I know I am a little late to the game on this one - I've been too busy to cover this topic. I will try to catch up now.
So here is a basic timeline. On 25 May 2020 police in Minneapolis were dispatched on a call regarding a Black man who attempted to pay for cigarettes at a local store with what looked like a fake 20 dollar bill. Upon arrival they discovered the man, George Floyd behind the wheel of his car.
The officers decide to arrest him. At first Floyd was presented as fully compliant, or at worst offering very mild, passive resistance. He is cuffed, led to a police vehicle - and then somehow ends up on the ground, with four police officers kneeling on him.
The first awareness the world got of the event was a highly disturbing video of White officer named Derek Chauvin holding Floyd's neck down with his knee. For awhile Floyd complains about being unable to breathe, then goes limp. It looks like he had died - though, apparently, the death occurred later on in the hospital. And yes, by that time the officers had called for an ambulance - which did come and take Floyd to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
What followed - well, I am sure we all know the mainstream narrative. As part of systemic racist mistreatment, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by police. A White police officer ruthlessly strangled him in broad daylight. This is just how horribly racist and brutal the police are.
Massive protests erupted in the US and elsewhere. For awhile, it almost became customary to call this event a murder. Protests turned to riots, in many cities in the US arson and looting took place, millions of dollars and dozens of lives were lost. And then...
And then reality of the situation started coming out. For example, the tehcnique used on Floyd, known in the police parlance as "neck resttraint", turned out to have been authorized for use within the Minneapolis Police Department. It had been used hundreds of times over the last few years, records show. Several dozens people were made unconscious through it - and none died prior to Floyd. So at best trying to kill someone this way was not a very efficient technique for committing murder.
Other details were even more intriguing. Derek Chauvin, the White officer who was on Floyd's neck, knew Floyd as they worked security at the same club. Also, it turned out that at one point, prior to being restrained on the ground, Floyd who was already acting very erratically started complaining about being unable to breathe - before anyone kneeled on him!
And then body camera recordings came out from the cameras worn by officers. The whole conversation between the officers and Floyd - or most of it - was captured there. And it turned out that officers were polite and accommodating.
Personally, I believe they made a mistake in holding Floyd down for two long (over 8 minutes) and holding him in the same position. They also failed to monitor his pulse. But that sort of error qualifies as a charge of negligent homicide at most, not murder.
So let's recap. The officers did nothing that could reasonably have been expected to cause death. So the term murder hardly applies to this situation. They also had done nothing indicative of animus or racist sentiment of any kind.
But we are not done. The real surprise came in the form of the autopsy report which found high levels of powerful drugs in Floyd's system. He had a high level of fentanyl along with cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol, etc. The force used to detain him may have played a role but it is reasonable to believe that drugs present in his system could, and likely would have, caused his death irrespective of other factors.
So here we have it: George Floyd, lionized as a martyr of racist police oppression, the man buried with massive fanfare, presented with a folded American flag like a fallen soldier, likely died of a drug overdose, in the custody of police officers who displayed absolutely no racist sentiment towards him and who, quite possibly, were absolutely powerless to help him no matter what they would have chosen to do. Now let this sink in.
Sources
Minneapolis cops left 44 people unconscious with neck restraints since 2015: report
Joshua Rhett Miller, New York Post, 1 June 2020
How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody
Evan Hill, Ainara Tiefenthäler, Christiaan Triebert, Drew Jordan, Haley Willis and Robin Stein, The New York Times, 31 May 2020
Bombshell: New Memo About George Floyd Leads to Question why Cause of Death was Ignored for so Long
Kari Donovan, DJHJ Media, August 2020
WATCH: Police Bodycam Footage Shows Moment-By-Moment Arrest Of George Floyd For The First Time
Jon Brown, Daily Wire, 4 August 2020
'We'll never forget': George Floyd's funeral in pictures
Al Jazeera, 10 June 2020
Originally published here on 30 August 2020.