I’ll preface this by saying I’m well-aware the horse is already out of the barn. The court of public opinion has already long since made up its mind that George Floyd was killed for the crime of being black, and for no other reason.
I’ll also add that I’m completely open to the fact that the police killed him.
I just want to figure out what happened. Because it seems like nobody really knows. Again, I understand nobody really cares, either, but there should at least be some priority given to facts, shouldn’t there?
I’ve seen two videos of the incident: the one with officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck, and then the security camera footage from the storefront that shows the officers apprehending Floyd. In the latter footage, which people are citing to prove Floyd didn’t resist, the officers can be seen slapping the cuffs on him and then starting to lead him towards the police car. Here’s a still:
Somehow, Floyd ended up in this situation:
What I don’t understand is how Floyd went from being escorted by police to being on the street underneath an officer’s knee.
What happened between Picture 1 and Picture 2?
New York Post says “video doesn’t appear to show George Floyd resisting arrest”:
But we don’t have video of the entire sequence of events. So how do we know he wasn’t resisting?
Most people are recoiling at the visual of the officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck. I agree, it looks very bad. There’s a video that’s over 9 minutes long that shows the officers with Floyd on the ground:
Hope that doesn’t come to St. Cloud #GeorgeFloyd pic.twitter.com/Z1558aOjt9
— YaBoii (@YaBoii00073728) May 28, 2020
But it doesn’t show how he got into that position. I would be willing to bet a scuffle or something happened from the time he was first apprehended to the time he wound up underneath the officer’s knee.
When you’re handcuffed, you go to the police cruiser and they put you in the back. For some reason, that did not happen with George Floyd. The process did not go smoothly, for some currently unknown reason.
No cause of death has been released, according to Star Tribune.
The DA investigation is still ongoing, and today the DA of Hennepin County said that “there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge” against the officers involved in George Floyd’s death.
NEW: Minnesota prosecutor says video showing George Floyd's death is "terrible" but says there's "other evidence that does not support a criminal charge" pic.twitter.com/X3hzxQJtfe
— BNO News (@BNONews) May 28, 2020
The knee on the neck video looks bad. The officer is in that position on top of Floyd for over nine minutes, and Floyd is clearly unconscious for a good 4-5 minutes of that. The officer has to know Floyd is unconscious because the bystanders on the street keep yelling it at him over and over.
We’ll have to wait and see what the official verdict is. We need to see the full video of his arrest: from the moment he is handcuffed to the moment the police officer gets him on the ground and puts Floyd’s neck under his knee. We need to see how it went from A to B.
The DA is in a horrible position. There is no more impossible job in America than the DA investigating this case. Either you clear the cops and provide the mob with an excuse for more looting and rioting, or you sentence a potentially innocent man to a very long prison sentence.
I don’t know if the cop is innocent or guilty. He definitely doesn’t look innocent from the video. Although I’m sure he didn’t have his full weight on the knee that was on Floyd’s neck, that still didn’t look good.