BLM Demonstrations, Riots, Police Brutality, Justice for George Floyd

[msslave]

More on yesterday's jury verdict. The three Ex-cops were tried on Federal Civil Rights crimes. The charge was depriving George Floyd of his civil rights by failing to stop a fellow officer from killing Floyd by pinning him down with a knee on his neck. That cop, Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and is serving time in prison.

Two of the Ex-cops convicted yesterday helped by holding Floyd's legs and body down as Chauvin knelt  on his neck. The other
"thug cop" held the small crowd at  bay as the pleaded for George Floyd to be let up.

The three still face criminal charges in Minnesota court. The trial is set for June. They are accused of aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter. With yesterdays guilty findings, there's speculation that a  plea bargain may be reached.

https://www.startribune.com/ex-minneapolis-officers-guilty-on-all-civil-rights-charges-related-to-george-floyds-death/600150079/

[msslave]

Another murdering cop pleads guilty. Thomas Lane entered a guilty plea tp manslaughter for his part in George Floyd's murder two years ago. A charge of aiding and abetting in second degree murder was dismissed. He's expected to be sentenced to three years in Federal prison. That will run concurrently with the Federal conviction for violating Floyd's civil rights.

According to Lane's attorney, he pled guilty to avoid a 12 year sentence if convicted on the manslaughter charge. Two remaining killer kops still remain to be tried.

https://www.startribune.com/ex-mpd-officer-thomas-lane-pleads-guilty-to-manslaughter-charge-for-role-in-george-floyds-murder/600174315/

[Pornhubby]

[msslave]

Will we ever be done with Derek (take a knee) Chauvin.
Our expol ice officer has now cost the city. Another 9 million dollars. That's the cost of the latest settlement for another victim of his brutal was.

Thankfully he's locked away for a long time. He'll be to old to hurt anyone by the time he gets out.

[purpleshoes]

I read that about him doing the same thing at least once before.

Question is, why wasn't he fired the first time?

Oh, right... nobody died because of it.

Brutality is brutality, and it cannot be tolerated.

[msslave]

We've had this culture in our police department for years. Nobody cared and just looked the other way.

After George Floyd's murder there was a mass exodus of police, some taking early retirement and many finding a doctor to say they were suffering from PDSD following the riots.

Staffing for the department fell by a third. Many calls have gone unanswered. New training procedures are being put in place and other reform's continue to be announced.

Lots of talk and politicians getting to stand in front of news microphones. Still how can we expect change that's been ingrained into these cops over the years.

[Pornhubby]

I have long suspected that there is a certain mind set that is attracted to law enforcement work. Perhaps people who were protected by law enforcement as a child and want to pay it forward. But also people with an inferiority complex who need to lord it over others. If you believe the media, there’s more of the second group represented.

Officers are constantly barraged with the message that that they should be afraid, that their survival depends on it. Not only do officers hear it in formal training, they also hear it informally from supervisors and older officers. They talk about it with their peers. They see it on police forums and law enforcement publications. All of this is a prescription for disaster as we unleash a heavily armed individual with a “warrior complex” on the public.

The only suggestion I’ve seen that makes sense is to separate “to protect“ and “to serve.“ We need the S.W.A.T. team for truly dangerous situations involving heavily armed individuals (thank you 2nd Amendment). But we don’t need paramilitary gear for dealing with mental illness, homelessness, substance abuse, or family conflict. The use of force in these situations should be scaled way down, and should be dealt with by professionals with specific educational qualifications in those fields.

We can hope for reform, but I’m not holding my breath.

[msslave]

There's been a push here for years to get mental health professionals to be involved in certain emergency calls. One of the arguments used against that is who decides on to send when an emergency calls come in. I feel the 911 operators are very professional and with a little more training they'd handle those early decisions.

[Dudester]

There's been a push here for years to get mental health professionals to be involved in certain emergency calls. One of the arguments used against that is who decides on to send when an emergency calls come in. I feel the 911 operators are very professional and with a little more training they'd handle those early decisions.

I have been both a cop and a 911 operator. There is absolutely no way that a 911 operator can detect on what will happen at a domestic call anymore than Steve Forbes can detect what the economy will do from reading the tea leaves in Greg Gutfeld's tea cup. In addition, for cops, there is no call more dangerous than a domestic call, anything and everything can happen.

