4 fired, with the State level police investigating their use force and the FBI looking into civil rights violations. More charges may be coming.
As a former cop this looks pretty indefensible. I’ve never, nor ever seen a fellow officer, treat a handcuffed subject this callously. If he had resisted prior to arrest my first objective would have been to get him inside the car once handcuffed. He then would no longer pose a threat to anyone but himself at that point. There’s no reason to kneel on his neck for that long once he’s been restrained.
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IMO, they absolutely did not want him declared dead on the scene. They can now claim he died later of unrelated things since they have it in their report that he seemed to be having a medical condition.
The mayor seemed to handle the situation well, and the 4 being fired is actually more action than I expected to happen (thought they would get administrative paid leave, and an eventual slap on the wrist).
I can’t think of any context in which the actions could be justified. I don’t know if the intent was to kill, to teach a lesson to the man and bystanders, or just extreme incompetence, but it was not appropriate IMO.
Protests will be on going. I am glad I don’t have to drive through that area, as traffic was blocked last night.
Apparently there were two other cops holding his legs but they can’t be seen on some of the videos.
Positional asphyxia is one of the first things we learned in custody and control. If someone can’t breathe you roll them to the side where they are still easily controlled while cuffed. Just like you’d do if they were vomiting and in danger of choking. I hope it was incompetence rather than callousness.
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Dude, I was in the military and a CO afterwards. Positional asphyxia? There was a knee on the guy’s carotid for minutes after he became unresponsive. I’ll stop short of saying this was premeditated murder, but it was not completely accidental. Positional asphyxia is a whole different ball game, and does not involve a several-minute blood choke.
I didn’t claim it was the cause of death. My point was it was drilled into us that if someone can’t breath you do what you can to make sure they can breath and that officer likely knew he could control him without a knee on his neck. Why the need to tilt at windmills here?
Apologies if you weren’t saying that, but positional asphyxia is going to be part of the defense against murder, and that would have more to do with him lying on his chest or pressure on his back than a knee on his neck. My point was that it’s incompetence combined with callousness. All the officers there besides Chauvin were only a few years on the force, but he was a 19 year veteran. There’s no explanation of this that doesn’t involve callousness. Didn’t mean to jump down your throat, though.
Oh my God I hope this pun was intended.
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Callousness was my point also. I always accept genuine apologies.
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This won’t be received well.
One of the cops holding Floyd’s legs asked Chauvin more than once if they could put him on his side. Chauvin said no. He also took Floyd’s pulse and said he felt nothing. I don’t know if that helps that officer any, but I think it hurts Chauvin.
Because it will be misinterpreted. For example, asphyxiation or strangulation could have caused him to die of something else before they could kill him.
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No question. This is huge for the defense with respect to the homicide charge; if these preliminary findings are not rebutted, I would expect them to result in an acquittal on homicide. Of course, regardless of what the cause of death is determined to be, this cop’s actions were atrocious. There has to be at least some sort of felony battery here. And an example for every cop in America of something they should never do.
It’s difficult for a lot of people with underlying medical conditions to breath if they’re laying face down, never mind with some dickhead’s knee on their neck. If you’re have a hard time breathing, then your cardiovascular is working a lot harder. So yeah, maybe he died of a heart attack, the cop who held him down still killed him.
Also, all of the cops I read on other forums were losing their minds over this video, before the riots broke out. I expect the prosecution will have no trouble finding use of force instructors to testify against this dickhead.
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Those preliminary findings don’t acquit him of murder. They’re hiring another person to do another autopsy, as could be expected, but having some other underlying cause kill you doesn’t mean you would have died if someone wasn’t pressing their knee on you. All in all, it was 8 minutes, with 2.5 minutes of still-kneeling on the guy’s neck after he had completely lost responsiveness, and he didn’t even stop when one of the cops said they couldn’t find a pulse. Nobody even did CPR on him after they couldn’t find a pulse. There’s so much more than an autopsy report to base things off of here. Police are very, very rarely convicted in these circumstances, but this is fairly cut-and-dry, regardless of a preliminary autopsy report.
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As a former criminal defense attorney, here’s the distinction I’d expect the defense to make: Sure, maybe he died because he was being restrained. But the cops had a right to restrain him. What they didn’t have a right to do was put a knee on his neck. Is the knee on the neck specifically what caused his death? That’s the question they will focus on. Doubtless, there will be any number of people who will testify that Chauvin was way, way out of line in what he did, and that this tactic should never be used. But that’s really non-controversial here; I don’t expect his attorneys to try to say that his conduct was reasonable, since that’s obviously a pretty tough sell. Rather, they will likely focus on causation. It will certainly be interesting to see what the second examination concludes. It is always possible that the prosecution will find further evidence to rebut the preliminary conclusion.
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Unfortunately, people will likely be burning more of the country to the ground based on these examiner’s findings. That’s not the examiner’s fault.
How well is trauma like this actually studied? Who, aside from people training martial arts, even spends any time in a situation like that? I’m sure doctors have their ways of knowing what will happen, but it is obviously not an experiment you can run on people.
Even then, the closest most of us will get is getting caught in a one-sided blood choke that isn’t in super-deep and riding it out to the edge of going black. It takes more time for your world to start closing in on you than it does when someone has you dead-to-rights in a really good RNC, which pinches both carotid arteries. That can come on pretty fast. Either way, you tap out and do it again in training. No big deal.
I’m trying to imagine the pressure from knee-on-neck while you float in and out of that borderline zone where your world starts to close in, right before you go out. I’m also imagining that with the panic you feel when you’re getting your ass beaten combined with the panic you feel as a new trainee, when you’re getting crushed and you’re helpless to stop it.
What is it like to spend nine minutes in that world, without the benefit of years of training and thousands of hours of mat time? What might the secondary physiological effects of that be?
I don’t think it will require a great leap to imagine deadly outcomes.
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I remember a BJJ instructor was showing how to defend the collar choke from being mounted. He had someone mount him and put his hands in his collar. He was talking perfectly fine. Then, he just went out. The guy mounted on him was surprised since he wasn’t trying to actually choke him. But the pressure was enough to make the instructor pass out and not even realize he was going out. He woke up and after he realized he went out, he laughed about it but it did demonstrate how blood chokes can work even when you aren’t really trying. You don’t need to use a lot of strength or even perfect technique.
I was passing someone’s open guard while he was trying to collar choke me. I didn’t think I could get choked out from there so I just saw it as an opportunity to pass as he was preoccupied with choking me. As I was getting past his legs, I went out, but my body kept moving and I woke up a second later side mounted on the guy. He had no clue I went out as I had no clue I was going to go out. We can laugh about these things because it’s part of training but to be slowly going out like Floyd, must have been terrifying.
It will be interesting to see what Ryron and Rener Gracie say about this if they put out one of their video breakdowns.
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Definitely true. However, his attorneys will talk a lot about reasonable doubt, and then try to create it.
And no question, George Floyd was likely going through hell those 8 minutes. No human being should be treated that way. That’s one of the challenges Chauvin’s attorneys will face. Their client seems like a particularly sadistic character.
Just because/take down of the week right there…