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On May 25 in Minneapolis, George Floyd’s heart stopped beating after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, according to a medical examiner. Floyd, an Africa,-American, was a 46-year-old petty criminal taken into custody on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. His family later released the results of a private autopsy which concluded the cause of death was asphyxiation from sustained pressure. Floyd died as a result of indisputable police brutality that saw the four policemen involved fired. The incident has justifiably ignited a keg of public outrage that has spanned the globe in the last week.
Such a tragic and preventable tale of police thuggery has received the response that anyone with an ounce of justice and investigatory know-how would expect. Derek Chauvin — the police officer who applied the lethal force – has been hit with the now elevated charge of second-degree murder. The other three officers, previously uncharged, now face counts of aiding and abetting murder. On May 28, the United States Department of Justice released a joint statement with the FBI saying they had made the investigation into Floyd’s death “a top priority”. President Trump and leaders around the world have publicly denounced the actions of the police and expressed their deepest sympathies to Floyd’s family.
None of this response has been unusual; indeed, it was to be entirely expected and its absence would have been cause for further concern. The most striking element of the George Floyd incident has been the hysterical response from quarters of society that in many ways comprised all of the nasty themes of evidence-free illogic, peculiar self-flagellation and stunningly wild rhetoric that has become the normal run-sheet when an event of this kind transpires. It was as if someone flung open a box brimming with latent indignation and sulphurous grievance which have now washed over the world in newsfeeds and all forms of media. Of course, the greatest sign of a robust democracy is the ability to criticise the government and its cornerstone institutions, including its police force. Long may we live in a society where this remains an option.
But overstatement when discussing these nuanced and sensitive topics pours petrol on the fire.
William Gladstone once opined that “men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic”. Many arguments have been made, allegations screeched and placards waved since May 25, and somewhere during all the heated politicking, that precious touch of logic has evaporated. When evidence, logic and a dose of measure are usurped by fury, dishonesty and a pint of hysteria, lessons go unlearned and discourse turns unproductive before it has a chance to be otherwise.
Of all the outrageous utterances pinging around the corners of the internet, none captures the essence of overstatement better than the conclusion that officers like Derek Chauvin are illustrative of systemic racism within our institutions of law enforcement. As contemptible as Derek Chauvin’s actions were, to posit that he is the face of a vicious racism calibrated to inflict endless injustice on non-whites is a farcical fiction. To claim that institutionalised racism is the very backbone of our criminal justice systems requires an extraordinary amount of intellectual dishonesty. Very often these statements attached to social media posts are accompanied by no evidence – the posters choosing to forget the cardinal rule of high-school level analysis that demands evidence to support a claim.
The claim that the justice system and law enforcement are ‘systemically racist’ has long been a central tenant of the Black Lives Matter movement. However, very often this school of thought ignores the quiet truth that disparities in incarceration levels and police interactions can often be a product of issues other than discrimination; instead emanating from cultural issues such as the trend of fatherlessness in the black community or rates of crime being committed disproportionately by that community. Coleman Hughes, has written brilliantly on this topic. Now those facts are tragedies and issues within their own right and need to be ameliorated with haste, but they remain a more plausible justification for statistical disparities than the lazier and commonly-accepted “the system is racist”.
On the matter of racist policing there is a slew of evidence suggesting this is simply not true. Roland Fryer, a black sociologist studying crime who is tenured at Harvard, conducted an empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force and found no detectable racial differences in officer-instigated shootings. After controlling for suspect demographics and officer demographics, the study found blacks are 27.4 per cent less likely to be shot by police, relative to non-black or Hispanics. Now let this be clear: this is not to say that racism does not exist, or individual police officers like Chauvin aren’t rogue racists. As the Fryer paper’s abstract puts it: “On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities.” But the leap to systemic racism is a far higher charge and needs a little more proof to be sustained.
For people to genuinely believe that America is a dangerous place for blacks, or that Australia is a dangerous place for Aborigines, shows how far the termites have spread and how well they have dined. These beliefs conveniently overlook the eye-watering largesse of governments in rolling out affirmative action policies, university scholarships and other social measures such as the Close the Gap health initiative to ‘balance the scales’. To hold these views about the most progressive and egalitarian societies the human race has been able to construct is representative of an entire generation having been fed a libellous diet of intellectual mush over a prolonged period.
