What Everyone Gets Wrong About George Floyd (Repost)
Analysis of the George Floyd arrest and the narratives surrounding it
Continuing to move old content from minordissent.com to here so I can stop paying Squarespace money. Here is one.
The purpose of this poast is to support my contention that, upon an even cursory review of what indisputably happened during the arrest, it can be shown that both dominant narratives about George Floyd vs Derek Chauvin are inaccurate.
This contention can easily be derived from the transcript of the arrest (only about the first ~20 pages are necessary) or, better yet, watching the body cam footage of the arrest (only the first ~20 minutes are necessary).
There are 10 key factors which both sides are conveniently leaving out one or more of so as to maintain their narrative, that, when accepted in their entirety, paint a much different picture. Below I will detail them.
Before we begin I do wish to say:
One, I have no horse in this race other than to try and figure out what actually happened. I am an evil crypto-nihilist whose only narrative model is “it’s complicated” and thus, like a dandelion’s florets, can be blown out of certainty on most anything in the gentlest of breezes. So if I clearly get anything wrong here please let me know and I will gladly review and update accordingly. [edit while reposting: I couldn’t care less about this at this point, so don’t waste your time trying to argue with me, I’ll just ignore it]
Two, this post will piss pretty much everyone off, left and right, so don’t get too excited that I’m going to use my big retard autism brain to confirm your bias.
With that out of the way, Lets’eh go!
1) Floyd was immediately acting erratic and impaired
As soon as the police walk up to the car Floyd is in, he starts freaking out and crying. Very odd behavior. Why? Is he high? Is he faking?
It’s worth recalling that everyone lies to the police. When you get pulled over for speeding, it’s always “I had no idea how fast I was going”, “I am late to x y z urgent matter (that isn’t real)”. If you personally are some goodie-two-shoes freak exception, you at least understand that you are such.
Thus, the default Police expect is for you to be lying, obfuscating, or misleading to avoid getting a ticket, arrested, etc. It is practically their job to be at best highly skeptical of everything you say, and more likely to just flat out assume everything you’re saying or doing, especially if it evokes sympathy, is a lie.
2) Floyd was resisting basically the whole time leading up to the neck restraint
Immediately and clearly throughout the entire interaction, Floyd is being non cooperative and often resisting. The Police have to tell him several times to do something before he complies, and when he does comply, he quickly uncomplies. We can speculate on his reasoning—fear (possible), aggression (unlikely), drugs (likely), so much drugs that he is not in control of his mind or body (possible) —but his behavior, not his reasoning, is the only thing that matters when it comes to what is a justifiable response by Police in the eyes of the law.
Keep in mind also that this dude is 6’6”, 250 lbs, and built like a super hero. Erratic and noncompliant behavior from a man this big and strong at best would put police on alert (as he could easily kill any one of them with his bare hands), and at worst really leaves them little choice other than to resort to high leverage moves (arm twisting, being rough, etc) to subdue him.
3) Floyd was falling over constantly and had a drug pipe found in his pocket
Floyd was falling over constantly, and a drug pipe was found in his pocket (I can’t tell what kind from the video). He was clearly physiologically impaired in some fashion. Whether this was due to drugs, alcohol, or some kind of weird legitimate panic attack cannot be deduced from the video alone. However toxicology reports later showed methamphetamine, marijuana, and a serious dose of fentanyl in his system supporting the likely case that this was not an act.
4) Floyd had a serious criminal record, though likely unknown to the officers
After getting him out of the car, across the street, and sitting down against the wall, the Police gathered his info and one was instructed to run his background. In my own experience of getting ticketed/arrested, getting your record is usually quite easy/quick, taking a few minutes tops.
I didn’t hear it said anywhere in the vid/transcript that this was actually completed and communicated (likely because all Police shifted their focus to getting him in the car), however it is possible the police were aware of Floyd’s extensive criminal history, including an armed robbery, 5 years in prison, and several drug charges.
