Shack, the negligence component is the piece you seem to have missed throughout. We know the cop did not line him up and execute him. The cop obviously did not intend to kill him. That said, his careless negligence DID lead his to death, hence the epic outrage. End of story.

What's worrying to me is the police officers did this in broad daylight when they were aware there were bystanders watching and filming. There were no signs of them holding back or exercising restraint. That's a feature of a police state.

This is insane situation. DC feels like it is under martial law, being across the river from it is weird. And now Trump is talking about having the military go after civilians. So I didn't think we be living through the 1918 pandemic mixed with the Great Depression, the 1968 riots with Andrew Johnson as president. What is next a Kent State moment? If the military kill civilians, Trump will have blood on his hands.

Speak for yourself. I'm the one who's fighting for the truth here. Even though it's ugly. Even though it hurts the black community. On the other hand what I'm seeing is people on the left too blinded by emotion to really take a fair look at this.

At this point anyone ignoring the drugs elephant in the room in the George Floyd case is being obtuse. It's there in two major ways. One, he was just found with a deadly drug in his system where one of the symptoms of OD-ing is breathing problems, and his death was a heart attack not asphyxication. Two, the officers side of the story is they were handling him as a drug emergency explaining how they couldn't get him in the car and pinned him until an ambulance came. Now that he was found with drugs in his system this is clearly true, it already was before between the criminal complaint and them mentioning drugs so much in the video. So if you're not willing to see the role of drugs in this case you're not interested in the truth. It would be like ignoring the citizen's arrest concept in Georgia entirely in the Ahmaud Arbery case. You cannot have a full picture of what happened to Floyd without drugs and you cannot have a full picture of what happened to Arbery without citizen's arrest. The court cases for both of them will most likely revolve around both those things. The toxicology report is probably the most important thing in this case because if there's too much Fentanyl in him, Chauvin has easy reasonable doubt by saying Floyd OD-ed. I'm not sure there's any way you could prove that Floyd died because of force instead of an OD at this point if he has enough in him, because clearly the physical evidence of strangulation wasn't there. It doesn't mean that the knee wasn't the biggest reason, but he just needs reasonable doubt.

After seeing that video I sort of agree that there is a reasonable doubt. If Floyd would have died instantly or during the strangulation I would have completely agreed that strangulation was the problem. But he died a few minutes later so if he had nothing in his system maybe he would have recovered in the ambulance.

Having said the above I don't think that the response from Police officers were correct regardless of this reasonable doubt.

Blah blah blah--you know what hurts the black community? Being regularly murdered/arrested/profiled by police everywhere and then being told either "What are you talking about? That doesn't happen, silly goose!" or some form of "Well, you deserved it because X, Y, Z" in this kind of armchair quarterback quest for personal truth response to *yet another* police killing of an unarmed black guy. You can dive into the minutia of this particular event all you want, but this is simply a boiling point--people have had enough of this repeat behavior with basically no accountability, enough is enough, etc. It can't be that hard to comprehend.

Also, there is no reasonable doubt about what happened--a police officer knelt on a man's neck until he passed out & died, certainly protecting and/or serving nobody. Quibble about the aftermath or how what they had for breakfast contributed to things all you like, but the event itself is pretty clear.

Police aren't supposed to be roaming thugs, exacting their will as they see fit and held to a lower standard somehow because it's a hard job so cut 'em some slack--sometimes they need to blow off some steam by randomly killing an unarmed black guy (on the street, in his own home, you'll never guess where next!). That should be one of those positions where you're actually held to higher standards since, in theory, you're a form of arbiter of the state. End of the day, either this latest example of police brutality/casual murder ruffles your feathers or you side with the good ol' boys in blue. Maybe one day you'll experience something to change your mind because it certainly won't be an internet discussion

Love to literally twist myself into a pretzel to avoid saying police are violent and killing black people.

Wonder why Shack never watched that video breaking down the videos from the arrest. You know, the one where the police had him in the squad car. And then removed him.

If the money is transferred to other programs that will result in decreased crime rate, this sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

In many countries defunding police has lead to the exact things I mentioned. I would also add that it can result in more stress in remaining police force, which can easily lead to more police brutality.

Also in many countries police gets "privatized" with private security forces, who are harder to control.

But I'm not aware of the public discussion about this in USA. If the money would be used in programs that prevent crime, it sounds like a good idea to me That's pretty much how the system works here in Finland.

