Derek Chauvin George Floyd
Courtesy Darnella Frazier

From the AP:

A Minnesota prosecutor has charged a [former] police officer with third-degree murder and manslaughter in the restraint death of George Floyd.

Floyd is the handcuffed black man whose cries of “I can’t breathe” in a widely seen cellphone video set off days of violent protest in Minneapolis and around the country.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Friday that he may yet bring more charges against the officer, Derek Chauvin.

The white officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for at least eight minutes in the video. Floyd can be seen gradually becoming motionless as Chauvin and three other officers ignored bystanders’ shouts to get off him.

Floyd was pronounced dead at a Minneapolis hospital in an incident that began when police responded to a report of a man passing a counterfeit bill in a grocery store on Memorial Day.

The charges came after Minneapolis has been rocked by three days of protests, including looting, scores of fires and the burning of a police precinct station on Thursday even after the governor called out the National Guard.

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96 COMMENTS

  1. Saw that coming. No matter which side of the argument you’re on, this was a certainty.

    • The other 3 officers on scene should be charged also. They should not have let it go this far and bear some responsibility.

      • I guess one of the guys was a rookie (~1 year on the job) so firing might be enough for him, but absolutely the others should be charged. Them just standing around and witnessing the murder is exactly why people say all cops are bastards.

        • chauvin was just a rookie at one point. The rookie here watched a murder and did nothing to stop it. If I followed unlawful orders I would have been held accountable for it.

        • I get what you’re saying and agree to a point. My thinking though is that I wouldn’t necessarily expect a junior person to take control of a situation away from *3* senior persons.

      • In the latest video that came out, we can now see the 4 officers worked together to kill George Floyd.

        3 men held his body down against the wheel of the car, and one pressed his neck. A 5th officer stood watching from the front. Its ridiculous to think these men didn’t know they were taken it too far once George was disabled.

        Minneapolis is a Liberal Democrat controlled city and state alike. Progressives are responsible for the poor officer training, the police department’s response to the officers crime, and the crimes of rioters destroying their city. In Atlanta, law enforcement handled the rioters and situation swiftly.

        Georgia is a Republican run state, though the city of Atlanta and Fulton county are Democrat run. @GovKemp should be congratulated again for handling the rioters well considering police were outnumbered like everywhere else.

        In my opinion, all 5 officers should be held responsible in George Floyd’s murder. The 4 holding him down equally participated, and should be charged right away with 3rd degree murder, the 5th standing was an accessory to murder by watching the neck press and doing nothing to stop it.

        I support law enforcement and know the vast majority are great people willing to die defending the innocent public. My overall point is there are problems in Minneapolis, and every part of this story shows how incompetent Democrat policies are in managing people, governing, and running anything outside of the bathroom maintenance.

        • So, you’re saying that Democrats, who brought us multi-gender how-ever-you-feel-today bathrooms, actually can maintain them…amazing, would not have guessed.

    • I don’t understand why it took so long to charge officer Chauvin. Local police and the District Attorney’s office would have had access to the police body camera video recordings immediately which will clearly show whether or not the deceased did anything to justify such heavy-handed (heavy kneed if we want to be hyper-accurate) tactics.

      If four people (who were not law enforcement officers) had done the same as part of an otherwise legitimate citizen’s arrest in the same situation, the District Attorney’s office would have charged them the next day.

      Now imagine this happening 20 years ago before anyone was recording the incident on video. The police would have told the District Attorney’s office that the suspect was violently resisting and justified their actions — and the police would have gotten away with it.

      • Pretty sure it took so long because they wanted to see if there was any way they could get away with not doing it.

        • It is a good thing that thousands of people protested, otherwise, they would’ve gotten away with it.

          Just like in Georgia, where it took almost 3 months to file murder charges against the private citizens.

        • @Miner49er
          You wouldn’t be saying that if your business had just been burned down from this.

      • “If four people (who were not law enforcement officers) had done the same as part of an otherwise legitimate citizen’s arrest in the same situation, the District Attorney’s office would have charged them the next day.”

        I dunno, look how long the Arbery case took to have any charges…

        • Hannibal,

          Good point. An excellent point I might add which blows up my argument!

          I stand corrected.

