George Floyd
2020 was the year of #BLM. Sadly like so many social media driven causes, writing this in February 2021, it seems to have come and gone. No more statues being torn down, no more graffiti, no more protests. Unlike the equal rights protests of the 60’s which kept up momentum.
I said at the time that George Floyd’s death was not all as it appeared to be in the media. That is not to minimise the heartbreak for his family. He had after all it seems fought with addiction for many years, given his life to Christ and done much good in his community. However, as anyone who has had any contact with addicts knows, breaking habits and living clean is almost impossible.
I was probably one of only a few that bothered in due course to what the long bodycam footage of the police officers involved. One of the few to observe just how much he was under the influence of drugs (subsequently verified in the inquest and investigations, the drugs were at the very least a major contributory factor). He was quite simply high and incoherent. His size made restraint really difficult and if I’ve ever seen someone resist arrest, this was it.
Had he not been on drugs and had simply complied with the officers’ requests, he would be alive today.
Two officers had responded to a shop-keeper’s call to arrest a man who had passed a forged dollar bill. Fo some reason George had not left the vicinity and was sitting in his car. The officers asked him to get out. He refused. They pulled him out and called for back-up.
George was in fact saying that he couldn’t breathe way before he the police officer put his knee on George’s neck,
George was in fact saying that he couldn’t breathe way before he the police officer put his knee on George’s neck, way before he was even on the ground. He was saying that he couldn’t get into the police car because of claustrophobia, despite the fact that their car was larger than his. I repeat, he was high.
Having got him into the ploice vehicle he climbed out the other side and this is where he ends up on the ground. Viewing then gets very hard because one can here him pleading to be released and bystanders shouting at the police. At this point whether the officer was intending to kill George only he and God will know.
Here you can see how the arrest was going fairly calmly to begin with. I would also draw attention to the racial mix of the officers. This was never a white on black matter.
Below is a statement which church leaders put out. I agree with most of what it says except, as you will appreciate, their reference to “the brutal killing“. I would endorse “tragic death” or any other similar wording but “killing” has not yet (at time of writing) been determined by a court of law.
Lastly I find it tragically ironic that quite early on in the year we were introduced to the cry “I can’t breathe“. As the months were to unfold, evryone ended up wearing masks and at some point complained that they couldn’t breathe well either> Are these things just strange ironies?