They're calling themselves out with their own commentary, no need for my head to explode.

I was originally trying to swear off arguing with liberals for a while which is why I didn't respond to that or Magnus suggestion to defund police in a country that has a massive crime/homicide problem, but NYT are partisan hacks so any video by them are going to be edited to fit the BLM agenda

LOL shocking response.

Black Lives Matter Agenda?

oh boy.

It seems like eliminating police unions could be a good idea. They are blocking reforms to protect their own.

What is the BLM agenda?

Mau guessed it few posts above. Black Lives Matter Agenda

No idea

I guess a human rights movement has some liberal hidden agenda as its core now. How dare they protest for equal rights? They can swim in the same pools as everyone else now, isn't that enough of a compromise?

Anyway, not that George W. Bush is a great man, he's at least a decent human being and not a wannabe Kim Jong-un:


And, the State of Minnesota filed a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department today, which will go back 10-years looking at its history of policies, procedures and practices over racial discrimination. Some progress.

Minneapolis Public Schools also voted today to terminate its contract with the Minneapolis Police Department.

I didn’t mean agenda in a negative way, just that a video showing Chauvin as a murderer is clearly aligned with the BLM protests and what they’re trying to accomplish.

This article sums up a lot of my thoughts about identity politics right now https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/do-be ... ce-theory/ In my opinion people care too much about race as a subject. In my ideal world race would be treated as a little more than a skin tan. I feel many some of these people's response to situations would change depending on which race is doing what, even if they’re attempting to take the morally virtuous side by doing it for the black community’s sake. Judging people by the color of their skin is one of the dumbest things human beings have ever come up with and the shit stain on our legacy.

Comments like this are not helpful. The while "GWB is still a war criminal blah blah blah". Nobody is saying he isn't. Refusing to recognize or accept an individuals improvement is not a good trait for society. Do we not wish Trump would change? Do we now wish W would have change during his Presidency?

Yes, some things are unforgivable, but anyone thinking society benefits by defining everyone only by their mistakes will find themselves with virtually no supporters. The faction of the Democrats who exist merely to point out peoples imperfection - and rarely offer any sort of constructive, substantive dialogue - are part of why W and Trump won in the first place.

Bush's statement is great. It is powerful given his previous positions. If he endorses Biden, that would truly send a message. Donald Trump won by tiny margins. Anything that helps Biden with moderates/independents, which a Bush endorsement certainly would, should be welcomed.

Like Sanders in the 2020 primaries, Trump almost certainly needs to expand his voter base to retain office. It seems he is going in the opposite direction.

Even this is questionable because again, 99.9% of police officers are good people who obviously do an incredible service for their community. There's an idea going around of dramatically increasing both pay & the penalty for negligence. Get a higher quality person and make them more self aware/

By far the best analogy of Black Lives Matter that I have heard is Breast Cancer Awareness month. One does not run up to people wearing pink during Breast Cancer Awareness and yell "BUT WHAT ABOUT PANCREATIC CANCER!?". Of course white, latino, asian etc lives all matters too. BLM isn't putting any others down, it is bringing attention to one specific issue.

What BLM truly lacks, and it does undermine their cause, is some sort fo real, clear, digestible statistic. For example, if in 2021, only 1 black person would be killed by police in all of the USA, do we riot our do we say "whoa, that is a big improvement!"? All of these black people saying they are being profiled when they get pulled over by cops - how do we distinguish between those who actually should have been pulled over vs. those were 'driving while black'?

Everything it seems agrees with the direction they want things to go, but there needs to be some sort of real, honest metric for measuring progress. It also should exist for white people too for comparisons sake and for monitoring police behavior.

This is literally not true. Have you not seen how aggressive violent officers have been the last few days? Also, all of these "bad cops" have partners/co-workers who cover for them, that makes them bad as well.

And the type of people you want to be officers... don't want to be officers. The people that want to be officers are typically military types, or people that like to have power over others. Not people that "want to help".

If police are going to be around forever, then they need to be removed of all riot gear, all guns, etc etc. The police should have the job to de-escalate situations. It's far too often they come in, guns drawn, because they were trained like shit.

If W can help get Trump out of power, and he can, what good does that line of thinking present the current situation?

I mean, they kind of have this. Just look at the prison population. The minor drug charges, etc etc.

Black/Hispanic males account for almost 60% of the prison population.