Floyd - Wright - Bryant: Not The Same

My biggest concern is that we as a society have become unable to have nuanced discussions. Things get painted with extremes, grouping unrelated situations by skin color, and inaccurate labels are the language we speak. 

Make no mistake about it, George Floyd was murdered. You can see my post from the other day breaking down that case for details.

However, Daunte Wright wasn’t George Floyd. 

Ma’khia Bryant wasn’t George Floyd. 

They were people, they were beloved children & family members, they mattered to people. But George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and Ma’khia Bryant all died under very different circumstances - and none of them can be classified as “police violence.” 

George Floyd was murdered. GF was cooperative; police force was beyond unreasonable and downright assault. Those actions were not sanctioned, he was not operating within his authority as a police officer. He was promptly stripped of his badge & pension, and has been convicted of murder. That is exactly the way the justice system is supposed to work once a crime has been committed.

Daunte Wright’s death is a terrible tragedy. Period. That officer did NOT intended to shoot him - she was as shocked as anyone. I realize that makes no difference to the grief and loss Daunte’s family is experiencing, but it does make a difference when he is used as an example of law enforcement’s inherent racism. When he was standing beside the car with his hands behind his back being handcuffed, nobody was pulling any weapons - nobody needed to. But then he tried to escape and drive away. Believe me, police stop white people when they try to evade arrest too. Had Daunte been white, he still would have been a man with a weapons warrant who was trying to flee custody. Tazing him was an appropriate action. Shooting him was a heart-wrenching tragedy. 

Is having a weapons charge justification for killing a person? Absolutely not, not if they are not a threat in that moment. That is why his death is a tragic accident and not a justified shooting. 

Ma’Khia Bryant was in the middle of trying to commit a violent attack when she was shot. When someone is an imminent threat to others, police have the duty to protect people from that threat. Not just the authority or the right to shoot, but a sworn duty/ promise to protect. Her family grieves her loss every bit as much as we all grieve the loss of beloved people in our lives. I’m not minimizing a single tear they shed. Their grief is real. 

As real as their grief is, she was equally as real of a threat to the people she was attempting to stab. Police don’t enjoy taking someone’s life. That’s not why people join the police force - in hopes of one day shooting themselves a real live negro. That was a traumatic event for that officer, too. He will live with that burden - and he accepted that burden in order to care for and protect her community. 

You don’t have to pick a side - minorities or law enforcement. You can support both, because despite the misleading headlines everything is not about race. Let’s start seeing all the different colors of the world, have the nuanced and difficult discussions, and weed through the political agendas to find and examine the truth, no matter how ugly or surprising that truth might be. 

38th & Chicago

 I understand that most of my friends have not watched the Chauvin trial in its entirety and may have questions about the verdicts. Having watched it all, please allow me to try to clarify a few things.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Second degree murder - unintentional killing while committing a felony.

Once Chauvin’s force crossed the line from being “authorized” to “unauthorized” or unreasonable, he was no longer acting within his authority as a police officer and was committing the felony of assault.

Because Floyd died, it becomes second degree murder.

This does not mean that Chauvin intended to kill him or knowingly killed him. He was never charged with first degree murder, which is what you are imagining where the state would have to prove that he intentionally set out to murder George Floyd. That was not one of the charges.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Third degree murder is a lesser burden. It means perpetuating an eminent dangerously act and evincing (possessing) a depraved mind.

Legally speaking, depravity of mind is a condition where there is a deviation or departure from the ordinary standards of honest, good morals, justice, or ethics as to be shocking to the moral sense of the society. Applying force to an unconscious, handcuffed individual in the prone position, continuing after his pulse stopped, qualifies. 

Once the jury determined that he did indeed use excessive force and committed assault, that covered the elements of third degree murder.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Second-degree manslaughter is culpable negligence creating unreasonable risk.

Kneeing on someone’s neck to the point of them losing their pulse qualifies. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This was not an anti-law enforcement case. I understand many people upset about this particular case are upset about broader issues with police enforcement overall, many who wanted to see a guilty verdict also support defunding law enforcement. This was not about defunding the police, law enforcement racism, or anything along political lines. It was about what happened between two men on the corner of 38th & Chicago last Memorial Day. 

I can tell you from sitting through hours of medical testimony presented by both sides, cross examined & rebutted, that George Floyd died from a lack of oxygen to this brain due to Chauvin’s restraint. They had really great witnesses that explained it thoroughly. I recommend looking up Dr. Martin Tobin’s testimony. He explained that between the hard asphalt on the front side and pressure plus being handcuffed on the back side, he couldn’t expand his rib cage to get oxygen. He talked in detail about the science behind it all. They also had doctors testify in detail why it was not drugs or heart disease that killed him. 

One thing that struck out at me during the trial was how traumatized the witnesses were a year later. The video everyone saw was filmed by a high schooler who was walking her 9 year old cousin to the store. There were several different teenagers there watching. Chauvin didn’t just end Floyd’s life, he also damaged several other people as well. 

As far as George Floyd resisting: he went into the store and bought a pack of cigarettes with a fake $20, the clerk believed he didn’t realize the bill was fake. They went to talk to him outside by his car about the fake money. They went back inside. He knew at that point that he was being accused of a crime but he didn’t flee. They came back out to talk to him, then back to the store. He remained in place until the police arrived. When the police arrived he initially was startled & scared, but he followed all of their commands. He sat on the sidewalk and truthfully answered their questions. He willingly walked across the street to the squad car. Does that sound like someone who is resisting to you? 

When they got near the backseat, he identified himself as a mental health patient, identified his condition (claustrophobia), told them what would happened if they tried to put him in the car. He did everything right. Had the officers followed their training, recognized that GF was in crisis and sat him on the curb to calm down instead of what they did, he wouldn’t have died. You see in videos him sitting on the edge of the backseat, panic stricken in his face, explaining that he doesn’t want to resist, isn’t trying to “win”, but that he cannot get in that backseat. They could have gotten a different vehicle to transport him, sedated him once EMS arrived, many ways to handle it without ending his life. 

I don’t think police forces should be defunded, though we do need a better response to mental health issues. I don’t think the criminal justice system is inherently racist, nor do I believe that all cops are racists. I don’t think Chauvin was looking for a black man to kill that day. I don’t even think Chauvin *tried* to kill GF. But I do think he is guilty of exceeding his police authority and crossed into assault; I do think that Floyd died as a result of that assault; and those elements add up to second degree murder.