An Active-Duty Police Officer Analyzes the Latest George Floyd Video

Some excerpts only from his comments below. The officer suggests, as I have done from the beginning, that Floyd died of a heart attack

The video then shows Floyd being escorted to a police vehicle. He is baring and gnashing his teeth with dried spittle at the corners of his mouth. These are both clear signs of meth intoxication. As he is walked to the car in a normal escort position (officers holding his arms), he is constantly complaining, doubling over, screaming and saying, “ouchie.” This is abnormal. As they get to the patrol car, an officer says, “Stop falling down.” Floyd most likely tried to drop to his knees. This is common behavior with meth users and with blacks who will try anything to avoid being put in the back of a police car.

It’s at this point that we first hear Floyd say, “I’m claustrophobic.” The officers search him before putting him in the car. Floyd then begins resisting the officers in earnest. He does not stop talking or moaning for even a moment during this part of the video. He goes from moaning and crying to calm statements such as “I’m not that kinda guy.” These are more signs of meth intoxication. Floyd then stiffens to avoid being put into the car. This is “active resistance.” Floyd has been legally arrested for a felony crime, and it would have been legal and reasonable to use additional force (baton strikes or other pain compliance) to get him into the vehicle. Floyd again says he is claustrophobic and the officers offer to roll the windows down for him. Floyd then says, “Imma die in here,” as he continues to resist being put into the car. He says, “I don’t want y’all to win. I got anxiety,” and “I’m not tryin’ to win. I’ll go on the ground, I’ll do anything.” This babbling suggests that Floyd is suffering from “methamphetamine psychosis,” a condition that causes delusions and hallucinations.

One of the other officers then goes over to the passenger-side rear door to pull Floyd through and into the back seat. At this point, Floyd’s voice becomes more and more raspy and rapid. It is clear that his intoxication and panic are getting worse. His pulse rate and blood pressure are probably rising dangerously. Floyd can then be heard saying over and over, “I wanna go on the ground. I wanna go on the ground.” A person standing outside the car can be heard saying something to the effect of, “You’re gonna have a heart attack, man. Just get in the car.”

At about this time, a third officer arrives. The three officers patiently try to get Floyd into the car. Just because you are claustrophobic does not mean you don’t have to get into a police car. If you’re arrested, you’re going into the police car one way or another. In any case, a really claustrophobic person is not likely to be sitting calmly in a car when the police arrive.

As the officers struggle with Floyd, he is already complaining, “I can’t breathe.” No one is “kneeling on his neck” or compressing his upper body in any way. He is clearly becoming panicked. A bystander tells Floyd, “You can’t win,” and Floyd replies, “I ain’t tryin’ to win.” Floyd continues screaming, “I can’t breathe,” even though both doors to the car are open and none of the officers is doing anything to obstruct his breathing. As Floyd continues screaming and resisting, an officer says, “Right now you’re under arrest for forgery.” Floyd stops screaming, and calmly asks, “Forgery for what?”

In the final part of the video, the officers give up trying to get Floyd into the car. They gently put him in a prone position, and discuss the use of a “hobble.” This is a piece of equipment that immobilizes the legs in a bent position and then attaches to handcuffs. The latest versions have handles so you can lift a restrained suspect off the ground, in a seated position, and put him a police car. You use these if someone is putting up so much resistance you can’t even get him into the car, or if he’s in the back seat trying to kick the windows out. Police don’t have to use these very often, so not every officer carries a hobble. It appears that one of the men goes off to get one. You keep a man face down on the ground to prepare him for hobbling.

The next part of the video has already been seen by millions; an officer kneels on Floyd’s upper back/neck area. This is an acceptable suspect-control method taught in police academies across the country. Floyd continues saying, “I can’t breathe.” The fact that he keeps saying it would not have alerted officers that anything they were doing was preventing him from breathing. He does not stop talking or crying, which suggests he is getting enough oxygen. The officers can also be heard saying, “EMS is on the way” meaning that an ambulance has been called to check Floyd out. He then says, “I’m ’bout ta die in this bitch.” He continues to be agitated and resisting, in the same delusional, stimulant-intoxicated way, just as he did from the moment the officers contacted him. He calls for his mother, even though his mother is dead.

A bystander says, “Get up and get in the car, man.” Officers are trying to determine what drugs Floyd might be on. One says, “He had a weed pipe on him.” They discuss the symptoms of PCP intoxication and mention that they had noticed Floyd’s eyes darting back and forth. An officer asks, “Roll him on his side? I’m just worried about excited delirium or whatever.”

By this time, the inevitable crowd of obnoxious blacks has gathered. People are advancing on the officers, and one says, “I ain’t scared of you, bro,” referring to an officer. They begin berating the officers, and this is the point at which George Floyd loses consciousness and dies.

I am not a doctor. I don’t know Floyd’s medical history, but he had taken illegal drugs. Methamphetamine is a stimulant so powerful, it can cause a heart rate of over 160 beats per minute and raise blood pressure to dangerous levels. Floyd also had taken fentanyl, which is a powerful narcotic. Even for a healthy person, this combination of drugs can be lethal.

