Posted on 06/03/2020 7:51:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
No one wants to watch an innocent man suffocate under the knee of a cop while bystanders plead for his life. Yet millions now have that haunting image seared into their memory.
The question to ask in response is simple: what could have been done to prevent this? While I’m in quarantine and can’t see my students, I imagine their predominantly minority faces and wonder how can I keep them from a similar fate?
Policy recommendations to prevent another tragedy like the one that befell George Floyd have ranged from defunding the police to ending qualified immunity and military surplus transfers to departments. But if peaceful protests—of which there have been many—are to achieve any meaningful change, they need a goal.
In the particular case of George Floyd, there is an obvious answer: at least two cops should have lost their jobs long before the event even occurred. George Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, had previously received 20 complaints filed against him, resulting in two letters of reprimand. His partner, Tou Thao, was sued in 2017 for stopping a man without cause and beating him in the street. In both cases, their contracts protected them.
Unfortunately, this is more common than not. Even after the most egregious conduct, many cops keep their jobs. As previously reported in The Atlantic, there is a long history of precincts still employing cops that would have been fired were it not for police unions keeping them on the force. One off-duty cop pulled his gun on a supposed criminal while intoxicated, misfired, killed the man who was later deemed innocent, and then returned to work.
There are numerous stories of on-duty boozing, theft, and abuse. In each case, the police union fought to reinstate these officers despite their inappropriate conduct.
Unfortunately, our priors often blind us when it comes to any talk of reforming police unions. On the left, any contention against unions is untenable. An author for Slate acknowledged the tension between social justice and police unions but couldn’t bring herself to renounce support for any organized labor. On the right, there’s a strong wariness against being perceived as anti-cop or weak on crime.
In reality, reforming police unions should be a bipartisan issue. The right has a history of undercutting the power of public-sector unions and, in this case, doing so would help promote a greater degree of racial justice in our country. In response to the critics, a weakening of their powers need not imply a complete abolition of unions. Studies blame collective bargaining and other roadblocks to thoroughly investigating cops, not the existence of unions per se.
Yet as with all unions, so too do police unions protect mediocrity, if not incompetence, in a profession trusted with upholding law, order, justice, and safety.
Studies confirm this position. Rob Gillezeau, professor at the University of Victoria, posted about his upcoming research into police violence and unionization. His team found that collective bargaining leads to “a substantial increase in police killings of civilians.” The protections that their contracts allowed shifted the incentives such that, when there was a swift decision to shoot or not, those protections pushed the decision to fire.
Furthermore, Gillezeau’s research found that “collective bargaining rights are being used to protect the ability of officers to discriminate in the disproportionate use of force against the non-white population.” Similar studies conducted by Oxford University as well as the University of Chicago Law School came to the same conclusion: strong unions, and in particular collective bargaining rights, lead directly to an increase in the use of excessive force.
A related negative effect of unions is their tendency to retard or stifle any meaningful reform. After the Ferguson riots in 2014, body-cameras on police officers developed bipartisan support. Then, a union in Miami blocked the initiative.
When my governor Scott Walker sought to limit bargaining rights, police unions got an exemption. Aggressive union contention blocks any structural reform that isn’t merely an increase in funding. But funding is easy. Real, structural reform requires accountability and work.
What could this mean for other proposed reforms? Perhaps ending qualified immunity or the demilitarization of the police isn’t the answer. But if unions are left in such positions of control, such proposals won’t even get discussed.
I’m sympathetic to the crusades against racial profiling and excessive force. But, like many, I’ve spent too much time these past few days watching videos of rioters looting businesses and burning down police stations. Wanton hooliganism will not result in the change we need in America’s police forces.
A man died because a union protected two bad cops. For the sake of the innocent and for the cause of protecting all the good cops out there, the time to reform police unions is now.
They had a man in handcuffs on the ground go into cardiac arrest and they kept their knee on his neck, while he complains he can't breathe, then he passes out for real, then one of the cops says he doesn't have a pulse, and then for ANOTHER two minutes after that.
THAT is the depraved indifference.
And the idea the guy was all drugged up, and they didn't notice, and so didn't exercise precautions when restraining him, makes it only worse.
Because aren't police trained in the possible deadly side effects of drug use, so they should've been extra special careful?
Nice try, troll-boi.
“”””””’At best it’s irrelevant; at worst it is damning for the police.”””””””””””””
Dying from a fentanyl overdose is irrelevant?
I think you should call your sponsor. Drinking this early in the day is not a good thing.
If you want to have fun with a liberal, use the 5 Whys Problem identification process on them. For each problem as “Why did this happen.” Then when they answer, ask “Why did that happen” until you have gone down 5 layers.
They will be fumbling around and stuttering...and finally just blame everything on Trump. Then they will call you a racist.