The lies we have been fed and continue to devour with not a blink of scrutiny is a sad indictment of the times in which we live which has seen the triumph of emotions over evidence. It is in part a result of wild rhetoric from public figures, such as Gayle King, the co-host of CBS This Morning, who claims Floyd’s death shows that it is “open season on black men” and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey’s saying that “being black in America, should not be a death sentence”. This is absurdly unhelpful rhetoric to be injecting into the public discourse. The previously cited Roland Fryer becoming the youngest African-American to ever receive tenure at Harvard, not to mention the presidency of Barack Obama, certainly does not accord with claims black men are facing an “open season” or a “death sentence” simply because of their skin colour.
While these baseless and divisive moans can be swiftly hit for six, the problem is that they are being made in the first place by people in influential positions. The result? An entire generation has been lobotomised to accept the lie that systemic racism exists. It is a peculiarly masochistic tendency for people to instinctively turn against their essential institutions, and in some cases themselves. I struggle to see the systemically racist undertones of unanimous denunciations of the Floyd incident from those of all political persuasions.
The second problem with the overstatement is the supercilious and righteous protection of it that makes any critique impossible. This is where the over-staters pre-emptively paint any dissenters as reprehensible before discourse can even begin. Examples of this include social media posts exhorting others to, “stop engaging with or talking to people you know to be racist”. Well, I am certainly glad that Martin Luther King or Frederick Douglas did not adopt that tactic. Another meme is “anyone framing their argument around property damage as being a disproportionate response is not worthy of your time”. Well, you can divorce the Floyd tragedy from a chosen response and hold differing views on the two without mourning the demise of Jim Crow laws and segregated lunch counters. Again, these feeble points can be swiftly dispatched without too much intellectual might, but the fact that they are being used as a tactic to disarm and vilify anyone who dares to swim against the current of public opinion is the issue. The overstatement could not exist if it were not wrapped in an impenetrable cloak of morally righteous justification that leaves zero room for diversity of opinion.
As a libertarian constantly on the look-out for instances of government overreach, there is nothing more that summons my rebellious juices than police brutality. I look forward to Derek Chauvin receiving a punishment commensurate with his wrong. We cannot afford police brutality and we should never excuse the death of a man who should still be alive. But we must get over overstatement.
Tristan Heiner is a recent law graduate from the University of Queensland
There is something involved here that is far less imaginary than “systemic racism”.
That is the war that is being waged by the shadow government, typically called the “Deep State” and the legitimate government.
The objective of the insurgents is the overthrow of the legitimate administration in order to reinstate the control exercised over previous administrations for several decades.
There are no rules in this war. There appears to be no limit to the resources of such perps as George Soros, either.
Consider the events of May 25 in Minneapolis. Videos show Floyd in handcuffs being led to a police car. Restrained as he was, Chauvin chose to apply a restraint technique taught by Israeli trainers. All the while, as the videos rolled, there was no conversation between Chauvin and Floyd…for nearly nine minutes. There was no conversation among the police officers. What were they waiting for? Backup? Chauvin had all the backup he needed right there. The video typically shown is taken from the left side of the police car, where the other three officers are not visible. There are other videos taken from the other side of the street. The three officers seem disinterested, as though they are only there for the scene.
What this spells out is a setup. This drama was staged.
Both Chauvin and Floyd were employees of the Rodeo nightclub, which is known to have been actively counterfeiting US currency. Chauvin was outside security when off duty as an officer. Floyd was inside security. Floyd had not been paid for some time due to the lockdown. It is not hard to connect the dots and suggest that this was an execution to prevent Floyd from spilling the beans about the illegal activities at the rodeo.
Chauvin has been charged. The charge has been elevated to murder she wrote. In order to get a conviction, it will be necessary to prove that his intention was to execute the victim. How can it be proved beyond doubt that it was an accident in the performance of his duties?
The family had an autopsy performed which suggests that George died of asphyxiation. However, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner says that Floyd suffered from Hypertensive heart disease, and had methamphetamines and Fentanyl in his system, and there was “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation”.
Therefore, a conviction will require proof of intent, as well as proof that cause of death was the restraint technique. What are the chances of a conviction?
Were this event to be investigate thoroughly, I suspect that it would be clear that it was the staged execution of a black man by the police in order to give substance to the riots that have been planned for weeks.