With boomers retiring and Gen X-ers being much more interested in staying home with computers, along with a marked decrease in the national maturity level (50 years ago, books and movies were written so young adults could understand the material, now, books and movies are written for twelve year olds), there has been a drop off in the quality, of not only those joining the military, but also those going into public service (cops and firefighters). Boomers were children of people that had tackled the nazi scourge and Japanese fanaticism. Boomers understood what it meant to take back the streets ("let's shut them down"), but millenials and Gen X'ers are genuinely afraid to physically tackle an out of control person. They are taught to use tazers, but those are completely ineffective against people under the control of certain substances. The step between using a tazer and using a gun is physical force. I took 15 years of martial arts before I became a cop (swing on me? big mistake, BIG mistake). People going into police work are only used to that crap seen in bar fights and school yard fights (the fight lasts 20-30 seconds, max. Take on an enraged drunk, even with the advantage of 15 years of martial arts experience, that fight could take up to five minutes) .
To survive on the streets takes street smarts, mental toughness, great training and a certain amount of physicality. The majority of today's cops are missing one or more of those qualities and it is a generational issue, not an institutional issue.

[msslave]

FINALLY!!!

The last Policeman in the George Floyd murder has been found guilty. Tou Thao was found guilty by the judge who presided over the televised Derek Chauvin trial.

It's been nearly three years since four cops combined to kill Floyd by using forbidden holds to restrain Floyd.  Thao was the officer who held back the crowd that was begging that the 3 x-cops get off George Floyd. The bystanders could see he was being killed.

Now "justice" has been leveled on all four killer cops. That may be be behind us, but much remains to be done. The toxic culture remains in the Minneapolis Police Department. Even though many have resigned or retired on medical reasons (PTSD), not much has changed. The same union still has a firm grip making discipline by supervisors a joke.

The judge who finding Thao guilty was the.same judge who presided at the Chauvin trial. His 170+ page decision soundly dismissed Thao's claim of innocence.

https://www.startribune.com/hennepin-county-tou-thao-mpd-officer-george-floyd-killing-manslaughter-cahill-minneapolis-police/600271709/

[Pornhubby]

Takeaways from the scathing report on Minneapolis police after George Floyd's killing (from @AP) https://apnews.com/article/358033a677e82f4b48c6b15197352d45

[msslave]

Our police have been a f##king embarrassing joke that have run amok for decades. Millions of dollars have been paid out by the city due to their excessive use of force. Another report is out today about their failure to handle domestic abuse cases in a proper manor.

Somehow years ago the police union gained a strong upper hand over control of the department. Nothing will change until the union is dismantled IMHO.

[msslave]

Derek Chauvin's appeal of his conviction for George Floyd's murder has been turned down by the Minnesota Supreme Court. His final resort is the U.S. Supreme Court. There's little chance they would consider the matter. They're just too busy trampling on the rights of voters and free speech. I digress. Anyway looks like Chauvin will stay locked up for a long time yet.

Gotta love justice... when it works.

https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-supreme-court-declines-to-hear-derek-chauvins-petition-for-appeal/600290868/

[msslave]

The last of the 4 cops involved in the death of George Floyd was sentenced in court Monday. Tou Thau was sentenced to nearly 5 years for his roll in George Floyd's murder. Thau was the former officer that kept the crowd away as the other three sat on George Floyd until he was dead. The sentence will run concurrent with the civil rights charges he's already pleaded guilty to.

https://www.startribune.com/tou-thao-sentenced-nearly-5-years-aiding-george-floyds-killing/600295391/

[msslave]

Opened up the newspaper on my phone first thing. Top headline of the day, Derek Chauvin was stabbed and seriously injured in prison where he's serving time for murdering Georgia Floyd.

Chauvin is serving a 21 year Federal sentence for violating Floyd's civil rights and  a 221/2 year state sentence for second degree murder.

https://www.startribune.com/report-derek-chauvin-stabbed-seriously-injured-in-prison/600322234/

Little information is being released. My first thought on seeing the headline was GOOD! Then I immediately regretted that. No matter what Chauvin did to George Floyd he doesn't deserve to be attacked.

The life of a former policeman in prison has to be a daily trial before. Hard to say what's ahead for Chauvin. All those years left on his sentence being kept in solitary confinement would be worse than a death sentence, IMO.

[Dudester]

A new documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis, is out.
https://mustreadalaska.com/watch-the-fall-of-minneapolis-documentary-with-new-details-surrounding-george-floyds-death/
The documentary brings up some interesting points:

1) When George Floyd was held on the ground, Derek Chauvin's knee was on Floyd's clavicle (as per police required procedure), not his neck. Furthermore, among the drugs found in Floyd's blood was fentanyl. An ambulance called to the scene, actually went to an address 8 blocks away, and then took 20 minutes to travel the 8 blocks. Mix all of this with any pre existing condition, plus Floyd being restrained, and you can see why Floyd died.