Floyd was crying and resisting throughout, saying “I’m not that type of guy” which is 100% a lie. There are reports that he has “turned his life around” since leaving prison (making “I’m not that type of guy anymore” possibly accurate), however I haven’t looked into it too deeply to determine whether this is just confirmation bias on the part of his proponents (likely) or actually valid (possible), but I don’t think it really matters that much to what happened during the arrest anyway.
Regardless of whether he “turned his life around”, his arrest record does not make that clear, and if the Police were made aware of his record, it would justify increased threat alert on their part. However, let’s assume they didn’t, as it doesn’t seem they did, and it doesn’t really matter for my case.
5) Floyd was yelling “I can’t breathe!” and foaming at the mouth long before any officers were restricting his breathing.
Next the police try to get Floyd into the Police car, which he resists, yelling, in a seeming panicked state, “I can’t breathe!” “I’m claustrophobic!”. Floyd can be seen as visibly foaming at the mouth a few times in the video and one officer comments on it in the vid and transcript.
(Worth noting: The police seem pretty darn reasonable for most of the entire video, trying to reason with Floyd to get in the car, etc. He begs them to roll the window down and they say “we will. Just get in the car.” Many similar cases).
The critical piece here is that Floyd’s claimed struggle with respiration happened long (5+ minutes) before there was any officer involvement in restricting his airways/bloodflow.
Based on his toxicology report, this seems legitimate rather than faking, as, quote:
This is consistent with Officer Kueng’s observation at the scene that Floyd was foaming at the mouth and, as found at autopsy, that his lungs were “diffusely congested and edematous.”
In other words, like a drowned man, Floyd’s lungs were filled with fluid. And that was the obvious and inescapable reason why Floyd kept shouting over and over again that he couldn’t breathe even when he was upright and mobile.
In retrospect we can say it’s obvious that Floyd was suffering a legitimate medical emergency. And as bystanders who don’t have to deal with people lying and being crazy as the default for our job, we might think it should have been obvious to the Police.
But when you legitimately put yourself in any police officers shoes: expecting them to know that the guy just happened to have been on a massive dose of drugs that would make his lungs barely work (while also being on some level of stimulants that were likely to be keeping him frisky despite his poor air flow) rather than just a crazy person trying to avoid being arrested is just not reasonable.
6) Floyd was trying to escape the police car and was the one who asked to lay on the ground/put himself there
After about five minutes of attempting to negotiate with Floyd and push him into the car, with Floyd continuing yelling half incoherently about how he can’t breathe, how he’s claustrophic, etc. one officer goes to the other side of the car and tries to pull him in.
Floyd immediately starts yelling while 3+ officers try to drag him in.
Floyd then pretty clearly is trying to escape the car out the other side and there is a section where he is repeating “I want to lay on the ground!” “I’m going down!” while there are 3 officers on the same side as him trying to push him back into the car.
Eventually, it looks like the officers just give up, and conclude they are not going to be able to get him into the car, and concede to allow him to lay on the ground, switching instead to pinning him there.
This is where Chauvin uses the neck restraint, while two (three? hard to tell from both videos) other officer’s hold down his waist and legs.
7) Brain hypoxia via neck restraint is taught to MPD
This article, sent to me by a pro-Floyder on Twitter who was trying to convince me that the knee restraint was illegal, actually very clearly shows it was allowed and justified by protocol for the situation:
Describing the police use of neck restraints, Mercil said the department's training calls for officers to use their arms to restrict the flow of blood to and from the brain by applying force to the side of the neck "with the intent to gain control of a subject." He also said that while neck restraints can be performed with the legs rather than the arms, his unit doesn't teach officers to do that in their in-service training.
"As far as my knowledge [goes]," he added, "we never have."
Referring to moves often seen in mixed martial arts competitions, Mercil said that people who perform such a restraint commonly use their inner thigh and their opponent's arm to apply pressure.
Minneapolis police policy bars the use of neck restraints in any situation where a person is not "actively resisting," Mercil said. The policy also requires officers to keep the subject under "close observation" after applying a neck restraint.