“Overstating” is the curse of our times. Feminists do this all the time (they are also the originators of this “whiteness” and “white privilege” rubbish). They go very quickly from things like no woman had voting rights before x year to insisting that men (implication ALL men) have had the vote for “centuries”! In truth the time between universal male suffrage in say SA and female suffrage was about 35 years. A generation. In Britain, it was a decade, and women over 30 had the vote at the start of that time! But try telling this to a feminist! They don’t want to know, and in part this is because without the idea that all men (at least all white men) have had vast advantage that all women have been denied, feminist theories (a debased form of Marxism) would be exposed as rubbish!
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So we have to swallow the idea that imply that Elizabeth I had fewer rights and power than some male peasant being forced off his land in 16th Century Yorkshire, or now that a homeless white man in the US has more “privilege” than Michael Jackson or Oprah!
BLUE LIVES MATTER!! Save the Smurfs.
BLACK LIES MATTER!!
Roland Fryer was on the latest Goodfellows podcast with Niall Ferguson and his Hoover mates. Check it out; it’s an excellent podcast.
Connected to these large-scale protests, all against the lock-down rules so zealously enforced until this weekend, is the scientific advent of an actual real experiment, in real time, with a control. Something quite rare.
We watch with hard eye the results of these protests over the next two weeks for any spikes in C-19 infections. Over the five Aus cities, about 70,000 people jammed in together for a number of hours. This is the biggest test sample we’ve ever had in this current pandemic – and we have a control since we already *know* the number of reported infections at this time.
If there are no spikes, then the restrictions should be lifted immediately, with only aged care homes and international border closures remaining. If there are obvious spikes, we go into the supermarket wars all over.
This should be watched with hard, eagle eye since the various authorities, MSM and politicos will do their very best to run dead on this.
All you meeja vanities – we are watching.
rod.stuart
I too questioned these events…from Chauvin turning up to the scene last (after what seemed like an appropriate amount of time for someone to call him or for him to respond after hearing details of the arrest on his police radio) to him walking straight over and kneeling on Floyd’s neck He looked like a robot completing a command…he even pulled pepper spray out at one point to discourage a bystander from getting too close. Why would you continue to kneel on an unconscious mans neck if not to make sure he was dead? Of course this is all speculation…but if Chauvin was sent to silence Floyd in regard to the illegal activities of their mutual employer then surely the call by the club’s owner, Santamaria, to have Chauvin “punished”…
(“We have to make Derek Chauvin an example so that police around the country realize that it’s not OK, and they’re not going to get away with it and there will be repercussions”)…is also questionable. Is this punishment that is being called for because he murdered Floyd or because her club is now exposed because of the public nature of the murder of Floyd.
The second most disturbing aspect, after the first of course being that Floyd was murdered at all, is that despite being filmed Chauvin murdered him in public, in broad daylight and having no doubt of getting away with it…something that black men in America that have been a victim of police abuse know all too well. Perhaps this time they will be listened…In attempting to silence Floyd the opposite has inadvertently been achieved.
And now to the issue of the looting that has taken place during the protests…footage showing it has been conducted by civilians and police alike… and also to the fact that Floyd felt it necessary to use a counterfeit note…I have but one comment, a quote by Thomas Moore…
“Instead of inflicting these horrible punishments, it would be far more to the point to provide everyone with some means of livelihood, so that nobody’s under the frightful necessity of becoming first a thief and then a corpse”.
Floyd was not murdered. This was negligence, and Floyd almost certainly died from other causes, so it would be nice if conservatives would stop virtue signalling about police brutality along with the lefties.
The policeman hasn’t even had a day in court yet. For a magazine that has so lamented the unfair conviction of George Pell I find this article totally hypocritical.
Peter Marriott
I agree with pgang. It’s not logical to think the Police Officer could have expected to get away with murder in broad daylight in front of a whole lot of bystanders, who he knew were actually filming the whole thing. The perpetrator Floyd would almost certainly have died of other health problems, with heart being the obvious one, and a ‘private’ autopsy can come to any conclusion those asking for, and conducting it, want it to, and is therefore to be dismissed as irrelevant.
IPASPL, the left have totally won the day with their rioting and looting and conservatives have surrendered like a bunch of gormless zombies. I just had a quick look at Spiked and immediately two articles were proclaiming the ‘brutal murder’ of Floyd. It’s outrageous. There is a man sitting in prison charged with murder – a police officer no less – and even the great conservative defenders of justice are happy to see him hang without trial.
