Almost from the start, nearly everyone on left and right claimed that the video of George Floyd’s dying moments made it clear that Officer Chauvin was a murderer.
I found this to be a shocking assertion – not in terms of the left saying it, but the right, too? Murder, really? Surely those who remember previous videos that told an incomplete tale ought to have held back from making such charges. But only a few could resist jumping on that bandwagon.
An exception to the rule was commenter “j e” at this blog on May 28, very early on in the story:
Although the actions of the police may in this case look bad, experience of these matters should teach us that hasty and highly emotional reaction to stories constructed around snippets of video without proper context should be tempered by measured analysis based upon all the facts as they become available, The rush to rapid judgement by all on the left (and by some on the right) has been proven to be foolish indeed time and time again.
It was only a couple of weeks later that I discovered that the restraining hold used by Chauvin on Floyd was an approved one in Minneapolis. It has since been banned and the instructions are no longer available online at their site – or even referred to. Instead, now it says “5-311 PROHIBITION ON NECK RESTRAINTS AND CHOKE HOLDS (10/16/02) (08/17/07) (10/01/10) (04/16/12) (06/09/20) (D) Neck Restraints and choke holds are prohibited. Instructors are prohibited from teaching the use of neck restraints or choke holds.” In other words, “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”
But based on the original information I had found there earlier, sometime prior to June 20 (I don’t have the exact date I began it) I wrote a draft for a post (never published), part of which went like this:
That made me curious to learn what the rules for restraint by police are in Minneapolis, and it just so happens that they can be found online:
Because the test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application, its proper application requires careful attention to the facts and circumstances of each particular case, including:
The severity of the crime at issue,
Whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and;
Whether he is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.
The “reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of the reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.
The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments – in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving – about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”
More:
Medical Assistance: As soon as reasonably practical, determine if anyone was injured and render medical aid consistent with training and request Emergency Medical Service (EMS) if necessary.
The following is clearly relevant. Not all police departments allow this, but apparently Minneapolis does, in certain circumstances:
5-311 USE OF NECK RESTRAINTS AND CHOKE HOLDS (10/16/02) (08/17/07) (10/01/10) (04/16/12)
DEFINITIONS I.
Choke Hold: Deadly force option. Defined as applying direct pressure on a person’s trachea or airway (front of the neck), blocking or obstructing the airway (04/16/12)
Neck Restraint: Non-deadly force option. Defined as compressing one or both sides of a person’s neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or airway (front of the neck). Only sworn employees who have received training from the MPD Training Unit are authorized to use neck restraints. The MPD authorizes two types of neck restraints: Conscious Neck Restraint and Unconscious Neck Restraint. (04/16/12)
Conscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with intent to control, and not to render the subject unconscious, by only applying light to moderate pressure. (04/16/12)
Unconscious Neck Restraint: The subject is placed in a neck restraint with the intention of rendering the person unconscious by applying adequate pressure. (04/16/12)
The Conscious Neck Restraint may be used against a subject who is actively resisting. (04/16/12)
The Unconscious Neck Restraint shall only be applied in the following circumstances: (04/16/12)
On a subject who is exhibiting active aggression, or;
For life saving purposes, or;
On a subject who is exhibiting active resistance in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective.
Neck restraints shall not be used against subjects who are passively resisting as defined by policy. (04/16/12)
This article says that the police called for an ambulance after they cuffed him. So they may have complied with that regulation.
Did Floyd resist? However, if Floyd didn’t resist, you would think the criminal complaint wouldn’t say he did resist. But that seems to be what it says:
Police were trying to put Floyd in a squad car Monday when he stiffened and fell to the ground, saying he was claustrophobic, a criminal complaint said. Chauvin and Officer Tou Thoa arrived and tried several times to get the struggling Floyd into the car.
Chauvin eventually pulled Floyd out of the car, and the handcuffed Floyd went to the ground face down. Officer J.K. Kueng held Floyd’s back and Officer Thomas Lane held his legs while Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s head and neck area, the complaint said.
When Lane asked if Floyd should be rolled onto his side, Chauvin said, “No, staying put is where we got him.” Lane said he was “worried about excited delirium or whatever.”
So it seems pretty clear that Floyd resisted getting into the squad car, and that’s why the extra police were there. But why did Chauvin pull him out? How was he acting in the car? There’s missing information there. And is that criminal complaint merely what the police said happened? Is it backed up by video evidence? The amount and quality of Floyd’s resistance, or its lack, could be very important.
