulled down statues of figures whom protesters deemed unworthy. These were mostly figures involved in or connected to the slave trade.
The African National Congress (ANC) sanctimoniously embraced ‘the cause’. Yet, at the time, the ANC-led government was facing accusations of security service brutality in the killing of 13 black people over alleged violations of the lockdown.
Signal their virtue
There was a rush by our sportsmen and women, in particular, to signal their virtue by wearing T-shirts decrying racism or by ‘taking the knee’.
But what if the evidence doesn’t support charges of murder? What if racism isn’t the reason for the policemen’s actions?
The grand juries in the deaths of Michael Brown in 2014 and Breonna Taylor in 2020 found that the prosecutors failed to prove that their deaths were murder or that the shootings were unjustified.
The Brown case became the iconic police shooting, whence the words ‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’ have become a cri du coeur for those claiming systemic racism in America’s police departments.
A recent documentary by Shelby Steele, inter alia a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and his son Eli, film director and producer, demonstrates clearly why the policeman who shot Brown was innocent of murder. The documentary looks in depth at Brown’s own actions and his dreadful upbringing that contributed to the behaviour that led to his death.
The Steeles also disproved that Brown shouted the now iconic ‘Hands up, don’t shoot!’; it came from a bystander.
Our recent article about the 2020 shooting of Taylor explains why the police weren’t charged with having murdered her. The insulting and derogatory remarks made by black public figures after the Taylor grand jury verdict suggest that even if Floyd wasn’t murdered, the lie will continue to be perpetuated to preserve the victimhood narrative. It’s likely that a ‘negative’ outcome would result in outraged denunciations of the law, and more riots.
Looking at the cellphone footage of Floyd’s death, it certainly appears as if Floyd was being murdered. The policemen’s body cameras, however, may tell a different story. I summarise my impressions.
A summary
A shop owner tells the police that Floyd has paid him with a counterfeit bank note.
Floyd is still sitting in his car outside, so two policemen approach the driver’s side from behind, knock on his window and ask him to open it. Floyd does nothing. A policeman opens the door – both officers now have their guns drawn.
Floyd is crying incoherently about being in trouble with the police again. Floyd already has five convictions that have resulted in jail time.
One officer tells him repeatedly to put his hands on the steering wheel, but he only puts forward his left hand; his right hand is down by his side, out of sight.
The police insist again and then tell him to get out of the car. He doesn’t move, so they pull him out, handcuff him and walk him to the pavement. Floyd staggers a bit: he’s fidgety and uncooperative, but not aggressive. Floyd was a very big man – tall and broad-shouldered.
Another policeman is interviewing a man and a woman who had been sitting in Floyd’s car. The conversation is indistinct but the woman says something about him being on something. She twirls her finger next to her head, as if to suggest that Floyd was ‘crazy’.
The police then get Floyd to stand up, though he is still agitated and uncooperative. They sit him down on the left-hand passenger seat of a police car. He complains that he’s claustrophobic. The police assure him that they’ll put the air-conditioner on and open the windows.
Although his hands are handcuffed behind his back, he’s sitting on the back seat with his feet resting on the road.
At this moment Floyd says: ‘I can’t breathe’.
Became agitated
The police get him to sit in the car properly, but he becomes agitated and attempts to slide out of the right hand door. A policemen tries to push him back inside whereupon Floyd bashes his head against the back seat. It appears accidental. A policeman calls for an ambulance.
Floyd is then removed from the car with difficulty. Again, he says he can’t breathe. He is squirming and the policemen are trying to restrain him. He says something to the effect of ‘I want to be on the ground’ or ‘I’m going down ground’ and ‘Let me go down!’
Once lying down he again says he can’t breathe. An officer tells him to stop moving. He cries out for his ‘momma’. These cries can clearly be heard by the crowd.
Chauvin has his knee on Floyd’s neck. It is a standard procedure in the Minneapolis Police Department, although it is controversial. It is intended to use the knee to stop an arrestee from getting up, but it is not meant to put undue force on the neck.
The other officers, alleged to be doing nothing, are waiting for an ambulance which has been called for a second time and on a more urgent basis. The police tell Floyd that an ambulance is on the way. This the crowd will not deduce from their viewpoint.
At some point a policemen tells the others to roll Floyd onto his side. He then falls unconscious. An ambulance picks him up, but he dies in hospital.
The county coroner found that Floyd had serious underlying coronary disease which exacerbated his death. He found no evidence of compression.
The toxicology report found fentanyl, methamphetamine and THC in his system. The dose of 11ng/ml of fentanyl is four times the amount that has been fatal.
Respiratory depression
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction describes fentanyl as ‘a narcotic analgesic with a potency at least 80 times that of morphine.’ Overdose results in respiratory depression. Sudden death can also occur because of cardiac arrest or a severe anaphylactic reaction.
Key arteries in Floyd’s heart were 75% blocked; one was 90% blocked. This was aggravated by clots compressing the blood supply to his heart. His heart was enlarged by about 48% more than normal.
One medical expert, responding to the cellphone footage, said there was no way that Floyd could have died because of the drugs. ‘We know his death is not due to toxicological means because of the [cellphone] video of the circumstances.’
A doctor quoted in the New York Times said that, from the cellphone footage, Floyd was talking normally and wasn’t sweating, so he wasn’t under the influence.
There will be considerable contradictory evidence for a court to consider. The policemen could face 40 years in jail if convicted of murder.
If the policemen are not found guilty of murder, BLM and its associated narrative are unlikely to change; too much has been invested in the ‘systemic racism’ narrative.
It’s likely that a ‘negative’ outcome would result in outraged denunciations of the law and may only spark yet more riots.
[Picture: F. Muhammad from Pixabay]
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