This is the Hennepin County autopsy report, which lists the cause of death as “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restrain, and neck compression.” It does not say “strangulation.” It also says Floyd had “arteriosclerotic heart disease,” which was “multifocal, severe,” and that he had “hypertensive heart disease,” and that he was Covid-19 positive. The toxicology reports says he had Fentanyl, Norfentanyl, Methamphetamine, Morphine, and various forms of THC (the intoxicant in marijuana) in his body. You can see the full list below. The most important finding is Fentanyl, which Floyd had at 11ng/mL. Later in the toxicology report, we find this crucial sentence: “Signs associated with fentanyl toxicity include severe respiratory depression, seizures, hypotension, coma and death. In fatalities from fentanyl, blood concentrations are variable and have been reported as low as 3 ng/mL.” Floyd had more than three times the potentially lethal dose of Fentanyl in his body before the police even showed up.

The Floyd family hired the medical examiner Michael Baden — prominent for going after police officers for misconduct — to do his own autopsy. Dr. Baden claims that Floyd died from pressure on his neck and back, which interfered with his blood flow and breathing. It will be up to the jury to decide which report is more convincing. My own view is that George Floyd died from a drug-induced panic or overdose coupled with his violent resistance, which caused a fatal medical reaction.

From start to finish, the officers acted professionally and calmly. They did not use force other than handcuffing Floyd and trying to get him into the car by using soft, empty-hand control. There were no baton strikes. It was reasonable and legal to take Floyd out of the car and put him in the prone position with the intent of hobbling him. It appears that they were waiting for the hobble to come.

It may look bad that Officer Derek Chauvin was kneeling on Floyd’s upper back and neck. But what were the officers supposed to do? Not restrain him? He would have gotten up and tried to escape. Put him in the back of the car? Four officers already tried to do that. Call an ambulance? They did that.

Could the officers have done things differently? Perhaps they should have rolled him on his side or begun CPR. There is always room for improvement. But the idea that four Minneapolis police officers — only two of whom were white — somehow intentionally killed Floyd because of “racism” is as absurd as it is dangerous. I feel sure that the officers would have acted in exactly the same way if Floyd been Hispanic, Asian, or white.

Unless you have put on a uniform and a gun belt and tried to arrest a violent, powerful black man, don’t tell the world what the officers should have done. If you think you know how to arrest a large, uncooperative black man on illegal stimulants, well, just try it. Many cities are talking about sending unarmed civilian teams instead of police officers to handle people like Floyd. I say, good luck to them.

More HERE 

A reader comments:  From the very outset I believed the officers had acted in a way they believe was authorised by their training .  Not because the police do no wrong but because they knew they were being filmed and their own body cams were on and also could be used as evidence against them if they did wrong.







BLM protesters demand white people ‘give up their homes’

A group of Black Lives Matter protesters in Seattle marched through a residential neighbourhood this week demanding that white residents give up their homes, dramatic video shows.

Footage of the Wednesday demonstration posted to Twitter shows a crowd of dozens chanting “Black lives matter” before an unidentified man projects his ire toward nearby white residents — saying they are living in a historically black section of the city as another woman in the crowd yells that they should “give up” their homes, the clip shows.

“Do you know that before your white ass came here, this was all black people?” the man says. “Do you know people like you came in here and basically bought all the land from the black people for less than what it was worth, kicked them out so you could live here? Do you know that?”

The man continues: “’Cause if you don’t, now you f – king do — now do something about it!”

Another woman in the crowd then urges the residents to “open their wallet” as the man continues to yell at the unidentified residents off-camera.

“So how do you plan to fix it?” the man continues. “As a gentrifier, because you are part of that problem.”

A woman with a megaphone then urges the residents to “give up” their house, the footage shows.

“Give black people back their homes!” she yells. “You’re sitting there comfortably — comfortable as f — k as if they didn’t help gentrify this neighbourhood! I used to live in this neighbourhood, and my family was pushed out, and you’re sitting up there having a good time with your other white friends!”

A second clip purportedly shows BLM demonstrators and Antifa members calling for white people to “get the f – k out” as others in the crowd call for reparations.

“Give us our s – t back!” one man yells.

Yet another clip apparently shot in the aftermath of the protest also shows demonstrators threatening a business owner who allegedly called cops to report that a window had been shattered at his business.

“You’re being racist, you’re being racist,” a protester tells the unidentified white business owner. “Check your privilege, check your privilege.”

The protester then tells the man to “go back to his gentrification business” while yelling profanities at him, the clip shows.

“This was never your neighbourhood,” the man’s rant continues. “This was never your neighbourhood.”

The mask-clad white man then refuses to identify his business before being threatened as he walks away, the clip shows.

“Yeah, we’ll make sure to support you,” the protester continues. “Hey look, we don’t know what happened, we ain’t seen sh-t, we don’t know sh-t. You better hope we don’t find out though. That’s not a threat.”

“That’s a promise,” a second man then yells.