          What this reinforces, once again, is that we have become a nation of men rather than a nation of laws and justice. How sad.

        • @ geoff
          Did I miss something or is his wife being Hmong completely irrelevant?

      • I don’t understand why it took so long to charge officer Chauvin.

        Mohamed Noor now an ex-officer and convicted murderer, was sentenced to about 12 and a half years in a Minnesota prison for the death of Justine Ruszczyk, an unarmed woman he killed while on patrol in 2017.

        investigation took a year, sentenced in June 2019… the protests here were because they DID arrest the Somali Muslim cop… Can’t fuckin please anyone….

      • “I don’t understand why it took so long to charge officer Chauvin.”

        Floyd died on May 25 and the killer was charged on May 29. Is that really such a long time?

        If I was the one charging him, I’d want to be as sure as humanly possible to get everything absolutely right. I’d want to completely nail these charges down to the best of my ability. There’s no room for error in this case. Undercharging and overcharging would only prove to be damaging. Get it wrong and stuff will burn and people might die as result.

        If the state doesn’t get a conviction, the following sh!tstorm will be seriously bad.

        • Along with firing they should all be de-certified to be law enforcement in any capacity. (whatever it’s called)

          Being fired, at least in my area, just means going to next county or city and getting another job as long as your personnel file ain’t too screwed up.

          Being de-certified means you are done in that capacity in that State. Move or welcome to another career choice.

    • Please explain the other side of the argument that justifies this behavior. I’m all ears.

    • All he was doing was taking a knee! Oh now the black folk don’t like it. When kapernick did it it was all the rage. White guy does it and lets burn down the city!

  2. Saw that manslaughter charge coming a mile away.
    They’re going to say it was a complete accident. Bet.

    And no, I doubt that will quell the riots. Its not about Floyd anymore. Its about getting back at the state. Payback time essentially, especially for the extended lock-downs.

    • 3rd degree murder (max 25 years) was the primary charge, manslaughter is just backup.. still time for more charges…..

    • I’m currently in a text conversation with a family member who is actually (and angrily) siding with the rioters/looters. He’s been so frustrated with the ills of society for so much of his life, he’s looking at the destruction as his proxy “payback for the corrupt court system and its tin-badged minions”.

      As Michael Caine’s character famously said in The Dark Knight, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

      • I Haz a Question,

        Regarding your relative who is fed up with our corrupt courts and their enforcers, ask him why he doesn’t direct his ire at the actual courts and their enforcers instead of local businesses which are not related at all.

        • Also ask him why he thinks the citizens of these cities keep voting for Democrat officials for the past 40+ years who enact the laws and procedure that the cops operate under? Ask him if the citizens are getting exactly what they voted repeatedly on?

        • @ uncommon-sense

          “why he doesn’t direct his ire at the actual courts and their enforcers”

          I’ve seen several comments that say more or less what you are saying here and at face value what you have said seems completely reasonable. But is it really? Isn’t the answer somewhat obvious? Soft targets. Why did we fire bomb Tokyo and Dresden? You burn down enough shit and people start paying attention. This is an unfortunate, but completely predictable reaction. Tyranny enacted with violence begets violence in return. And as is the case in every conflict a heavy price is born by the populace.

        • Jason,
          Arson, vandalism and theft against 3rd parties are still crimes that should land the perpetrators in prison with the officer no matter how much you understand and sympathize with them. Also “we” didn’t bomb anything in WWII, that was other people who are almost all dead now. Vancouver would have been an even softer target than Tokyo or Dresden but it wasn’t bombed – any ideas on why?

        • @Vic

          You are perhaps missing the point on purpose?

          When people are pushed far enough, when they feel that they no longer have anything to lose, they at times will snap. Emotions are not rational. Would it have made more sense to, oh I don’t know, take a favorable position in parking garage with a rifle and shoot at police officers? Maybe. But I suspect you wouldn’t have been any happier with that than they were in Texas. And how would focusing on officers that weren’t involved be any better than looting a store? Or maybe they should have assembled an ad hoc commando team and did an O’dark30 kidnapping of the officers involved in the incident. The point is that some of these people feel that there is no winning. The courts fail them, the police abuse them, peaceful protest gets them no where, elected officials turn a blind eye, the system covers up and pretends that nothing wrong is ever done by police officers. Don’t misunderstand, I think that what is happening is a terrible tragedy, but do you honestly think that officer would now be charged with murder if this terrible public spectacle hadn’t happened, do you really? Sometimes people just lash out at what is in front of them. It very rarely makes sense.

