Black American men commit a huge percentage of violent crime, often selecting white and Asian victims. That is racist behavior too.
We do know that some criminals resisting arrest will be killed by the police. The criminals least likely to be killed while resisting arrest are black criminals. Those data are from the ultra-liberal The Washington Post.
But racists don't care about data. They have their unproven beliefs, which can not be falsified with facts, data and logic. Leftists are experts at creating division and hatred by using false narratives. Truth is not a leftist value. And that's why this blog exists. Ye Editor
" ... George Floyd, a convicted violent felon, passed a fake $20 bill.
When the police arrived, Floyd was clearly under the influence and complaining that he couldn't breathe.
The police tried to get him into the back of their car, at which point he went wild.
Concluding that Floyd was suffering from excited delirium (i.e., a probable drug overdose), Derek Chauvin restrained Floyd in textbook fashion, by placing him on his stomach with Chauvin's knee across Floyd's shoulder.
The police also called 911 for a paramedic.
While all this was going on, a crowd gathered, filming what was happening and hurling angry, threatening imprecations at the police.
Then Floyd died.
You know the rest: America caught on fire;
Black Lives Matter got in the driver's seat of the American political, social, and economic establishment; every white person who wasn't bowing to the mob became a racist;
... Meanwhile, the coroner's report established that Floyd died not from suffocation, but from a massive fentanyl overdose (on top of the other drugs in his system).
Nevertheless, the BLM mob wanted blood.
That's how Chauvin ended up being tried for murdering a man who died from an overdose.
Finally, to spice things up, right before the trial began, Minneapolis handed $27 million over to Floyd's family.
... The trial is a show trial, and if the jurors wish to live, the mob has already told them they'd better find Chauvin guilty.
The problem is that the prosecution's witnesses are destroying the case.
And no one tells that tale better than Ann Coulter, the master of sardonic snark: "Apparently, no one is watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer on trial for the murder of George Floyd.
Otherwise, the media couldn't get away with their spectacular lying to the public about how the prosecution is killing it.
It's quite the opposite.
In fact, in less than a week, the prosecution's theory of the crime has subtly shifted from MURDER! to "failed to provide what we would say, in retrospect,
would be a full and complete duty of care during the one- to three-minute interval between Floyd's resisting the police to his dying, as a hostile crowd screamed obscenities at the police officers."
The defense hasn't even begun to make its case, but the prosecution's witnesses keep helping Chauvin.
... Week One was chock-a-block with weeping bystanders wailing about how they felt watching Chauvin restrain Floyd.
This would be tremendous evidence if the charge against Officer Chauvin were "first-degree upsetting bystanders."
But that's not the charge.
"The excerpts below are from Anastasia Katz’s detailed report on Derek Chauvin’s Trial through Day 5.
“Under cross-examination, defense lawyer Eric Nelson asked if drug use could cause hypoxia, and the doctor said it could.
Mr. Nelson inquired about Floyd’s high carbon dioxide levels, and whether that could be caused by Fentanyl. Dr. Langenfeld said that it could;
the “primary reason” Fentanyl is so dangerous is that is depresses the lungs.
A high carbon dioxide level causes shortness of breath, even without stress.
The doctor also said that Fentanyl causes sleepiness, and Mr. Nelson said in his Opening Statement that he would produce a witness to testify that Floyd was very sleepy before the police showed up.”
“Next on the stand was Lt. Johnny Mercil, a MPD use-of-force instructor ...
Mr. Nelson showed the lieutenant a photo of a paramedic checking George Floyd’s carotid pulse by feeling the side of Floyd’s neck while Officer Chauvin still had his knee on him.
“In your experience, would you be able to touch the carotid artery if the knee was on the carotid artery?”
Lt. Mercil replied, “No, sir.”
The defense then showed a screenshot from one of the officers’ body cameras, that showed Officer Chauvin holding Floyd down.
Lt. Mercil agreed that Officer Chauvin’s shin appeared to be across Floyd’s shoulder blade, not on his neck.
There were two other screenshots with different time stamps that also showed Officer Chauvin’s shin across Floyd’s shoulder blade.
When he looked at a fourth photo that showed Officer Chauvin’s knee, the lieutenant said this seemed to be a “hold,” not a neck restraint.
He conceded that it’s possible he had to hold someone down for 10 minutes in his own police career, and that he had held people down while waiting for Emergency Medical Services.
He has trained officers to do this.
The court viewed photos from a training manual that show an officer putting a knee on a subject’s shoulder, with his shin across the neck.
This is a technique for handcuffing someone in a prone position.
An officer may need to stay in that position for a while, but Lt. Mercil said that officers must be mindful of the neck.
He also testified that he had been taught that if someone can talk, he can also breathe.”
Testimony also brought out that when apprehended, Floyd already under the influence of drugs had ingested more drugs to avoid being caught with them
and the doctor who led the effort to save Floyd testified that there was no report from EMS that Floyd had overdosed on a specific drug, so the doctor did not consider drug antidotes.