There is ZERO the Federal Government can do about bad cops. They can’t change that any more than the President can demand that Customer Service Agents get better at their jobs.
ALL of this stuff is local. It happens locally, it can only be fixed locally.
Declaring that everyone should be “nice” to each other might feel OK, but it doesn’t address root causes.
I posted the comment below on another police union thread. I think it’s worth mentioning again here,p.
A union (any union) can be thought of as something like a law firm. It’s the union’s job is to protect the membership. Period. You wouldn’t blame a defense lawyer for doing his job. Neither should you blame a union official.
It’s the job of management to discipline workers, and sort out the bad apples. Folks who blame the union should instead be blaming weak management.
However, there is a fly in the ointment. It should be a level playing field. But it’s not. Legislators have made it too hard to fire someone for cause.
I agree but the real problem here is not the police unions. They have no power other than that granted by the local politicians.
Bad cops can be removed it just takes hard work and competent leadership. Both are missing in dem cities.
As the lawyers say.
What are the pharmacokinetics of the markers used to measure fentanyl in the body?
Do they change after death, or are there any decomposition by-products which interfere with the assay post mortem?
What is the sensitivity analysis of the methods used to detect fentanyl or its metabolic by-products (by analogy, merely having Covid-19 RNA in your system does not by itself prove you've ever been contagious)?
What is not just the LD-50 for fentanyl, but the distribution of LD-50 in the population as a function of body weight?
All these have a bearing on the chances that the fentanyl "caused" his death.
My god this is like shooting fish in a barrel.
This had nothing to do with unions. Those two knew each other from their part time jobs at a night club. It was more personal than anything.
That is what a trial is for.
I know that you are unaware of how this works but believe it or not the defense team will bring in medical experts who will present their side of it.
Have you ever heard about what happened to General Flynn? The prosecutors hid a lot of evidence. A lot of people, non thinkers similar to yourself, believed what they were told and declared Flynn guilty.
You have made up your mind. It is probably a lot easier to go through life having people tell you what to think so you don’t have to do it for yourself.
Some of us wait until all facts are presented.
You said a couple posts ago he died of fentanyl, not as a suggested line of defense, but as established fact.
I pointed out the scientific / medical questions which would have to be answered in order to make that statement, and you blow smoke about "waiting for the facts."
BUT YOU DIDN'T WAIT, YOURSELF. YOU PULLED LIES OUT OF YOUR ASS, THAT YOU KNOW HE DIED OF FENTANYL.
Heart attack, meth and fentanyl intoxication are on the list of reasons he died.
You said that would be irrelevant.
You seem very anxious to call this death by cop and ignore everything else.
During the TRIAL, which you apparently have never heard of, all this speculation will be figured out.
What killed him the most? Heart attack, meth, fentanyl intoxication, other reasons, etc.
My SPECULATION is he died mostly due to an overdose.
But unlike you, I will wait to have that confirmed at the trial. I might be right, might be wrong, we’ll see.
But I sure won’t jump on the media narrative that you sucked onto the first minute this took place.
It took eight months to charge the somali cop who killed a white woman. It took eight minutes ( I am using hyperbole here so don’t stroke out about the inaccuracy of that statement)to charge this cop with murder, even before the toxicology reports were available.
Police unions are just another federal employee union, which have demonstrated no service for the taxpayer, and protection for the substandard worker, and insulation from procedural correction.
Writer’s a teacher? To stop pedophilia, we need to fix the NEA.
The problem is, I have read numerous posts by people claiming to be medical examiners and/or MDs. All of them concur, that there are multiple situations where cardiac arrest exists, that you CANNOT say definitively post mortem, what particular item caused a person's death by cardiac arrest.
That means anyone attempting the "he DIED of drugs" is up the creek.
That in and of itself, does not make "The Cause of Death"™ the policeman all by himself -- by default, as it were.
But the reason, that isn't enough to clear the policeman either, is two fold.
One is that both the state's coroner, and a coroner retained by the family, (remember, the guy's dead. The coroner is an agent for the state; the state stands to get sued bigtime if a state agent is partially culpable for the death; the family could be accused of just wanting to sue, but maybe they just want to make sure if the ex-policeman did kill their relative, he doesn't just walk, "the principle of the thing" and not money.)
That means, both coroners could reasonably be suspected of ulterior motives, in opposite directions.
But BOTH of them concur, the policeman's knee on the neck at least contributed.
So if "both sides" (the state and the family) have coroners agreeing on that, it's gonna be really hard for a defense attorney -- who by definition only wants to get his client off -- to overrule both of them on his own medical examiner's authority.
That's not sufficient; I'm not saying it is. Time out for a detour.