The restriction of bloodflow to the brain to gain control of an actively resisting person (which Floyd indisputably was, if you watch the video) is taught.
Now you might say “so using his arm was allowed but his knee was not”. But you have take into account the size disparity between Chauvin and Floyd.
Chauvin’s arms are like twigs. I’d be surprised if he weighs even 160 lbs or has ever lifted a weight in his life. His quads are the size of Floyd’s biceps. I think it’s pretty obvious he used his knee instead of his arm specifically and solely to account for the fact that he did not believe he could adequately restrain such a chad with his little soy boy arms.
Nowhere in the testimony I can find does it say that a knee restraint is illegal, just that it’s not what is taught.
In fact, looking at this quote from Mercil from the above:
He added that a "knee on the neck would be something that does happen in the use of force that is not unauthorized."
Not sure how it doesn’t get anymore clear cut than that. “We don’t teach it, but we don’t say you can’t/shouldn’t do it” because the goal is restraint (or, in this case, a blood choke) Improvising with your leg when your arm is not sufficient due to disparities in size would make total sense.
As far as I can deduce: the knee is a red herring and proof that someone is responding emotionally to the video rather than actually understanding legitimate Police protocol.
If you changed nothing about the scenario except that Floyd was 150 lbs: Chauvin would have used his arm, only one other officer would have needed to hold his legs down, and the exact same result (Floyds’s death) would have happened.
Edit: Re-reading this I just realized that the testimony says “applying force to the side of the neck”. Does that mean that the pressure on the back doesn’t actually work? If true that would lead to either A. reconsideration that he suffocated (less likely) or B. reconsideration that he did overdose (more likely). If anyone can comment on the anatomical validity of the positioning of Chauvin’s knee, that would be helpful.
8) An ambulance was called as soon as he was put into the neck restraint, if not before
It is not quite clear from the video whether an ambulance was called before hand (the dialog is muffled), however IIRC from the transcript they immediately called EMS upon placing him on the ground.
Given that they expected they were going to be able to get him into the squad car up until the very moment he pulled himself on the ground and gave them no choice but to restrain him there, this seems to me like the soonest they could have reasonably been expected to request medical support.
(also, EMS arrives within 8 minutes of Floyd getting on the ground, which would support that they were called immediately).
Why would they call an ambulance immediately if their intent was to kill him? Answer: they wouldn’t.
9) Floyd resists for 5 minutes a hold that should have knocked him out in seconds
I’m sure you can find a better source to confirm, but I was already 95% sure this is accurate so don’t care to look deeper:
You will remain conscious from 1-3 minutes after your air way is cut off.
You will remain conscious only 3-8 seconds after your blood flow is cut off.
This video of UFC fighters being put to sleep also paints a similar story. It is heavily edited but I am also 95% sure that these choke holds almost always lead to passing out within seconds.
Given that Floyd continued yelling, talking, and resisting for 5 minutes into the hold (all which obviously require air) and clearly still breathing a bit after, I don’t think we can reasonably claim that Chauvin was blocking his airway.
However, it also means that Chauvin was failing to adequately block the blood flow for most of the interaction. This was either due to incompetence (he didn’t know how to do the hold), inability (Floyd was just too chadly for even Chauvin’s knee to work), or the possibility that Chauvin actually wasn’t even trying to cut off blood flow, just hold Floyd there until ambulance arrived (would surprise me, but possible).
It would be nice to answer this but I don’t think it’s necessary, because, as I will show in #10, it seems pretty clear cut that no matter which of these is true, all roads leads to Rome.
10) Chauvin maintained the hold for 3.5 minutes after Floyd stopped breathing
Up until the point that Floyd passes out, I do not see how, in the full context of the video, anyone could reasonably claim that the Police did not follow procedure or did anything uniquely dangerous or illegal. You can say that Police shouldn’t be allowed to choke out actively resisting suspects, and that it is wrong and immoral for them to be allowed to do this (what would you have them replace it with? hugs and kisses?) but you cannot argue that it is against protocol or illegal.