        • Vic Nighthorse,
          Why wasn’t Vancouver bombed? I’m not sure what’s your point. Vancouver, British Columbia- Canada was our ally. Vancouver, Washington – we’d be bombing our own citizens.

      • I forgot where I heard/read it but this sort of thing always makes me remember something like it: while the 3rd word longs for food and clean water the 1st world longs for chaos and starvation.

      • The problem with that is that nobody is actually taking revenge or exacting payback from the authorities who are responsible.

        The police are the people who did this; they’re the jackboots who apply force for the system. Why is everyone at each other’s throats over this — attacking their own neighbors, destroying local businesses who don’t like the shitty system either — instead of surrounding the police precinct? The local pawnshop has nothing to do with it. There should be a cordon of thousands of people around the police station right now.

        But instead, everyone does the dumbest, most harmful thing possible. Nobody gets anywhere good in this scenario — except the people in charge of the system. They’ll be fine, and in fact, they’ll come out of it with more power than ever before. Wash, rinse, repeat.

        I’m sure you know this, and you’ve probably also said something similar to your family member. It’s just incredibly disheartening to see people who are angry at “the system” taking it out on other citizens while the real problem continues to get even worse.

        • You should go watch the live streams from days ago and prior to the white kids burning down the city. Don’t let the media feed you disinfo.

        • Already have corrected some of it — my assumption that the police station was being left alone was wrong.

          Your contention that “the white kids” are burning down the rest of the town is also wrong. I don’t doubt that there are black bloc (aka white communist) opportunists fanning the flames out there, but the mass of rioters hasn’t been trucked in; 99.9% of the looters are local people attacking their own, and 100% of looters, arsonists, and communists deserve to be shot.

        • Simple explanation, two words— Antifa, Black lives matter. Both are anarchist organizations that are bank rolled by George Soros. Remember, ” Never let a crisis go to waste “. First create a crisis over a murder by using the fake news to sensationalize it. Second, whip up a frenzy and send in the paid anarchists. The local ignoramuses will respond by being led around by the nose and burn their own neighborhoods.

        • why burn down this place that you live in.

          This is the part i don;t understand every time something like this happens. We as a people start fires loot shops that are needed in the area that you live.

          And every time it is put on the news every time gun ownership goes up in cities that burn.

          But the buildings are still burned down jobs are lost and it takes years for recovery to happen.

          So ya this guy will go to prison maybe or maybe he will get off, and if he gets off more fire more unemployment and no one wins.

          The law enforcement will get a better building in the hood more white cops more heavy handedness on the streets.

          But the people that live there will be there for years to come and nothing will have changed.

          • The age old question, they’ve been doing it since the 60s and apparently still have not figured out that it’s their own shit they are destroying..

      • What you’re really saying is that your friend wants other people’s world to burn. I’m sure he doesn’t want his own little part of the world to burn. That’s how it usually goes with Outsiders.

      • Why didn’t anyone riot when Mohammed Noor (first Somali cop in Minneapolis) shot Justine Diamond, a white woman who called the police about some suspicious activity in her neighborhood. If I recall correctly, Noor shot her through his partners window as she approached the cruiser. She was not armed; she was wearing a bathrobe and pajamas.

        No one rioted. No business were burned. No one else had to die.

        No sympathy for the rioters.
        Careful to distinguish that not everyone protesting is a rioter.
        Genuine protesters are to be commended.

        • There are plenty of examples. Remember this guy?

          “a black man charged with fatally shooting a woman and wounding seven people at a Nashville church aimed to kill at least 10 white churchgoers”

          That was only 3 years ago. The difference is the way it’s portrayed in the media and by politicians. Democrats use these tragedies to whip up division and hate.

    • Lance,

      The police will no doubt claim that it was an accident.

      I argue that their actions were beyond a mere accident. Rather, the police were negligent at best.

      Unless there is other evidence beyond the videos of the incident which show that those police officers wanted to murder someone, there is no way that a prosecutor can convict them of murder. It should be a slam-dunk, though, to convict them of whatever Minnesota calls negligent manslaughter.

