Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Do not say that it was not murder

The Daily Beast reports:
A Louisiana police officer has been put on administrative leave after he wrote in a Facebook post that the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died in police custody, was a “mistake or misstep not an act of murder.” Shreveport Police Chief Ben Raymond has reportedly ordered an investigation into Sgt. Brent Mason to determine whether he violated the department’s social media policy. Floyd, 46, lost consciousness after saying repeatedly that he could not breathe while an officer held him down by kneeling on his neck.

Mason said in the since-deleted post that he had been training officers for 12 years and had been with the department for 25 years. He wrote that Derek Chauvin, the officer who kneeled on Floyd’s neck, had “poor technique,” which is a “common mistake” made by police officers. “Normally this mistake does not result in death,” he wrote, adding, “where is the innocent until proven guilty!?” Shreveport PD said the “views expressed by individual officers on their personal social media accounts do not reflect” the department’s views or values.
I do not hear anyone say that Chauvin should be considered innocent until proven guilty. Now I know why. One can get fired for saying that.

If Chauvin were intentionally murdering Floyd, why would he do it in from of a live videographer accusing him of murder? It makes no sense. It is much more likely that Chauvin thought that he was following proper procedure.

Speaking of censorship:
Google Drive, at the request of The Washington Post, has taken down a user’s personal copy of the movie “Plandemic.”
Plandemic has some non-mainstream opinions about COVID-19, but that's all. It is bizarre to censor this movie.

Update: There are now conflicting autopsies in the George Floyd case. Obviously a lot depends on whether a neck injury was a cause of death. We have yet to hear Chauvin's story, and how he was trained to deal with situations like this.

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