The Floyd Case: Double-Barreled Stupidity

Not exactly a case of Deja-Vu-All-Over-Again, the killing of George Floyd and the resultant riots do have a certain resemblance to the Ferguson riots of a couple years ago.  The common factor in both these cases is thundering stupidity on both sides.

In the current case, an exceedingly stupid Minneapolis cop went after an unarmed drunk, got him on the ground, and then kneeled on his neck -- while Floyd kept yelling "I can't breathe!" -- for a good eight minutes until the man finally died, while three other cops only looked on.  This is not an approved police technique, any more than the choke-hold (which has likewise killed a few obstreperous suspects).  Now what did the cop think was going to happen if he kneeled on a man's neck for nearly ten minutes?  Likewise, what did those earlier cops think would happen if they choked people's necks, with their arms or their batons?  Stupidity in action!

To be fair, if somebody he's trying to "subdue" keeps struggling and yelling for more than five minutes, the cop is going to wonder: "If you can't breathe, where are you getting the wind to struggle and yell?"  Likewise, stupidity in action.  Compounded stupidity like this does tend to have fatal results.

Now a bit of sense on either side could easily have prevented the tragedy (not to mention several others before). 

On the victim's side, if he'd just been willing to adopt a technique invented by White folks, a good half-century before, he would have simply gone limp -- kept quiet and played dead, just like the war protesters of the '60s whenever they were knocked down by cops.  Despite the obvious political hatred, it was very rare for cops to kill anti-war protesters, and it wasn't just because most of them were White.  I don't know what it is about contemporary Black culture which encourages youngsters and even grown men to fight and curse and yell at the cops, but it doesn't do them or their community any good.  If anything, this is a fine example of how Black Pride is self-destructive on a wide scale. Stupid!

On the cops' side, the simple prevention -- which could have been started decades ago -- is to get serious about using stunners.  Nowadays, these include hand-stunners (often misnamed "stun-guns") for close range, stun-batons for middle range, and Tasers for long range.  Police departments could arm their troops with two stun-batons, three or more hand-stunners, and four or more Tasers apiece -- and train them with those stunner so intensively that the reaching for a stunner, instead of a club or gun, becomes second nature/conditioned reflex/default position.  One zap from a stunner would have put Floyd out like a light, and he could have wakened -- sore but alive -- in the back of a police car.  Problem solved.  Why has no major police department done this?  Stupid!

Note that stunner-armed cops could also deal more efficiently with self-righteous rioters.  Supply the cops with armor, riot-helmets, and riot-shields, and let them go ahead and wade into the crowds zapping everyone in front of them.  Once the rioters are either asleep or fled, the cops can then cuff the prone bodies, stack them in the paddy-wagons, and cart them off to the holding cells with no loss of life and minimal property damage.

So now we come to the usual reaction to stupid crimes like this;  the usual protest marches that then turn into merry smash-and-burn riots.  At least this time there's evidence that the involved sides are beginning to wise up.

The Ferguson riots followed a regular pattern;  community leaders would organize protest marches that made their way through the streets to significant sites -- usually the local police station or city hall -- where they'd give speeches, circulate petitions, and otherwise demand the usual Redress of Grievances.  These would proceed peaceably -- until the sun went down.  Then the thugs and provocateurs would come out, smashing windows, looting and burning stores, with a nice disregard for whether those buildings were Black or White owned.  Then the police would come out, tossing around tear-gas and smoke grenades, and bopping heads with clubs. Copycat protests and riots sprang up in several cities.  This kept up for several days running, despite the indignant complaints of the protest organizers, and they accomplished nothing except a lot of property damage and arrests.

This time around, the Black organizers of the real protests have noticed the looter/provocateur presence and complained about it.  They've also noticed that a lot of the thugs, usually wearing black head-wraps like Al-Qaida Arabs, aren't Black at all.  Note https://www.thedailybeast.com/black-organizers-enraged-by-white-agitators-here-to-fck-shit-up-in-george-floyd-protests?ref=scroll.  So far, the organizers have done nothing more to these interlopers than to take pictures and yell at them, which is usually enough to drive them off.  We'll have to wait and see if they proceed to other tactics. 

Likewise, the local police in the 30 or so protest-riot afflicted cities have responded with a little more sense and flexibility than in Ferguson.  During daylight and the official (and peaceful) protests, they're notable for their absence, leaving the protesters to march and wave signs and speechify in peace.  Only after the sun goes down, when the thugs start to come out, do the police show up -- usually to form a defensive perimeter around local police stations and city halls, using non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets, tear-gas, smoke grenades, and flash-bangs. 

In the last two days, though, the thugs have taken to attacking less politically-significant and more richly lootable targets, such as banks, top-scale department stores, car dealershps, and even the CNN headquarters.  The police are kept guessing just where the thugs will strike next, smashing windows in an odd similarity to the historic Kristallnacht.  This shift in targets has led the beleaguered CNN, at least, to blame the damage on "White supremacists" -- though this is hard to reconcile with righteous Black protesters.

We can probably leave the ousting of the looter/provocateur thugs to the Black organizers themselves, who are not at all happy with "outsiders" damaging the reputation of their legitimate protests, but the questions remain;  just who are these thugs, where do they come from, and just who is organizing them?  Who seriously wants to damage the US's reputation and economy?  There are plenty of suspects: agents of China, Russia, Iran, and even the Democratic National Committee -- who have shown willingness to do almost anything to Get Trump.  At the moment it's the latter who look the most likely, given that a lot of the thugs have proved to be members of Antifa and BLM.  If so, then when the Black organizers expose the tactic, it will backfire royally in the DNC's face.  This may well add to the growth of the Blexit movement, as better-educated Black Americans decide to stop being automatic supporters of the Democrats. 

All that the police need do to bring this about is to institute a nationwide program of using stunners as their main weapons.  Let's see how many of them have the sense to do it.

--Leslie <;)))><