The emotions in this case, got all wound up (as you say), by people jumping to conclusions from past cases. "We're sick of people lying about "Gentle Giant" and then the REST of the video comes out" "Reginald Denny" "He has a violent past!" "The policeman has 10 (or 17 or 18 ) excessive force complaints against him!" "He's a druggie!" None of those apply to me. I didn't hear about the case through the press.
Some of those don't apply to this case: nobody claimed the decedent was minding his own business.
But the initial claims by the police were that he was vigorously resisting arrest, and that extreme measures were necessary to subdue him.
The POLICE are the one's whose initial claims were repeatedly refuted by independent, no-axe-to-grind, 3rd-party videos.
That is the opposite of the model used by the knee-jerk "oh god another false police brutality claim" people.
One video shows the police trying to pull him out of his OWN car. If they'd put chocks on the wheels so he couldn't drive away, and waited for him to come out to go to the bathroom, there would have been no need to try to pull him out of his car.
Another video shows him calmly handcuffed, seated against a building; the police firmly helping him to his feet and all of them walking across the street into the middle distance on the camera about 1/2 block away.
Another video shows him partway in the police cruiser, and one of the policemen leaning in and the vehicle rocking side to side somewhat.
None of those videos support either police brutality or -- layman's term -- forceful resistance. Nobody's hair is messed up, nobody's clothes or uniforms are wrinkled or ruffled, nobody is panting or sweating.
The next video is nine minutes long, uncut, as far as we know released in its entireity, taken from about six feet away, and shows the policeman with his knee on the neck of a man lying on his stomach in the street, who is also wearing handcuffs.
This was cited not by the press but by the Statement of Probably Cause.
The element of depraved indifference, comes because on that uninterrupted video, you see a man in custody (at which point the police are his "custodians" hence the word), with someone's knee on his neck. (A still shot from across the street shows two of the policemen on his legs.) The knee continues after the man says he can't breathe--this is NOT "hands up! don't shoot" because it is uninterrupted video, and during the course of the video, the guy does in fact pass out, one of the POLICEMEN (not Geraldo Rivera three weeks later) says he doesn't have a pulse,...and the policeman in question, doesn't even double check for a pulse, or perform CPR. He keeps his knee on the neck of a man, lying down, with two cops holding his legs, in handcuffs, and without a pulse. That's "unreasonable force" since a man without a pulse does not get up, grab your gun, and start shooting bystanders. It's also unreasonable force since he had not been even accused of a crime of violence for his arrest, but passing a bad $20, which is not an imminent threat to life or limb. And finally, because multiple independent videos show that the decedent became compliant once the cuffs were on...let alone when he passed out...let alone when he went into cardiac arrest.) The "Depraved Indifference" comes about because a 19-year veteran first responder continued to hold down by the neck (there are multiple other cases from all over the country, and expert opinions from police, police trainers, and criminology professors saying that holding someone down is dangerous all by itself. Continuing to do so, after another COP tells you to your face, the guy has no pulse, and you keep your knee on his neck instead of even going through the motions of CPR... no jury in existence is going to say, Oh, that's ok because the guy was convicted of a violent home invasion 5 or 7 or whatever years ago 1000 miles away in another state.
If there were drugs in his system, then the police had even more of a duty to treat him with kid gloves, being trained in how illicit drugs may potentially affect the heart and lungs -- it does not give them the right to kneel on the neck of a guy they know to be in cardiac arrest.
DEMOCRATS own ALL unions. They are responsible for everything going on right now especially the Floyd fiasco. Democrat politicians,police higher ups and the unions have turned their back on rank and file police purposely.
Prevent Another George Floyd Tragedy, We Must Fix the drug problem in the Black community.
DRUGS KILL! In more ways than one.
DRUGS and the Black culture killed George Floyd, regardless of the final act.
“””””””””But BOTH of them concur, the policeman’s knee on the neck at least contributed.”””””””””
The prosecutor....The nice young man who was turning his life around did not die of a heart attack, meth or a fentanyl intoxication. He died 100% due to the cop holding him down.
The defense......http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDmGhethEoQ
The jury can see all evidence provided by both sides and make a decision.
“No one wants to watch a career criminal die of a heart attack and heroin overdose.”
Both autopsies conclude his death was a homicide. Care to argue that little point?
L
Don't you realize that any normal person knows
a) you don't kneel on someone's neck, you might hurt them
b) if a policeman sees a man right in front of him and another cop says he doesn't have a pulse, he's supposed to do CPR instead of keeping his knee on the guy's neck which shouldn't have been there for the last 7 or 8 minutes straight anyway ?
You are using strawmen to represent the prosecution, which demonstrates your bad faith.
Could’ve saved George Floyd’s life by keeping him in prison where he belonged.
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