One of the protesters was then taken into custody for alleged vandalism as other Black Lives Matter demonstrators yell obscenities at cops, footage shows.

Seattle’s police chief, Carmen Best, stepped down this week as the city council approved cutting the department by as many as 100 cops through lay-offs and attrition. The city currently has some 1,400 officers and the reduction fell short of the 50 per cent cut that many Black Lives Matter protesters had sought.

The city’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, is also facing a legal battle to get her kicked out of office for her role in Seattle’s violent protests, which started in June when demonstrators took over its Capitol Hill district and later renamed it the Capitol Hill Occupation Protest.

SOURCE 






Federal appeals court upholds male-only military draft

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday against a lower court judge’s decision declaring the male-only military draft system unconstitutional.

In a decision reported by the Associated Press, the three-judge appeals court panel unanimously ruled “only the Supreme Court may revise its precedent” with regard to the constitutionality of a male-only draft. The decision, in effect, overrules a lower court judge’s determination that the male-only draft system is unconstitutional.

The appeals court decision comes after it announced in March that it would consider a case in which a federal judge in Texas already ruled in 2019 in favor of the National Coalition for Men and determined that the male-only draft is unconstitutional.

The panel, which included judges Carl Stewart, Don Willett and Jacques Weiner, acknowledged in their decision that the Supreme Court previously ruled in favor of the male-only draft in 1981 when women were largely absent from combat roles, setting the precedent for the male-only draft. In their decision, the judges said, “the factual underpinning of the controlling Supreme Court decision has changed” but “that does not grant a court of appeals license to disregard or overrule that precedent.”

Currently, men between the ages of 18 and 26 are required to register with the Selective Service System. The mandate was put in place by former President Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Proclamation 4771 on July 2, 1980.

In March, the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service has recently issued a Congressional report in which it determined women should be required to register for the military draft. The report said women between the ages of 18 and 26 should be included in the same Selective Service System.

“The Commission determined that the time is right to extend the registration requirement to all Americans, men and women,” the March report said. “The current disparate treatment of women unacceptably excludes women from a fundamental civic obligation and reinforces gender stereotypes about the role of women, undermining national security.”

Combat roles in the U.S. military have been increasingly opened to women in recent years. In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the U.S. Department of Defense needed more data to study the effectiveness of women in combat roles and said the “the jury is out” on the subject.

In July, the first female “Green Beret” graduated from the U.S. Army Special Forces qualification course

SOURCE 






Gallup: 80 Percent of Black Americans Want the Same or More Police in Their Neighborhoods

Defund the police? Not for the vast majority of black Americans, who say the number of cops patrolling their neighborhood should remain the same or even be increased.

This is not the impression we’re getting from the media, who are cheering on Black Lives Matter in their efforts to castrate American police forces. Apparently, they’re doing it in the name of the radical-left faction of black Americans, not the overwhelming majority of black citizens.

Who’d have guessed it?

Washington Free Beacon:

Over 80 percent of black Americans want the police to spend as much or more time in their neighborhoods as they currently do, new polling from Gallup conducted last month finds.

Asked if they would prefer police spend more, less, or the same amount of time in their neighborhoods, 61 percent of black respondents told Gallup the same, while a further 20 percent said more. Just 19 percent said less. Black respondents were more likely to want more police presence than white, Asian, and all adults overall.

The overwhelming support for current levels of policing even holds among black respondents who say they see the police often or very often. Two in three of those say they would like to see the police the same amount or more; 84 percent of black respondents who see the police “sometimes” responded that way, along with 92 percent of those who see the police rarely or never.

Even more interesting is the Gallup finding that blacks who see police frequently in their neighborhoods are no more likely to oppose a continued or elevated police presence in their neighborhood.

The slightly elevated frequency with which Black Americans see police in their neighborhood has limited impact on their preferences for changing the local police presence. About a third of Black Americans who say they often see the police in their neighborhood think the police should spend less time there (34%); however, the majority of adults in this group think they should spend the same amount of time (56%) or more time (10%).

Black Americans’ desire for reduced police presence drops to 16% for those who “sometimes” see the police and to 8% for those who rarely or never see the police.

This doesn’t mean that there is any love lost between blacks and the police.  Fewer than 20 percent of black respondents have any confidence that police will treat them with “courtesy and respect.”

Gallup sums up the findings.

Most Black Americans want the police to spend at least as much time in their area as they currently do, indicating that they value the need for the service that police provide. However, that exposure comes with more trepidation for Black than White or Hispanic Americans about what they might experience in a police encounter. And those harboring the least confidence that they will be treated well, or who have had negative encounters in the past, are much more likely to want the police presence curtailed.

Concentrating on how the police interact with the communities they serve is far more important than the number of cops or social workers or “conflict resolution specialists” on the streets. Blacks want the same thing that whites do: safe streets and simple respect from police. Cops want respect too, and a recognition of how tough their jobs truly are.

That’s very hard when people are disrespecting cops. The situation will not improve overnight and both sides shouldn’t expect it will. But progress will come if politicians stop kowtowing to a violent mob and refuse to defund the police.

SOURCE 


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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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