Testimony also brought out that “Mama” was Floyd’s name for his girlfriend and that he might have been calling for her ...
Chief Arradondo said “neck restraints and choke holds are taught and authorized by MPD policy, and he classified the neck restraint he saw Officer Chauvin using in video footage as a “conscious” neck restraint, one that was not intended to render someone unconscious.
An unconscious neck restraint is authorized only if an officer is in fear of bodily harm.”
“In cross examination, Eric Nelson asked an intriguing question: Was Chief Arradondo familiar with “Camera Perspective Bias.”
The chief said he was not.
Camera Perspective Bias refers to the fact that the point of view from which you see an event can change your opinion of it.
Two videos were shown in court ...
One video was taken by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier with her phone and the other was video from Officer J. Alexander Kueng’s body camera.
From Darnella Frazier’s perspective, it looks like Officer Chauvin had his knee on George Floyd’s neck — but Police Chief Arradondo agreed that from the perspective of Officer Kueng’s body cam, Officer Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s shoulder blade.
Up until that moment, the chief said he thought the knee had been on Floyd’s neck.”
"I leave it to you to decide why, from the Trayvon Martin case to the George Floyd case, the media has so consistently misrepresented the facts.
... But it was shocking to me to get letters from heads of very good independent schools who had bought completely into the initial media accounts of an out-of-control white cop deliberately murdering a black suspect in his custody.
It occurred to me then that if people like these could be sold the false narrative, officer Derek Chauvin was surely in for a judicial lynching.
Once again, I turn to Legal Insurrection, which has consistently provided the most detailed and reliable accounts of high-profile trials and warn readers away from the AP, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and TV and cable news if you have any respect for truth.
... a highly-skilled defense counsel, Andrew Branca, has been monitoring the trial and has posted so far nine daily accounts of the trial proceeding.
... Branca feels the publishing deadlines overvalue the direct testimony and underrate cross examination.
... [T]he widely accepted narrative that Chauvin kept his ‘knee on the neck’ for 9 minutes has been thoroughly debunked by the prosecution’s own witnesses and the body cams.
There was pressure by Chauvin’s knee, but it was not continuously on the neck, and was mostly on the back and shoulders, according to prosecution medical witness testimony.
Recognizing this evidentiary problem, the prosecution case has shifted from the initial several trial days of claiming that pressure from the knee to the carotid artery cut off blood flow to the brain causing loss of oxygen and inability to breathe,
a claim rejected by the prosecution’s own medical experts, to a broader claim that Floyd being restrained while handcuffed in the prone position with pressure from multiple officers impaired his ability to inhale.
There are very significant evidentiary problems ignored or misrepresented in the mainstream media as to
(1) cause of death,
(2) whether Chauvin caused the death,
(3) whether the force used by Chauvin was unlawful, and for some counts,
(4) Chauvin’s intent.
People who only read the mainstream media coverage of the case are ignorant of these issues.
2. The use of force was reasonable under the circumstances.
Floyd was larger and heavier than the arresting officer, was resisting arrest, and complaining of being unable to breathe even as they tried to seat him in the squad car.
3. Floyd was high (on three times a fatal dose of fentanyl) and foaming at the mouth and had earlier experienced some of the same symptoms from a drug overdose for which he had been hospitalized.
4. Both fentanyl and amphetamine pills were found in the squad car where he had briefly been placed:
To the extent the drugs ingested by Floyd also contained methamphetamine, however (and we know that the found pills contained both), then they also contained a stimulant, which could explain Floyd’s energized state in forcibly resisting lawful arrest against multiple officers for some 10 minutes.
The meth would also explain why Floyd’s pupils didn’t demonstrate the pin-prick constrictions of fentanyl overdose but were instead dilated
— a condition the state used to argue, again, that it could not have been fentanyl that killed Floyd — the dilation would be induced by the meth component of the drugs.
All of this ... suggests an alternative cause of death other than Chauvin’s knee, and that is the self-induced overdose of Floyd via that pill ingestion on May 25.
The widely viewed video that seemed to show Chauvin had pressed against Floyd’s neck was misleading because of the camera’s perspective.
The body cam which had been in the custody of Minnesota authorities revealed that his knee was on Floyd’s shoulder.
That is consistent with the autopsy finding that his carotid artery had not been compressed nor had he died of asphyxiation.
... camera angles can provide misleading versions.
Curious ... that the government has had this exculpatory evidence in its possession all this time and only produced when required to for this trial, not earlier when it might have checked the rioting?
6. [T]he use of pressure and body weight to restrain a suspect was adopted by the MPD because it was a lesser intensity of force than the prior practice of using strikes — either barehanded, or with batons, or even with weighted gloves — to compel compliance.
The take home message for the jury is that Chauvin’s knee, far from being a public execution in a public street, was a lesser force than would otherwise have been required.
7. Angry bystanders interfered with the officers’ ability to control Floyd and obtain more quickly medical treatment for him.
In effect, they at least contributed to his death."