      • NAL but Minnesota’s 3rd degree statute seems exactly on point:

        “Whoever, without intent…causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life…”

        IMO this is absolutely a textbook example of depraved indifference to a person’s life.

        • Not used to it being called 3rd degree murder but different states different statutes. Appropriate fit for the currently known facts.

        • “Not used to it being called 3rd degree murder”

          Same, that’s why I had to look up what the heck it is. AFAIK in Oregon it would be “Manslaughter in the first degree”.

      • Manslaughter is for when the person that died contributed to their own death but you had no right to kill them. Murder has three degrees for various types of murder. First degree requires premeditation.

        • “Manslaughter is for when the person that died contributed to their own death but you had no right to kill them.”

          No, that’s not it at all. Voluntary man is a wrongful act that can be charged when the killer intended only to cause serious harm but death resulted, or if the killer intended to kill and did so but was acting under extreme circumstances or duress (mitigating factors). Involuntary man occurs when there was no intent to kill or injure, but death still resulted. Manslaughter differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but that’s the gist of it.

    • Is this the nonsense narrative coming from right wing radio right now?

      The people rioting do not and have not given a shit about lockdowns. They don’t follow them. This is middle-class white projection.

      • Yeah, the families of small business owners (some who would be black) forced to close down and doesn’t have insurance (because that costs quite a bit of money) to cover stolen goods they can’t sell surely wouldn’t be a part of this.

        I’m sure folks being out of work and having they’re bank accounts slowly dry up wouldn’t join in on the fun.
        I don’t know about right-wing radio nonsense, but I do know lock-downs have not been friendly to small businesses.

        Its only white projection though, so screw’em. Especially the black folks who were already suffering from it and have to contend with the damage of their communities by people who don’t even live there. They’re probably race traitors, right?

    • The youths said they would stop rioting when all four are charged. So, I guess the youths will still burn down what’s left.

    • Right, people who are already on welfare don’t GaS about non-existent lock downs which they were not paying attention to anyway. There concerns are not your concerns. Minneapolis has been a powder keg for a long time. This would have happened without C19 sooner or later.

  3. I’m shocked?? Oh wait saw it an hour ago, really expected 2nd degree but the Civil Rights shit is still coming, that will sweep up the other three…

  4. Cops have too much authority. This isn’t about race it’s about a tyrannical state. No knock warrants and police brutality must end! The DA’s offices are also in need of a major clean up. What makes anyone think they wouldn’t be at the mercy of a prosecuting attorney sweeping exculpatory evidence under the rug just to toss a man of any color in jail just for the W in court???

    • Every time you clean your house it somehow still gets dirty!

      Fix the system by changing it. Do away with cops and change the justice system to a functioning one. We can go back to policing through an office rather than a department.

  5. Its not even june yet.
    Impeachment
    Covid 19
    Stock market record drop
    Oil traded negative
    Major riots
    Wtf is next

    • The more I think about that, the more I like it.
      This could: (1) quell riots, (2) encourage the notion among the naive that cops can no longer hurt people of any ethnicity, (3) scratch America’s anti-gun itch.

      • Yes, but taking away their guns will solve the problem… because guns.

        Instead of dastardly firearms, constables in blue states could carry distress whistles… and multiple sets of earplugs with appropriate safety ratings (snicker).

  7. “Earlier this week, police said in a statement they were responding to an alleged forgery Monday evening and that Floyd “physically resisted officers.”
    But surveillance footage from the nearby Dragon Wok restaurant shows the first point of contact between Floyd and officers. While there are several minutes where Floyd’s interactions cannot be seen from the camera’s vantage point, the footage does not appear to support the assertion that Floyd resisted arrest.
    In the video, two officers approach Floyd and two passengers in a vehicle parked outside the restaurant, located across the street from a convenience store where the alleged fraud occurred.
    Officers appear to handcuff Floyd, though the exchange is partially hidden behind the vehicle. Floyd appears to fall before an officer lifts him up and leads him onto the sidewalk, where Floyd sits down against a wall.
    Eventually, the officer helps Floyd to his feet before both officers escort Floyd across the street to their SUV. Floyd appears to fall again before a second police vehicle blocks the view of the surveillance camera.
    At no point in the video does Floyd appear to struggle against the officers.
    Police said in their statement this week that officers “noted (Floyd) appeared to be suffering medical distress” and called an ambulance.
    Floyd was declared dead at a hospital a short time later, police said.
    Minneapolis police have yet to release bodycam footage from the officers involved.”

