Re: George Floyd
 

The murder was 1.5 miles from my house. The riots were centered maybe a couple more miles in the other direction.

Re: George Floyd
 

We're a leafy ways from where the shit will go down. But we also have our outs.

Re: George Floyd
 

And then he gave that press conference. I do not understand that man, aside from thinking he may be beholden to the police union.

He told us he couldn't charge Clark's killers because he couldn't consider anything beyond the moment before they employed deadly force. Here, it's on tape and the cop was told by bystanders that he was killing Mr. Floyd. If he thinks this is a close case, he needs to go.

I'm kicking myself for not doing more to get Haase elected to replace him.

Re: George Floyd
 

Hi, neighbor. (I guess)

Re: George Floyd
 

Anything less than Murder 1, this country enters Civil War 2. There's no way you can have your knee on a guy's neck for 8 minutes without intending to kill him. None.

Re: George Floyd
 

What a stupid thing Freeman said. He walked it back later. But yeah, hard not to see how Chauvin could not have formed the requisite criminal intent as he slowly and methodically crushed the life out of Floyd. This city is getting boarded up and shut down right now.

Re: George Floyd
 

Is "knee on neck" even a thing? The cigarette guy in NYC who was choked to death, choke holds were a thing, just not authorized, but I have never heard of "knee on neck."

News From the Front
 

So a HS friend who is extreme MAGA (I dated her in HS, like what if that had stuck?) has posted, "Pretty everyone agrees the cops should, and will, rot in prison, BUT..... why burn your city down?"

In past police murders she was more reposting the victim's prior bad acts. Progress?

Re: George Floyd
 

Re: George Floyd
 

No, "knee on neck," particularly while the suspect is already under control and hasn't resisted arrest, is not an accepted method of taking a person into custody.

The choke out in the Garner case is also not an accepted practice, but I think they had a basis to argue there was a struggle and resistance there, and it occurred alongside other acceptable techniques.

I had a cop draw on me once and then cuff me face down on the ground. It was a fuck up in which a plate from a stolen car had been placed on my rental car, and I was dumb enough to open the door and approach the police car after I was pulled over. (Big no no.)

Nobody choked me (even a suspected white car thief gets the benefit of the doubt), but they did aggressively push me onto the ground and get on top of me. Once your arms are cuffed behind your back, you're subdued. There's no way to do anything. There is no conceivable reason - and every cop alive knows this - to choke a person who is cuffed or otherwise has his arms held behind his back and his face on the ground.

The guy was helpless and choked to death slowly. A good defense lawyer could plead it down to something reckless or heat of passion, but given the cop's experience, training, the fact that other cops had control of the guy's arms and legs and he wasn't resisting, I could see this being a first degree charge. No way that cop is explaining the length of time he sat on Floyd's head while hearing "I can't breathe" and hearing the crowd tell him to get off the guy because he couldn't breathe without realizing he was killing the guy.

If I were his lawyer I'd argue it had to be heat of passion or temporary insanity of a sort because no sane person would openly commit murder on camera the way this cop did.

Re: George Floyd
 

We agree on very little lately, but I agree with this. There is no struggle, there is no reason not to pick him up and put him in the patrol car. The cop just sits there. He registers the crowd's statements, the man's pleas, and he just sits there.

But moving past that, WHY DO WE LIVE IN A POLICE STATE?

Why do cops get army equipment that's been discarded?
Why do they need predictive software that allows them to run Minority Report (NPI) scenarios on people in the inner cities? (Thanks, you fucking scumbags at IBM, and you, Peter Thiel.)
Why do we need cameras on the corners?
Why do they need to tap our phones?
Why do they need access to our data?
Why does every crime have to be met with the most extreme charge?

Do we need four fucking cops to investigate a bad check?

Why is there civil and criminal forfeiture that allows the state to take property from people and then force the people to prove they're entitled to its return?

Why do we jail more people than China and Russia per capita?
Why do we jail people for decades for non-violent crimes?
Why did we ever have the War on Drugs?

CRIME IS DOWN AND HAS BEEN DOWN FOR SOME TIME.

None of this shit is justified. It's evidence of a growing police state, the wages of imbecilic "tough on crime" laws favored by the dumbest fucking voters among us and paranoia about "terrorists among us."

And if we get social unrest as a result of the economic fallout from this virus, expect this to get a whole lot worse. "Never let a crisis go to waste," will be the whispered goal of the thugs and Orwellians.

Re: George Floyd
 

I don't think so. I think you'll see the mother of all crackdowns.

Law enforcement is itching to play with its new toys. They're already running facial recognition software on rioters.

They'll throw Chauvin under the bus as they damn well should, but the police state will then pivot to using this as a teaching moment of exactly the wrong type -- experimenting on responses to social unrest in a single city to find the best ways to snuff out unrest on a broader scale which may accrue from economic fallout from the virus.

In Lighter News...
 

Re: George Floyd
 

You don’t know Bob Kroll, the police union president (who appeared on stage with 45). He hasn’t said much yet, but I don’t think he will throw Chauvin under the bus.

At the moment, the police are basically gone. Yesterday morning, after a night of riots, the only policing saw anywhere in the city were clearing out a homeless encampment near the looted Target (there were certainly looted goods in the but kicking people out with no place to go is questionable). This morning, after even more rioting and a police precinct burned down, I saw exactly one police squad car. They’ve fled the city.

Today, unlike yesterday, there are a bunch of state troopers and national guard holding a perimeter. What happens after dark? Who knows?

The mayor has declared an 8pm curfew. Who is going to enforce it? The cops who have taken the last several days off? Troopers? National Guard?

Re: George Floyd
 

Sounds like Hertz.