Seems to me that anyone who believes that Chauvin should go to jail or be prosecuted up to this point, is responding emotionally, not logically (I understand the video was shocking and “not nice”, but the world is shocking and “not nice”, and if this is a surprise to you, it might be time to leave your rich, upper class, law-and-order, white majority area and see the real world).
It is however at this point that a reasonable case against Chauvin begins.
After about 5 minutes of resisting, Floyd eventually calms down, and soon stops talking. He can still be seen breathing up to about 30 seconds later, at which point his breathe either stops or is imperceptibly (from the video) low.
My common sense as well as that UFC video I linked earlier leads me to believe that as soon as someone passes out, you should immediately release the hold and re-allow blood flow to keep the person from suffering serious brain damage.
If for some unknown-to-me reason, you are supposed to hold it for longer (unlikely) you certainly aren’t supposed to do it for 3.5 minutes, as 3 minutes is the point at which irreversible brain damage becomes a possibility.
This is where things stop making sense. Why would Chauvin continue the hold at this point? A couple options:
He did release it, just not completely, and it just isn’t obvious from video footage. For whatever reason, it’s impossible to find the original, unedited video anywhere (this is the closest I can find) but it certainly doesn’t look like this is the case.
Chauvin actually had no idea he was cutting off bloodflow thus was not intentionally inducing hypoxia, and so did not know that once Floyd passed out he needed to re-allow bloodflow to keep from killing Floyd (seems very unlikely as I would be amazed if this is not 101 stuff from Police training).
Chauvin was just an evil racist white man who kills black people on camera for fun for the whole world to see (the least likely, based on the previous evidence presented).
Chauvin continuing the blood choke for several minutes after Floyd passed out was not calculated/intentional but instead emotional/accidental due to the adrenaline of the situation or just being a dumb boomer (most likely?).
Chauvin was neither intending nor achieving a blood choke, rather just restraint until the ambulance arrived, and Floyd passed out/died mostly due to drugs/drug related effects, perhaps accelerated due to being forced onto his stomache for so long (unlikely but possible).
As of this writing, some form of #4 seems the most likely to me.
Some factors that would lead to this and/or are worth considering:
Chauvin clearly seemed to feel threatened by the bystanders (pulling out his mace and yelling at them to step away when they motioned to move up and try to push him off Floyd) he may have been cognitively caught up in them and their actions and not paying attention to the time.
Chauvin likely had an opinion on and negative emotional view in general about the anti-cop rhetoric as of late, and likely felt the sentiments of the bystanders to echo this. This attack on his and Police-in-general’s character coupled with a camera to “show the truth” may have caused Chauvin to feel self righteous, seeing this as an opportunity to make a statement on "anarchy and ignorance vs law and order” (if you spend anytime around conservatives/military/police types, or read Jonathan Haidt's work, you know this is is an important core value of theirs). He would have thus been making a statement by taking his actions to the very edge of legally permissible. If true, he would have had no intent of killing Floyd, and almost certainly wouldn’t have if it had not been for the combo of drugs in his system, whose specifics were unknown to the Police at the time.
These 2 factors and perhaps more may have significantly skewed his emotional/adrenaline state to cause him to misperceive how long he had held Floyd for.
Chauvin may have felt that subduing Floyd until the ambulance arrived was more important than the chance that Floyd may suffer brain damage from an extended hold. Given that Floyd was not aggressive, his resistance more an annoyance than a threat, I would be surprised at this reasoning, even when I put myself in the officers’ shoes who were likely on much higher alert after Floyd pushed 3 officers out of the way to get on the ground.
Chauvin was for some reason intentionally punishing Floyd. Given that there was a chance Chauvin knew Floyd, it’s possible he had personal beef with him that led to Chauvin letting his emotions get the best of him. This knowledge of eachother seems very unlikely though, and I only present it to say we considered everything.