    • I’ve seen one body cam from officer that arrived while Floyd and 2nd individual were sitting with backs to a wall… They were blocked out, Floyd was supposedly placed in police vehicle and then removed and placed on the pavement by Chauvin (that’s why I was looking for murder 2)… Video from up the street shows three cops on him, and no “agitated crowd” surrounding them…. This will not be good enough family wants 1st degree murder (ain’t gonna happen) protestors want the other three charged right now…. I think it will come out that Floyd was on drugs, got sick in the cop car and pissed Chauvin off so he dragged Floyd out of the vehicle and was proceeding to teach him a lesson (that exculpatory evidence)…..

  8. This is going to be very embarrassing if the medical examiner reports that Floyd’s death wasn’t caused by Chauvin’s pressure on his neck. It’s pretty obvious from the video that no pressure was applied to the front. That rules out suffocation by compressing the windpipe. Even if pressure did close off an artery on one side of his neck, the other side wasn’t affected. I’d suspect damage to Floyd’s spinal cord before either of those.

    After a suspect is taken into custody, police become responsible for his welfare. As soon as Floyd lost consciousness, if not sooner, Chauvin should have switched from arrest mode to first aid mode. Even if the medical examiner’s report clears Chauvin, his failure to render aid will, and should, condemn him.

    • Interesting to see how that Department’s “”Policy”” reads about arrest procedure. Is that tactic (Knee on neck/head) In the manual?

      I’m not anti-police, know some good ones mostly however, I have often seen some questionable tactics that are presented in court as ok because manual says so or it’s written so broadly.

      Maybe the cops, active or retired, on this board will chime in.

      • Minneapolis personnel are permitted to use their knee on the back or neck to get control and subdue somebody until they can be handcuffed behind their back. If the perp is still unruly, they are supposed to put the shackles on his ankles. However, once a person is cuffed behind their back, they must be moved into a sitting position to reduce the chances of situational asphyxiation. They are not allowed to leave them on their stomach or on their side for that reason.

        The cop pretty much did everything you are NOT supposed to do precisely for this outcome.

    • I don’t have any medical or real tactical training to cloud my opinion, but when I saw the video I actually thought he was compressing the neck in a way similar to the “sleeper” hold. The SH is deadly if used incorrectly; for example the Portland police can’t use it any more because they got killy with it.
      Just FWIW

  9. All four of those scumbags should be charged. The one that did the kneeling should hang until hes a lifeless meat bag. Like i always say on here: Eye for an eye.

    • His Russian handlers ran out of money to pay him. Or he did get paid spent it all on Vodka and is currently in an alcohol induced coma.

  11. Like I give a damn about some criminal in Minneapolis who got killed by the cops. let the city burn. George Floyd was a career criminal, he got what he deserved. The officer was just supporting Colin Kapernick and took a knee…the cops should be presented a crime prevention award!

    • Yes because the Police Officer that killed him has so much more regard for your life. You need to have an encounter with one of these bad actors and I hope for a similar outcome just no riots for your death.

      • Never going to happen, because I am not out committing crimes, therefore I don’t have any type of confrontational contact with police. This doesn’t happen in my community because we do not have a ethnic population. Our local police and deputies are very well trained, we respect and support them. George Floyd died of a heart condition, maybe the officers contributed to his death. But hey, it’s the chance you take when you are a life long violet criminal. Check his criminal history, this scumbag was involved in a home invasion robbery where he and his criminal associates forced his was into an elderly woman’s home and pistol whipped her while robbing her. Yet you support him, because he’s black. yea, stick your head in the sand, it’s easier than facing facts.

  13. Since they did know each other, first degree homicide could/should be on the table. A manslaughter charge is a slap in the face to non LEOs everywhere. An example needs to be made, and the other 3 need to also be charged. This is not the US where I grew up, it is indeed a police state, getting worse and worse.
    If this is the cost of diversity, please bring back the European types.

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