Chauvin trial re George Floyd - Sky News

So ghoulish! No scriptwriter needed.

If anyone else has the time to watch it as it happens, I've set up a thread here

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/crime/4208173-Is-anyone-watching-Court-TV-George-Floyd-trial

It's still live on channel 179 as they are behind us timewise. They're on lunch (or they were as I have paused during the day). You can watch the whole thing as it happens. You can watch what the lawyers are asking as well as the testimony. It's really interesting.
I did start a thread in Crime here, but nobody responded.

Having watched the whole thing today and yesterday, the Defence are moving on two approaches imo to give reasonable doubt to the jury. 1. That it could have been caused by drugs and 2. That the paramedic response was not good.

You can watch the full trial live on Channel 179 if you have Sky. What Sky reports and what happened in the courtroom are somewhat different.

I mean, he was hardly an angel and I broadly agree with your point that often less attention is paid to female victims of violence. But a) facts are important and b) whatever GFs background is is irrelevant to this case, as he wasn't named in the call to police so it didn't affect their actions towards him. Plus only worrying about whether or not people were illegally killed if they were "good" people is a bit of a slippery slope to start down...

The footage of the restraint is really upsetting.

I work in an environment where physical c restrain is sometimes used and I've received training on how to be part of a restraint team.

Standing on someone's neck is not restraint. It is assault. There is no restraint technique that says stand on someone's neck until they stop breathing.

At least where I work, the key messages from restraint training are basically:

• don't touch the chest and neck area
• restrain someone on their neck not their front of at all possible
• is someone is not resisting, don't keep holding them down

The George Floyd footage is literally the opposite of all of this. They have him on his front, they were compressing his throat so he can't breathe (deliberately), and they hold him in that position until he literally stops breathing. It's horrifying.

Retired with pension 🤬

Not surprising you didn’t hear of him though

I hope she is well hidden

♥️

Scepticaltank

A useful reminder that some people see violence against women and children as problematic because of the harm it will cause to the reputation of men.

I hope that woman and her child are safe and well.

The person who comes to my mind, when people are talking about a violent man involved in the death of another violent man, an act which is the very essence of human history and happens every second of every day somewhere on the planet, is the woman whose unborn baby was just currency, inhuman enough to have a gun placed exactly where both would die for a little bit of money and a temporary a high. I care nothing for either of these men, only that mother and her baby.

I hope she is well hidden.

when the international uprising from George Floyd was because we recognize racism plays into police brutality in the US.

And what if you're wrong? Why is impossible to consider any other possibility apart from one?
Personally I prefer to seek the truth. Whatever that is.

Nobody is shutting down discussions rather countering why the hell it's necessary to worry "what about the white men" when the international uprising from George Floyd was because we recognize racism plays into police brutality in the US.

But just kindly knock off the whole "is it or is it not racism?"

If white people have also died because of a knee to the neck from the police force, then it is perfectly reasonable to consider the option that there is a problem with police brutality as a whole, and that GF may have died as a result of this, rather than the colour of his skin.

Shutting down discussions by calling people racists because they are talking about police behaviour in the wider community is helpful how exactly?

I listened to some of the testimony the past 3 days. I watched parts of various videos they were showing. It was harrowing and I was a mess last night.

I had a loved one who was addicted. Watching yesterday I felt like they thought he was trash because he was a drug user. That him being terrified and then dying was no big deal because his life was of no value.

I don’t know if they are racist but I think they are sociopaths.

I live in the US and am also sickened by the lack of prominent headlines about this trial. This doesn’t seem to be very important to MSM at all now. I guess they got the mileage they wanted last year.

The way the law works, even if they did the wrong thing, if that is not what killed him, the law does not punish them for murder.

That seems pretty basic, really. If it looks like he had a heart attack from drugs or whatever, the fact that they didn't restrain him properly is immaterial to a murder charge.

The US has serious problems with policing, which are themselves in part related to social breakdown more generally. But a lot of it is due to really poor training.

But as for whether racism was at play in this case it seems impossible to say. I can't see the outcome being better for a white guy with the same record doing the same thing. In fact my understanding is that while black men are more likely to be harassed by police, the evidence for them being victims of police killings more often, if you take into consideration confounding things like poverty, isn't all that strong.

An interesting analysis on that topic (pre George Floyd)

nonsite.org/how-racial-disparity-does-not-help-make-sense-of-patterns-of-police-violence-2/

www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730691678/ex-minneapolis-officer-sentenced-to-12-1-2-years-in-death-of-unarmed-911-caller

God I wish the whole whataboutism "white men die at hands of police too" would just go away during this trial. Yes, we are fully aware that US police also kill unarmed white men. White men are a majority in Minnesota (over 80%) so statistically we'd expect this.
American police are particularly brutal compared to their other western counterparts.

But just kindly knock off the whole "is it or is it not racism?" Cause you're clearly an outsider weighing in here on a specific community with multiple layers of history, attitudes, politics, diverse ethnic groups and cultures. Minneapolis is not Charlottesville, Virgina (with its history of slavery, confederates and KKK) nor is it Portland (west coast, extremely progressive)- it's like comparing Italy with Norway with Germany.

There is plenty of evidence of long-term racist actions and attitudes from the MPD (Mpls Police Department) and when Black people in the Twin Cities as a race class get pulled over, harassed and handled roughly by the police (90% of officers don't live in the city and wouldn't "deign to"), it's particularly painful for Minneapolis citizens to see their worst case scenario come true-death of a Black person after he or she is arrested.

When you watch the video of the 3 officers kneeling for that long on a human being, it's chilling. It's depraved. Can I prove without a doubt Chauvin was a racist in his heart? No. But does it matter that an unarmed Black man was slowly suffocated to death in front of Black people and teenagers who were begging for his life? Yes, it does. And any nasty whining about white men get hurt too IS racist as hell in this scenario.

I hope justice is served.

How many people know the name Tony Timpa?

I didn't, thanks for sharing. That's awful.