If this line of reasoning is correct, then the first three would probably have played at least some role in skewing Chauvin’s behavior, the second in particular. Everyone has values they wish to stand for, get hurt by insults to their character, and lose track of time in high adrenaline situations, This is further supported by Chauvin’s alleged history of using excessive force.
But here’s the thing:
The same statement about Floy’d reasoning applies to Chauvin too—the law doesn’t really care about your reasoning, only your action. It doesn’t matter why Chauvin failed to appropriately account for time. It matters that he did, and that Floyd is dead.
Even if Floyd was stone cold sober, continuing a blood choke for 3.5 minutes after passing out had a high risk of killing him.
Thus, this would make the question of whether Floyd would have overdosed or suffocated due to his lungs filling with fluid anyway a moot point. Chauvin unarguably moved into, at best, a legal and ethical grey area that brought a risk of death into the realm of possibility, and, arguably, moved over the boundary, intentional or not, into becoming unequivocally culpable for Floyd’s death if it ensued. Even given the unliekly chance that a blood choke was not intended and/or achieved, I cannot imagine any scenario in which holding him there for 3.5 minutes after he stops breathing is not criminal negligence/manslaughter.
In conclusion:
In conclusion, as far as I can tell:
The idea that Chauvin intentionally murdered Floyd is dumb. The Police were (relative to the situation) highly cooperative and accommodating to a resisting suspect, and called an ambulance as soon could have been reasonably expected (as soon as he was on the ground).
The idea that Floyd is completely innocent and that pinning him to the ground was completely unnecessary is dumb. Floyd was resisting arrest, erratic, and even tried to escape the police car. He put himself on the ground and the only reason he stayed there was because, despite Police efforts, he was too strong for them to effect otherwise.
The idea that Floyd couldn’t breathe because of Police restraint is dumb. He was complaining of struggling to breathe for minutes beforehand, and his toxicology report shows that a fat dose of Fentanyl filling his lungs with fluid was the cause of this.
The idea that the use of a knee hold had any significance or relevance is dumb. Blood flow blocking via neck restraint is authorized in a resisting suspect, and the means by which one achieves this is circumstantial. Thinking about it for even 5 seconds, it’s seems obvious that a knee was chosen instead of an arm due solely to the size disparity in the interaction.
Thus, taking specific issue with anything the Police did up until the point as which Floyd passes out, is dumb. It may tug on your heart strings to watch Floyd struggling and crying out for his mother, saying he can’t breathe (it certainly does to mine), but this out of context view paints a picture highly inaccurate to what actually happened.
The idea that Police should have been expected to respond to Floyd’s medical emergency is dumb. Everyone lies to Police. It is the default behavior toward Police. It is practically their job to err on the side of assuming all requests for sympathy are lies. Police had no way to know that Floyd’s lungs were filling with fluid, that he was likely only still able to fight due to stimulants in his system, or that he already had a bad heart and arteries. All Police behavior should be judged in the proper context of their role and what was known at the time of arrest.
However, the idea that Police, particularly Chauvin, handled the last few minutes of the interaction to this same standard is questionable at best. As far as I can tell, they failed to operate under basic medical knowledge (don’t hold a blood choke for 3+ minutes) which would, irrelevant to pretty much any other factor, make them culpable for Floyd’s death. As far as the law (and anyone’s own common sense) It doesn’t matter if Floyd would have overdosed or died on his own, it matters that the Police were actively negligent to him no longer breathing. Whether this would fall under manslaughter, murder, or whatever else, is beyond my current knowledge of law to have an opinion on (and I have zero interest in figuring it out) but the idea that Chauvin will get off—even if it was a white dude and thus was no national outrage—seems highly unlikely to me.
The only way I don’t see Chauvin getting prosecuted is if it can be somehow proven that Floyd was still breathing for at least some, ideally all, of those 3.5 minutes, which seems highly unlikely given the video.
As the case is still on going, and as of this writing, the defense has not made their case. I guess we will see.
I’m pretty over thinking/writing about this, but if something major comes out, i’ll probably update the poast [repost edit: Nope, didnt care].