Video emerges of Minneapolis police killing a citizen - - Riots

[vienna]

This TV news report has a snippet from a surveillance/security camera across the street from the scene where George Floyd died; at about :28 into the report, Floyd is shown being walked by two police officers across the street to a police vehicle as they get to the car, it appears Floyd trips or slips on the edge of the sidewalk next to the vehicle; up to that point, Floyd is not seen giving any resistance to the officers as they usher him to the vehicle:





Note that Floyd falls on the sidewalk side of the vehicle, but the death scene is on the opposite side of the vehicle; it would be interesting to see what happened during the move to the other side of the cruiser. Regardless of what transpired during those moments moving from one side of the vehicle to the other, there is no excuse for the actions of four officers leading a single non-resistant person to a car to use force way out of scale to not only the nature of the alleged crime Floyd was being accused of but, also, towards a compliant suspect. The knee to the neck is reminiscent of the choke/sleeper holds police officers used to use until they were banned in almost all police jurisdictions; the knee to the neck has the same potentially lethal effects of the banned holds: constriction of breathing airways, blockage of major arteries in the neck, the preventing of blood flow to the brain. There are other newly posted videos on YT of the incident, including some police body cam footage, and all, so far, shows a rather routine, non-threatening sort of encounter; officers seem to be almost casual about the whole encounter up until Floyd falls off the curb of the sidewalk. There were two other persons in Floyd's car at the time of his arrest and even they are not resisting and are shown as being rather casual about the situation...

I support the police departments, but I am not blind to the fact there are those who wear the badge who shouldn't. Even among the ranks of the officers, there is a disdain for the rouge or corrupt officers who make it all the more difficult for the vast majority of good officers to do their jobs and gain the trust of those they serve. There is a unit in the LAPD called the Metro Squad that had a very less then stellar reputation; they moved from area to area of the city and were tasked with 'cleaning up' crime rises as they occurred; their tactics, ethics, and morals were the subject of much criticism both inside and outside the force; for decades patrol officers dreaded the appearance of Metro in their areas because Metro would swoop in, indulge in their heavy handed brand of "justice" and leave, leaving the patrol officers to have to deal with the negative fallout from Metros actions. Metro, now, is a whole different team; the ineffectual Police Chief at the time of the 1992 riots was given the boot and subsequent chiefs, notably Bill Bratton, who did a through cleansing and reorganization/modernization of the LAPD, have made the force more acceptable to LA citizens; the level of respect shown to the LAPD officers now is remarkable in contrast with the former levels of distrust and fear...

The time is long overdue for police agencies to face the reality that coddling bad officers is a disservice to the fine work done by the larger majority of good officers; the same goes for the police unions: the automatic, knee-jerk, all-in backing a blatantly bad officers serves no purpose other than the harm of the good officers they are supposed to represent...




<O>