Tristan Heiner, you’ve been owned. If you’re the future of the judicial system in Australia then God help us.
The author of this piece calls for logic and not hyperbole yet says “I look forward to Derek Chauvin receiving a punishment commensurate with his wrong.”. Surely, as a recent law graduate he should be looking forward to the trial of this policeman and that justice be done. Whilst the circumstances look as though Chauvin has committed a crime it is yet to be proven.
To add to the last three comments, Tristan describes Floyd as a petty criminal. Where did she get that from? I suggest she has a look at the video put out by Candace Owens if she wants a rundown on the crimes of this violent offender. If Chauvin gets off there will be more riots and looting. Next time the public will be a little better prepared. No wonder they value their second amendment rights so highly.
pgang is more or less right. The question is whether the police officers concerned can look forward to a fair trial—or not. As far as I am aware—and I stopped taking notice of so-called news etc some days ago (yet again)—none of these policemen have given their side of the story. What we have at present are questions, not punishment based upon a video. Regarding a fair trial, I suspect the answer is no, not gonna happen. The Pell analogy is not quite right but it does, or should, make for caution.
On the sheer humbug of “Black Lives Matter” see the splendid collection by Pierre Gosselin at .
The news clips we have been shown depict: 1) Floyd being escorted across the footpath by a policeman, showing no sign of resisting, and 2) Floyd lying on the ground the other side of the price car with Chauvin’s knee on his neck. An arrested man doesn’t normally walk calmly behind a police car and lie down to be trampled. Can someone explain what happened between scenes 1 and 2?
Two points.
First, the sudden explosion of outrage and protest in this instance evidently comes from people raised in a Left-controlled education system and then cocooned a Leftist media echo-chamber in which they are never personally held to account for their views in open debate.
Secondly, therefore, the solution to this problem in America as in Australia lies in the reform of education in the first instance. This requires the internal restructuring of State education; increasing freedom of choice within the State school system; a renewed emphasis on the parent as the person chiefly responsible for the education of the child; and measures to encourage private schools and home schooling. Ongoing ‘debate’ in the media will not solve this. The problem runs much deeper. Reform of education on democratic principles is essential if Australia is to avoid sliding further and further into the quagmire of socialism.
Who was the person who took that 8 minute video which went viral and seen around the world, and why did he NOT call out to the police officer, “Stop it, you are killing him!”
Margie Joan – The women who took the video was standing alongside many other witnesses who were calling out the entire time to make the officer get off and they asked many times for him to check him because he couldn’t breathe. The officer that was standing was yelling at the witnesses to get back and at one point Chauvin himself had pulled pepper spray out of his holder and threatened witnesses with it. From all the videos I’ve seen lately of black victims at the hands of police, when witnesses are present and recording, they don’t try to intervene..I’m guessing because they are afraid that they too are going to suffer abuse at the hands of the police…possibly even death.
It’s hard to watch for two reasons…the first being obvious but the second because no-one even tried, despite the threats, to attempt to stop the officer murdering Floyd.
> “MSM and politicos will do their very best to run dead on this” [protest crowds as experiment on C-19 lockdown]
Yep. Exactly. So predictably dreary, our self-appointed “elites” – the only cognitive reaction I’ve seen was from a very nervous ANU Professor of Epidemiology. He was quite nervous of exactly the point I made above. Two weeks …
I’ve left commentary on the the George Floyd issue to others here. I don’t see how I can add anything of further use. The opportunistic C-19 lockdown experiment needs to be grasped as such occasions are rare.
Both the autopsy report and the police report are already out, and it seems that in Minneapolis the neck restraint is considered non-lethal, and forms part of their training procedure. Two of the police officers were rookies and would of course bow to the 18 years of Chauvin’s accumulated experience, as any of us might, particularly considering the fact they would have been similarly trained.
Floyd appeared to have lied to the police in telling them he didn’t want to get into the back of the squad car because he was claustrophobic: he was taken out of the driver’s seat of the car he was found sitting in. Why no claustrophobia then. Police are faced with countless pointless little lies like this (and many not so piddling).