Proof beyond a reasonable doubt means that the case lacks probable cause to appeal and based on the above, if you say Chauvin is guilty guilty guilty and this case lacks merit to appeal, ask yourself if you were in legal trouble and there was reasonable doubt to appeal and a judge/jury refused your appeal, would you consider this fair?

2) The judge insisted on the trial taking place in Minneapolis as there was massive media coverage on the trial, and thus, the chance of an untainted jury was tiny, given the threat of massive destructive riots if Chauvin was found innocent. This is actually, very much akin to a black man, in the year 1960, in Alabama, facing an all white jury. Yes, there was going a particular verdict found, no matter what happened. Do you think this was fair?

I was a cop and given the circumstances, I would not have handled the situation the way it played out. Floyd was being detained because he allegedly passed a counterfeit bill. Myself, I would have written a ticket to appear and alerted federal authorities as passing a counterfeit bill is a federal function anyway. With that said, there are some suspects that just won't cooperate. You try to explain that this will take five minutes and if they cooperate, they'll quickly be on their way, but no, they want to fight, thus going from paying a small fine to facing multiple felonies.

[Shiela_M]

There are numerous pictures out there where you can clearly see that the knee is on his neck, and the nonchalant way Chauvin had his hands in his pocket shows he doesn't see Floyd as a threat of resisting.
Being a MP in the army I was trained on restraining, and there are a few things I noticed in the pictures and videos, and make me agree with the verdict.

The problem none of us where there, and we are all basing opinions (because nothing we say here are hard facts) on second hand reports and biased news. Yes ALL news is biased.

[Dudester]

There are numerous pictures out there where you can clearly see that the knee is on his neck, and the nonchalant way Chauvin had his hands in his pocket shows he doesn't see Floyd as a threat of resisting.
Being a MP in the army I was trained on restraining, and there are a few things I noticed in the pictures and videos, and make me agree with the verdict.

The problem none of us where there, and we are all basing opinions (because nothing we say here are hard facts) on second hand reports and biased news. Yes ALL news is biased.

I guess we have to agree to disagree, but because of the color of Chauvin's pants, the color of Floyd's skin and the low quality of the picture (made from a very shaky video) that leaves much to individual interpretation, but let me ask you this: If the next 25 years of your life were on the line and THE only piece of evidence was a still from a low quality and shaky video, wouldn't you point that out to a judge (or judge panel) and ask "Is this proof beyond a reasonable doubt?"

I was a cop in a small town and the only anglo in a hispanic police force and every single one of my arrests was called into question, every. single. time. That camera saved me time and time and time again.
Did I use too much force? (in any arrest)
Was I right to draw my gun when the suspect (at night) emerged from a dark corner behind a house with his hand behind his back ?

BTW, I was also was an MP in the Army before becoming a street cop, but by the time I became an MP, I already had 9 years of martial arts (judo/karate) experience before becoming an MP and I continued the martial arts while being an MP, so I call your restraining class and raise you one well trained sensei.

[Shiela_M]

If the next 25 years of your life were on the line and THE only piece of evidence was a still from a low quality and shaky video, wouldn't you point that out to a judge (or judge panel) and ask "Is this proof beyond a reasonable doubt?"

You mean if I was apprehending a suspect with three other officers, and even though the suspect is on the ground with handcuffs on and I felt he was so little a threat that I could just chill out on his neck with my hands in my pockets. I think I would question myself before anything else. If my ineptitude led to an unnecessary death, then I wouldnt question anything.

Now, if you watch the video, instead of looking at stills, and dispite skin and clothing color, it is still obvious to anyone who sees it that floyd is moving his shoulder quite a bit meaning the knee was not on the clavicle. And there is the angle of Chauvin's leg.

I would think with that much experience and knowledge you have, you'd have noticed these things. The jury of his peers that convicted him with no experience could see it.

[Dudester]

If the next 25 years of your life were on the line and THE only piece of evidence was a still from a low quality and shaky video, wouldn't you point that out to a judge (or judge panel) and ask "Is this proof beyond a reasonable doubt?"

I would think with that much experience and knowledge you have, you'd have noticed these things. The jury of his peers that convicted him with no experience could see it.

What I noticed was how shaky the camera was. If I was the DA (and I did an internship in a DA's office in college) I wouldn't hang a murder charge, I would have gone for involuntary manslaughter. And as far as the jury, the case was tried in Minneapolis when there should have been a change of venue to a small town far from Minneapolis. Granted, there would have been a jury tainted because of the overwhelming amount of coverage the case drew, but it would have been a fairer jury than in Minneapolis.