By Henry Fowler, Stevensville
As with previous causes célèbres, when the facts come out, the lies of Black Lives Matter and its enablers are shattered. The newly-leaked police body camera footage (posted at DailyMail.com) of the beginning of George Floyd’s arrest disprove the sacred narrative in which Floyd was the innocent victim of racist police officers.
The nearly eight minutes of footage show the police officers’ encounter with Floyd between the time they first engaged him and the time they put him on the ground. During the entire time, Floyd was dishonest, uncooperative, and acted deranged and scary, while repeatedly refusing to comply with the officers’ instructions.
Although acting like a lunatic, Floyd lied to the police about being on any drugs. The autopsy revealed that he had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death. The autopsy also found that Floyd had “severe” heart disease, that he died of a heart attack, and that the fentanyl and the meth might have contributed to his fatal heart attack. He didn’t die of asphyxiation and there was no damage to the trachea or bruising to the neck.
As the officers tried to get Floyd into the police car, he refused because he claimed to be “claustrophobic” even though he had no problem sitting in his own car. They ordered him four or five more times to get into the police car. He kept refusing and resisting. He claimed that he is afraid, that he’s claustrophobic, and that “I’m gonna die” and “I can’t breathe!” This is before he’s on the ground and when the only thing restraining him is handcuffs. The officers finally put Floyd on the ground while he continued to protest, “I can’t breathe!” That’s when the bodycam footage ended.
The authorized knee-in-the-neck procedure was only used after Floyd’s repeated refusal to get into the police car. The muscular 6-foot, 4-inch, 223 pound Floyd had been actively resisting arrest for at least eight minutes. The neck restraint that was used was permitted under Minneapolis police procedure to gain control of a subject who is exhibiting active resistance.
That’s what one police officer did while they waited for the ambulance that they had called for Floyd because he expressed difficulty breathing. The officers look so casually indifferent in the video of Floyd’s death because they had nothing to do while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.
After watching the bodycam footage, it is easy to see why the neck restraint was used and why the police officers believed Floyd was lying when he said, “I can’t breathe.” The police officers had been struggling for at least eight minutes with a hysterical and uncooperative suspect resisting arrest who had been yelling over and over that he couldn’t breathe as a way to convince the officers not to force him into the police car.
Considering Floyd’s resistance and bizarre conduct, the behavior of the police officers seems appropriate and restrained. There is no indication in the bodycam footage that the police officers were motivated by Floyd’s black race.
Moreover, there has never been any evidence that race played any role in Floyd’s death. He was not arrested because he was black, but because he committed a crime and was acting “drunk” and “not in control of himself” according to the 911 caller. He was not forcibly restrained because he was black, but because he was actively resisting arrest. Two of the four officers are non-white.
The George Floyd case is not a race crime. And Floyd was not a victim of police brutality or injustice. He died from a stress-and-drug-induced heart attack, not from asphyxiation.
That means the narrative pushed by the media, BLM, and antifa, i.e., white cops torture black suspect to death, is a lie. All the protests and riots have been based on a lie. Because of this lie, America has been convulsed by three months of race riots, which have killed dozens, injured countless others, and destroyed billions of dollars in property and countless livelihoods.
Just like the previous cases of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, a media-enabled lie was put forth to incite racial division and conflict, while the basic American legal principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty was ignored. In all of these cases, there were either no criminal charges because there was no evidence of a crime or a verdict of not guilty.
As the riots continued, Floyd was turned into a culture hero and buried in a golden casket, while his (recognized) family was showered with gifts and praise. All this despite being a drug addict and a sometime drug-dealer who had four criminal convictions and spent five years in prison for assault and an armed robbery in which he held a gun to the stomach of a pregnant woman. He also sired and abandoned multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing.
Worse still, this BLM lie has been turned into a war on law enforcement – e.g., “defund the police,” the cold-blooded murder of at least five police officers, and resulting rise in black shootings in the inner cities – and a war on America with its destruction of statues of anybody who doesn’t meet today’s “woke” standards and its call to “dismantle” any institution and to “cancel” any part of American history and culture that the “woke” mob considers “racist.”
Many Democrats have joined the bandwagon and become supporters and enablers of this anarchic destruction by their pandering and bending of the knee (some even wearing Kente cloth in the Capitol), while almost every Republican has shamefully remained silent. Only Tucker Carlson has had the courage to call out the “woke” mob.
If the Democrats win in November, they will destroy the country by legislating into law the BLM grievance agenda – an agenda based on lies.