Being part of police procedure in that state, one can hardly call Chauvin’s neck restraining was ‘contemptible’: it was commonplace and deemed safe, but appeared awful to the ill-informed. What was awful was Floyd sticking a hand gun into the stomach of a pregnant black woman, demanding money. He served time for that. Then there was the methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system, the latter many times more powerful than oxycodone, on top of this he was drunk. Hennepin County medical examiner’s autopsy reveals George Floyd had also tested positive for coronavirus: hardly a picture of health.
I suspect the prosecutor will have a tough time convincing a jury of either first degree (wanted by most protestors) or second degree murder. There is a possibility of ‘manslaughter’ succeeding, but it would seem to be miscarriage of justice to most BLM/AntiFa protestors if he were so charged. .
Geoffrey Luck: the missing part would have been Floyd resisting being put in the car, with the car rocking to and fro with the very force of intervention.
If I were a black man knowing that I was going to be abused by police I would resist too. I don’t think you would find a person alive today that would willingly be cuffed knowing a beating was going to follow. I don’t agree, as would any decent human being, that killing a man is a good punishment for resisting arrest.
Please tell me how a neck restraint, that results in a death, could be considered non-level…doesn’t the dead body give a clue here. The man didn’t drop dead, coincidentally while a cop was grinding his knee into the mans neck, from an overdose (as the cops at the time were trying to imply). If he had of been sitting in the cop car, unbeaten, cuffed and breathing, as he was in his own car then he would have lived….as he was living while sitting in his own car.
The man’s criminal past was judged and he served time. It is not for us to judge whether he has or has not changed after given a second chance and it is absolutely not for us to judge whether this past justifies his death at the hands of these cops. The man was alive before police were called and very soon after he was dead.
*non-level = non-lethal
jt, are you sure you shouldn’t be somewhere else, tuning in to Fran Kelly?
Warty, none of which salient information will be found in the media. The media is now little more than a vile caricature of its nameplate.
In regard to the neck restraint, it is a highly effective way to immobilise a person of any size without having to use excessive force. In the military we were taught to crawl up behind somebody and up-end them by their ankles, then jump on their upper back and neck. You could sit there until the cows came home and they were perfectly helpless. I think it is a very useful technique for the police in dealing with potentially violent and unstable characters.
Perhaps jt could try it at home and find out how hard it is to actually strangle someone with a knee on the neck. But that would expose the truth I guess, and the truth has an annoying habit of contradicting public displays of virtue.
‘If I were a black man knowing that I was going to be abused by police I would resist too’. If I was a cop knowing how many cops are murdered by black men I’d use a neck restraint too.
The death of Floyd was terrible. The courts in America will determine cause and fault. However, Tristan’s article mentioned how some (many) people believe that Australia is a dangerous place for Aborigines. The same hysterical response to almost any ‘black’ death in America is seen here too about most Aboriginal issues. Again the facts are different from the beliefs. Since 2003, Aborigines in custody have died less frequently, pro rata, than ‘whites’. Aboriginal incarceration rates are not due to unfair or discriminatory treatment. They result from Aborigines disproportionately breaking the law. Why? Because too many Aborigines cling to and practice ‘traditional’ Aboriginal culture. This culture typically includes violence towards women, as any truly academic study will show – read the journals and stories of Mitchell, Sturt, or Buckley. Spending even more money on the Aboriginal ‘gap’ issue, already double that spent on similar ‘white’ issues (pro rata) is not the answer. Only when Aborigines stop fixating on their ‘culture’ and move forward to join with, and live like, other Australians will the gap diminish and Aboriginal issues stop being newsworthy.
pgang – How do you determine potential violence when there is no weapon. Am I to just always assume that a 6ft 6in man is potentially violent. Floyd was not trying to murder cops. He was restrained. 4 on 1.
How do you then speculate that Floyd died if the heavy restraint on his back and neck were safe and he was simply ‘immobilized’?
All these comments have proven is how quick to violence people are and how quickly they try to justify that violence.
I had a Vic cop tell me once that they are taught to treat all civilians as criminals. This person changed profession after many years of struggling with how this perspective on normal citizens had changed them.
lhackett01- perhaps you could give a few suggestions as to how other Australians are going to encourage Aboriginies to stop fixating on their ‘culture’ and move forward to join with and live like other Australians? And which Australians are they suppose to live like? Little Willow Dunns father and stepmother, the health care worker who left Ann Marie Smith to die, the Politician (Jonathan Peter Doig) arrested for child sex abuse…the list goes on and on. Perhaps it would be best to educate them against violence and leave the rest of their culture be.
