It has been described here many times. But do you really want the whole story?
It starts many years before the encounter. Officer Derek Chauvin had more than eighteen complaints against him. Many of those complaints were sustained, or upheld as accurate.
In other words. He did it. His superiors knew he did it. And he had a pattern of doing it.
They describe an officer quick to use force and callous about their pain.
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They told good old Chauvin several times to not do these things. Now with that many complaints and more still rolling in before that fateful day. We have three possible explanations.
Either A) Chauvin didn’t think the bosses were serious. They were just checking the block so to speak. B) The bosses were not serious in letting Chauvin know this sort of thing was wrong. Or finally C) A mix of the two, where the Bosses could have been a bit more emphatic but were not.
Now remember. Many of these complaints were upheld. Chauvin had a history of excessive force. Maybe just across that line, but a history.
What we are certain of is that the Minneapolis Police trained Chauvin that once the suspect was restrained to end the kneeling control trick. They told him it was dangerous. He had five complaints from its use after the individual was in restraints before. Five complaints.
So what we have is a guy who has a habit of doing things he knows he isn’t supposed to. Maybe he thought the danger of Positional Asphyxia was bullshit. Maybe he thought he was too good to let that happen. Maybe he thought he just knew what was really going on.
What we know is that they told him not to do it and he did it more than once.
The thing about breaking rules is that you might get away with it from time to time. You might get away with it many times. You might even get away with it for life. It depends on something else now. Luck. Leaving your fate to luck isn’t a great plan.
I was a Combat Engineer in the Army. We did a lot of things that were potentially dangerous. And we were trained to follow the rules and minimize the danger. Something an instructor told me in Basic Training always stuck in my mind. The rules were written in the blood of those who didn’t follow that rule.
Chauvin knew the rules. He decided to flaunt them. He decided to do what he thought was right. He took the risk. And as almost always happens eventually his luck ran out.
We know that 44 people lost consciousness while this procedure was being used in Minneapolis. So we know that the cops are aware it can be dangerous.
Floyd was a bad guy. A drug addict and career petty criminal. But that doesn’t matter. As a society we expect such people to be arrested and tried for their crimes. Personally I think treatment has a better success rate than incarceration. But that is irrelevant for this discussion.
We as a society believe that if someone dies at the hands of another, that other better have a good reason. And here is where Chauvin lost before any trial took place.
There are some good explanations for a person dying at the hands of cops. And none of them apply.
1) I didn’t do it. The video and Chauvin’s own statement make it clearly impossible for the it wasn’t me defense.
2) I was doing my job and following policy and procedure. The line of duty defense. But that defense doesn’t work unless you are actually following the policies and procedures.
3) I was afeared for my life and/or the lives of my fellow officers or citizens. The self defense argument. Floyd was no danger to anyone. Chauvin never claimed he was.
4) It wasn’t my fault. He died from something unrelated.
This last one is what Chauvin tried in the trial. But the Prosecution demolished all of those just in case.
Now. The only things left is that Floyd was a waste of flesh and the world is better off without him. The Relative Value argument. There was a time in human history where we operated that way. But those times are long gone and relegated to the pages of history books and fiction or fantasy genres.
The last one is even worse. Floyd would have died anyway. To that I’ll answer. Maybe. Maybe he would have overdosed. Maybe he wouldn’t have. But that doesn’t matter.
Let’s say your child has Cancer. Your child will die in six months. There is no hope for a treatment. No cure is possible. If I shoot your child in the head and kill that child, would you accept that as an excuse?
That attitude in the 1970’s helped lead to the get tough on crime attitude of the 1980’s through to today. When some thug killed an old man or lady and said who cares? They were old and going to die soon anyway. We didn’t accept that. We as a society didn’t accept it.
In the end we have the testimony of even the Defense Expert. All of the medical people ruled out overdose as a cause of death. Unless they are all wrong, and some basement dweller on the internet is right, we have to conclude that Chauvin’s actions directly led to Floyd’s death. And the Defense Expert agreed with that under cross examination.