The following is one of the most terrible parts of the video:
Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, including nearly three minutes after Floyd stopped moving and talking, the complaint said.
But having read the rules on Conscious Neck Restraint and Unconscious Neck Restraint, I wonder whether any of the behavior of these offices fit into those rules. For example, if Floyd was “exhibiting active resistance” in repeatedly refusing (physically) to get into the car, they might have decided they were justified in using Unconscious Neck Restraint “in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective.”
Remember also that Unconscious Neck Restraint is considered a non-deadly force restraint, but it is designed to render a person unconscious. This seems inherently dangerous to me, although a medical person could say whether it ordinarily is or isn’t. The danger is that it would be difficult for an officer to know whether the person is merely unconscious or is in far more trouble than that, and I don’t see any instructions on how to make the distinction.
The difference between a Conscious Neck Restraint and an Unconscious Neck Restraint appears to be the amount of pressure used. That unfortunately cannot be gauged by watching a video, and I’m not sure there’s any way to ascertain it.
I want to re-emphasize that all of the research in the above quote was done by about three weeks after Floyd’s death, which is two months ago. And it wasn’t hard to do – it was all readily available online at the time. We know more now, of course – a lot more. And it all falls on the side of the exoneration of Chauvin and the others rather than their guilt.
I forget why I didn’t publish the post at the time it was written. I think it was because it was very long and unorganized (the above is only an excerpt), and so many dramatic events were happening at the time that I think it just got lost in the shuffle. But my point isn’t about me; it’s about how easy it was, early in the proceedings, to find out a lot that was relevant to the guilt or innocence of Chauvin and the others.
Very few people even tried. Their minds were already made up, either because the video convinced them or because it was ideologically necessary for them to spread the word that Chauvin was a cold-blooded murderer.
That’s all a preface to this new article by George Parry, a former prosecutor, which I read today. Here’s an excerpt:
As will be explained in detail below, throughout Floyd’s confrontation with the police, he was at imminent risk of death from sudden cardiac arrhythmia caused by excited delirium. So it was that these officers followed the MPD’s official procedures for how to properly and safely subdue someone in that life-threatening condition. In doing so, they were not only keeping Floyd in the prescribed “recovery position” to alleviate his risk of asphyxiation, they were also keeping an agitated and delirious Floyd from harming himself as they awaited the arrival of the ambulance that they had twice summoned to provide medical aid to him.
So where are these well-intentioned, well-trained, and dutiful public servants today? They are in jail awaiting trial on murder and aiding and abetting charges after having been universally condemned in the news media and used by neo-Marxists and opportunistic criminals across the country as a pretext to riot, loot, and burn. And, while they sit in their cells, not one Minneapolis official, from Mayor Jacob Frey to Police Chief Medaria Arradondo or any member of City Council, has come forward to acknowledge that, in subduing Floyd, these law officers were acting in meticulous accordance with the MPD training and directives designed to reduce the risk of harm to persons suffering excited delirium…
By their hypocrisy and cowardice, these blame-shifting public officials, desperate to preserve their political careers and places at the public trough, have tossed these police officers to the howling mob.
As I explained in my recent American Spectator article “Who Killed George Floyd?,” “the physical, scientific, and electronically recorded evidence in the case overwhelmingly and conclusively proves that these defendants are not guilty of the charges and, in fact, played no material role in bringing about Floyd’s death.”
Please read the whole thing.
George Floyd’s death has been used opportunistically as an excuse for the agenda of the left. The narrative of police brutality leading to a need for a complete re-organization of the country, the cooperation of so many elected officials and virtually the entire MSM and pundit class, and the sheer stupidity of many others who should know better but follow them blindly, is a profoundly depressing situation, particularly because the facts are available for all to study. But if our so-called leaders refuse to reveal them to the public and insist instead on propaganda, I just don’t see how the truth can be accepted.
When something like this happens – and it’s happened quite a few times before – it’s not unusual for the facts to emerge in a courtroom and for the accused officers to be acquitted or to be convicted of extremely mild charges. That infuriates a public that’s been fed on lies for so long. And that’s part of the plan of the left, too – the riots and rage that ensue at the thought that justice has not been done when in fact it has.
I wish I had a solution. I don’t – except the hope that enough people still have enough common sense and good judgment that they will see through what’s happening in time. But do they, and will they?