Lacebug- never heard of Fran Kelly. I just saw that she works for the ABC…and that’s why I’ve never heard of her.
jt , , , I’m not sure what specific MSM you have been following, but your source/s seem replete with myths about police-on-black violence and misinformation.
Floyd’s ‘potential violence’ was very real vis a vis his extensive record. This was not just a man ‘known’ to the police, he was a repeat-‘known’, in other words very, very ‘known’ including the armed robbery sort of ‘known’ and the thrusting of a hand gun into the belly of a pregnant black woman kinda ‘known’. This along with his size was enough to make a Tyson Fury wary.
As for the rather considerate use of restraint, well, yes this was after he resisted going into the squad car, which shifted him from ‘passive’ resistance (the dragging your feet/ acting like an oversized lump on the way to the police vehicle) to ‘active’ resistance, which requires a rather different police response, and a paragraph or two more in their written reports. Added to this was his ‘dropping like a stone’ to the pavement, his final means of evading (unsuccessfully) custody.
Though one would not have wished to speed up his early demise, he did have serious health issues (depending which autopsy report you read).
The real problems will come out in the wash, when the cops go to court. There is a serious chance of the prosecution seeking the wrong level of charge, which will mean their getting off scot free (and I, along with many others, will ‘punch the air’. These cops are scape goats to AntiFa carnivores.
Incidentally, only two of the police were directly involved in the final stages of custody, the two rookies being restricted to looking on.
Warty – Judging people without even knowing them is replete with discrimination.
At what age do you consider a person to be held accountable for their actions. The argument of “I did it because he told me” are the words of cowards who don’t have any moral sense and have completely abandoned any notion of personal responsibility.
I don’t know what this MSM is that you referring to as I don’t have social media of any kind. (Another incorrect judgement passed about someone you don’t know).
The health issues that Floyd may have had would only have hastened his death as they were indirect causes of death not the direct cause.
Chauvin was on Floyd’s neck, Kueng and Lane were on his back and legs, while Thao was standing watch to stop bystanders from intervening. This is what the aiding and abetting law is all about.
And incidentally now we know what you think of the Floyd case what do you make of the two elderly men who were brutally pushed over by cops?…Martin Gugino (Catholic human rights advocate) and James Tobin (walks with a cane, leukemia patient and veteran).
jt, Aborigines can improve their lot by giving up several traditional cultural practices, especially violence towards women that is inherent in their culture according to the writings of the early exploreres and today by Jacints Price, an Aboriginal woman. A large proportion of Aborigines in prison are their because of such acts. They can stop accepting the preferential and discriminatory welfare assistance provided by Governments, being about twice per capita to that available to non-aborigines. I have met with many Aborigines. An Elder in the NT told me twhen asked about incentives for his people to work and contribute to society, said essentially, ‘ we get enough money from Government to live as we like and there is no need for us to do more’. It is long past time when Governments should need to support Aborigines except in extreme circumstances as for other Australians. Most Aboriginal problems stem from them being treated as a special species and given benefits not available to any other Australian. Aborigines generally live dysfunctional lives on lands given to them by governments and funded entirely by the taxpayer and “royalties” extracted from non-aboriginal enterprises within their lands. Reports abound that expose the reality that aborigines live in places where there is no work, where social dysfunction causes drug and alcohol problems, where children do not attend school, where domestic and sexual abuse is common, and where ill-health is due to unhygienic conditions.
lhackett01 – I agree with what you have just said. I have never said anything to the contrary. I have a very close family member who lived in the aboriginal community for many years and among a lot of wonderful stories there are some terrible stories of violence inflicted to the women and children of the communities. What I am saying is that the entire culture of a people does not need to be destroyed in order to assimilate them into another. Violence, generally speaking, needs to be addressed more seriously. Not all aboriginies are violent and dependant on government benefits. And yes, I too am sick of having to tick ‘no’ on medical forms relating to my genetic background…..it shouldn’t matter.
As with America, I don’t believe that all black people are subject to racism, it is a culture difference that the majority can’t tolerate; however, having said that there are still many racists out there.
On another note, bad cops on the force doesn’t make all cops bad and conversely cop abusers don’t represent the general public.
