George Floyd Arrest Body Camera Footage Released

Not that anyone cares anymore, because the Summer of BLM was never really about George Floyd, but for anyone who is interested, they’ve finally released the body cam footage from the May 25 fatal encounter:

https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1290344057781313536?s=20

Right off the bat, this guy Floyd is clearly on drugs or something. He’s having a nervous breakdown, sobbing and calling for his mother.

The media, of course, will use this to portray Floyd as a blameless victim, childlike in his innocence. “A gut wrenching look at just how terrifying it is to be black in America,” I’m sure. Because we all know police are out to get black people at all times.

White liberals will be tripping over themselves to let the whole world know how painful it was for them to hear the anguish and terror in George Floyd’s voice. Because as we all know, white liberals are the Real Victims Here. Because they just care so damn much about black people!

The Daily Mail, which I believe was the first outlet to release the new footage today, is framing it exactly how you’d expect:

“After the struggle to get Floyd in the cop car”

That’s a minor detail, huh?

At the 1:47 mark, a woman who I assume was a passenger in Floyd’s car yells at Floyd and says, “Stop resisting!”

I said this within days of Floyd’s deaths: George Floyd wasn’t killed because he’s black, he was killed because he was resisting. When you resist arrest and give the cops a hard time, all bets are off. Your safety cannot be guaranteed at that point.

I don’t think Floyd was resisting badly enough to warrant being killed. I don’t think the police were right to kill him. But he was definitely not cooperating with the police. At that point, you’re on your own.

At 2:10, the officer tells him “Stop resisting” and Floyd says, “I’m not!”

The first half of Part 2 shows us only a brief glimpse of Floyd, it’s mostly focused on the officer who is dealing with the passengers in Floyd’s car. They’re giving the officer a hard time, constantly protesting “I didn’t do nothing!” “We were just getting a ride from him” etc. The officer asks the one lady for her ID and she says she doesn’t have it.

https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1290344336761200646?s=20

Just a general lack of respect for law enforcement. That’s not going to do you any favors.

The officer asks the woman why George Floyd is acting so erratic. She says she doesn’t know. He asks if he’s on drugs. She says no, but that “he’s been shot before” and “he has a thing going on” and points at her head, as in a mental condition or something. “What’s that mean” the officer asks. “He’s got problems, especially when they had a gun pointed at him like that” she responds, in reference to when the officer pulled a gun on Floyd as he approached the car and Floyd would not cooperate.

The last half of Part 2 goes back to Floyd, who is clearly very upset. The police ask him if he’s one drugs, he says no. Then they start walking him across the street to the other police car. This is the “missing” part of the footage we never got when the story first broke: the footage from when he was in cuffs against the wall, to the point where he ends up on the ground with an officer’s knee on his neck.

Floyd is despondent and sobbing, the officers go to put him in the back of the squad car and at the end of Part 2, you can hear the officer say, “Get up, stop falling down.”

Parts 3 and 4 are just the officers trying to get him in the car, and him continually refusing. Eventually by Part 4, he’s halfway in the car, the officer with the body camera that we’re watching goes around to the other side to pull him through from the back, and Floyd starts screaming and presumably thrashing around. He’s obviously not complying with the officers at all even though they’ve asked him countless times to simply get in the car. He keeps saying “I want to be on the ground” and “I’m claustrophobic” to avoid going in the police car. He then yells “I can’t breathe” even before the officer is on his neck.

https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1290344883585261573?s=20

I’m trying to be objective here, but the main thing I took away from this was that Floyd was non-compliant, he was erratic, he seemed like he was on drugs or in an altered state of mind. And of course the autopsy report said he was on fentanyl and methamphetamine:

It seemed like the officers were being reasonable with him. I still don’t think Floyd deserved to die, as his resisting did not appear to rise to the level of actively trying to harm the arresting officers. But he clearly was not the innocent victim the media is portraying him as.

He died because he had prior medical conditions and was on drugs. Of course his heart attack was probably set off by the high-stress situation of being subdued by an officer’s knee on his neck. But the only reason he was in that situation was because he did not comply with the officers and just go into the police car.