I do believe a lot of people reading my comments have misinterpreted me. I am by no means siding against cops or saying that because Floyd was black that they were racist cops. I am pro ‘good police and against rogue, killer police. I am trying to understand why people are automatically siding with these specific four cops against an unarmed black man who was a known past criminal.
My main questions are:
Does no one believe in redemption and forgiveness of a past criminal (who by all accounts was helping young black men to stop their criminal activities and put down their guns)? and
Why do people assume that the cops are always right?
The other point to note is that why do people automatically assume that once a criminal always a criminal? Yes he handed over a counterfeit $20 note…but the club El Nuevo Rodeo (ENR) that he worked for is a known (by FBI and CIA) front for drug smuggling and money counterfeiting…he was most definitely paid by this club. Why does no one think that he could have been paid with bogus money without him knowing. (There is an estimated $70-$200 million dollars in counterfeit money in circulation in the U.S)
Is the benefit of the doubt only reserved for a select few?
jt . . . MSM means ‘main stream media’ i.e. The Sydney Morning Herald, or The Age, or 9 News, or CNN etc. and as such has nothing to do with social media. Twitter can be an utter cess pool, so in terms of distortions it just doesn’t count. The details about Floyd’s health (lack of) and ‘priors’ most certainly don’t appear in the MSM other than Jennifer Oriel’s article in The Australian. The rest requires hack work elsewhere on the internet (or the intellectual dark web).
As to whether or not I know you, well we know the answer to that, but one can respond to the written word, and information conveyed via the written word, which I do.
As to Martin Gugino, I know nothing about him, but the twit on crutches ought not to get in the faces of advancing cops, if even only slightly incapacitated. He should also show the degree of dignity one might expect from someone his age. I had no sympathy for him whatsoever, despite the pavement crack to his obviously numbskull.
jt – Judging people without even knowing them is replete with discrimination.
Erm, yes, I think that’s the point we’ve been making and you’ve been trolling.
“The man was alive before police were called and very soon after he was dead”.
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Often happens with ambulance calls too, oftentimes because the person is under the influence of a drug cocktail and has serious health issues.
Warty – “As to Martin Gugino, I know nothing about him”.
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My wife is a “bleeding heart”, but even she said, after watching the incident in slow motion as well as normal speed, “Serves him right”. The suggestion that he was “**brutally** pushed over” may be indicative of what a soft society we have become as it was merely a “get out of the way” (a way he should never have been in) brush off.
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He may have been off-balance, causing his fall (if I were similarly pushed there is no way I’d have hit the deck) because he was waving his phone (if phone it was – how could the police know) within inches of the police, which he clearly should not be doing and the police had, in my opinion, not just the right but the obligation to get him out of their faces, promptly.
Murder, properly investigated, involves 40 hours work by an experienced, capable and conscientious forensic pathologist. Followed by a hearing by an honest, informed judge, experienced in the law and resistant to pressure.
I once certified fatal Cocaine Myocarditis, in a young adult male sudden death. As was my practice, I ran a drug screen during the autopsy which revealed the corpse was full of illegal drugs. I then performed a frozen section on his heart, which showed excitotoxic myocarditis. The whole process took one hour.
A few months later, the labor state minister for health wrote, telling me to change the diagnosis. More months passed and then the labor state minister for justice wrote telling me to change the diagnosis. This was the only time such illegalities occurred in my career.
Finally, the coroner called an inquest [rather a surprise, since more than 99% of my death certificates were registered unchallenged]. Then the penny dropped: the court was packed with angry labor party people, because the deceased had been a minor labor party functionary. I was shocked when the coroner responded to pressure and changed the diagnosis to – Myocarditis Unspecified.
I am unable to specify the cause of death for George Floyd. I am informed that he had hypertensive heart disease, coronary heart disease, coronavirus pneumonia, and that his corpse contained multiple drugs of abuse. These findings are certainly sufficient to account for sudden death.
If Floyd had come to the morgue fresh, which was possible, I would have measured his right and left heart oxygen, carbon dioxide and lactate. If his breathing was blocked, then oxygen would be down, and carbon dioxide and lactate up; if his heart stopped then gases and lactate will be normal.
Resuscitation will destroy the evidence. In that case one looks for bruises and fractures.
Congratulations on an wonderfully written, eloquent and lucid piece, Mr. Heiner.