VerBruggen: New Floyd Video Changes Nothing

I appreciate this piece by National Review‘s Robert VerBruggen explaining why he doesn’t believe that the new eight-minute police bodycam video in the George Floyd case meaningfully changes the narrative. Excerpts:

The video does clarify some things, especially the precise degree to which Floyd resisted arrest. But I would urge anyone whose mind changed dramatically upon watching it to ask themselves: Why does it surprise you that Floyd resisted arrest? And why does it change your view of how the cops behaved in a completely different part of the encounter?

In reality, nothing in the video is all that unexpected, and nothing in it changes the fact that law-enforcement officers kept a handcuffed, obviously unwell man face down, with a knee on his neck, for about eight minutes, including two minutes after they failed to find a pulse. The second-degree-murder charge against Derek Chauvin is likely a stretch, as Andy McCarthy detailed back in June, but the other options available to the jury — third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter — remain entirely plausible.

He goes on:

Now, until this video came out, we didn’t know for sure the extent to which Floyd resisted arrest. But the only way it could surprise you that he resisted is if you dismissed or didn’t read what the police reports said from the beginning, preferring instead to buy into other testimony that claimed he hadn’t resisted at all and the escalation of the incident was 100 percent the fault of the cops. (Even in the document that introduced a new second-degree-murder charge against Chauvin, prosecutors noted that the cops had to try to “force” Floyd into their car and that Floyd “stiffened up and fell to the ground.”) In a later post, Dreher admitted that he “didn’t go looking for” additional information about the case before. “I assumed the Narrative — white cops torture black suspect to death — was true, or mostly true. We had video, did we not?”

Uncritical acceptance of one-sided tales before all the information is available is what brought us the “hands up, don’t shoot” canard five years ago, and apparently it was widespread in the Floyd case too. In the former ordeal, the narrative obscured the fact that the shooting was outright justified. But in this one, it’s distracting us from the real issue, which is what the cops did after they got Floyd under control.

Robert is right to fault me for uncritically accepting the common narrative. I knew that Floyd had resisted arrest, but I had no idea the extent to which he had, and how he had done it. I imagined that the resistance was brief, and that the police badly overreacted. What the new videos show, though, is that his resistance was constant — for eight minutes — and it included shrieking, “I can’t breathe!” when the only thing restraining him was handcuffs.

Why might this make a difference? Because it could establish that George had been talking nonsense for eight minutes before he was subdued on the ground, including claiming that he couldn’t breathe. The police, as we now know, made a fatal mistake in not taking him seriously when, flat on the ground, he claimed he couldn’t breathe. I do not know to what extent that may exonerate the police of the charges against them, or to what extent it mitigates their moral culpability. My point in the controversial earlier posts was that the encounter between Floyd and the cops was a lot messier than I assumed — and should the rest of the media decide to report on those videos, I believe that a lot of people will find their understanding of the narrative altered too. (You can watch them here, at the Daily Mail site).

I also knew that Floyd had drugs in his system, but until the new police bodycam footage emerged, I had not looked into which drugs he had in his system, and to what degree. Nor was I aware that he had a heart condition the coroner ruled “severe.” Mind you, all of that information was available in the autopsy released days after his death. I had not troubled to look closely at the autopsy, because I was so focused on what to me was the obviously insane cruelty of Chauvin kneeling on his neck, and the other cops watching without saying anything. Again: it was my fault that I was so shocked by the new video, because I had not dug into the details, rather took for granted the general thrust of the media accounts. That failure is on me. And to be completely honest: this May 29 piece in The New York Times mentioned in detail how Floyd resisted arrest, including things captured on the newly released videos. It is my fault that I didn’t know this.

Anyway, read VerBruggen’s whole piece. He says that nothing that happened before Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s neck is likely to matter much. He may well be right. As I said before, and as I’ll repeat here: it may turn out in the trial that Chauvin’s action was completely indefensible, both legally and morally. Like VerBruggen, I still find it hard to imagine how kneeling for that long on the neck of a subdued suspect can be justified, though I’ve received a few e-mails like this:

I just read your article “Why George Floyd Died” and the many updates. This is the first time I have seen your site and I appreciated your honesty and thought process. That said I would like to share a couple of thoughts that I did not see in your article.

1. You seemed upset that the information in the video was not presented earlier. However, there were plenty of videos that did show much of the “pre-knee on neck” video that did show the officers acting appropriately. This is not directed at you so much as the entire mob of people who were so upset but did not bother doing the research before they condemned someone. I was not surprised by the new video because I reviewed the other information that was available a week after the incident. Even the indictment noted that he could not breathe before he was on the ground.

2. The knee to the back of the neck looks awful but is not a choke hold or even a “blood choke”. I am a martial artist and an engineer and have a decent understanding of this. To cause asphyxiation by preventing the blood from going to the brain you have too close both of the carotid arteries in the front of the neck. I know there are also two smaller arteries in the back of the neck but they are well protected and will cause the same effect. Think about it: have you ever seen anyone choked out by only touching the back of the neck? It would not be possible to cut off the air or blood with the position of the knee on the neck. I know it looks bad and I had to demonstrate it myself to my adult children. There were others who were qualified to discuss this and to demonstrate. One was a college wrestling coach. However, instead of listening to information he was called a racist and fired for demonstrating a fact. You will see it noted that this is dangerous but you will not be told why so that you can assume it is because you can choke someone out. Not the case. It is dangerous because you can injure the spinal cord and base of the skull.

3. You question the morals of the officer but if you understand number 2 above, you realize that he has seen this before and is holding George in a position to protect George, the officers, and the people around him. People under the influence of narcotics can change temperament very quickly. You should research Excited delirium yourself. Whether it is a legitimate medical name or not, the actions the people do is well known. And restraining someone in that condition is the morally correct thing to do.

Please investigate my claims but do not use my name. I cannot afford to be fired right now.

I had not realized that a wrestling coach had been fired for questioning the received narrative — but it’s true. “His behavior was not consistent with our equity initiatives and nondiscrimination policies,” said the school district spokesman. Unbelievable. Maybe this coach was mistaken in his claim. But fired for discrimination because he claimed that the knee on the neck did not kill Floyd? How is that legal?

Another correspondent who said he is familiar with this restraint technique said that we don’t know if the officer was applying significant pressure to Floyd’s neck. Again, I expect that these claims will be well explored in the trial, but let me ask you readers (doctors and those with professional knowledge) if they can possibly be true. I genuinely want to know. I am grateful to work for a magazine that will not fire me for asking.

We know from the official autopsy found “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.” The medical examiner still called it a homicide, saying that Floyd likely died from “the combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by the police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system.” The question then becomes to what extent did the neck restraint contribute to Floyd’s death, and whether or not using that restraint was permissible under Minneapolis PD guidelines (because if it was, then that will lessen the officer’s legal culpability). In thinking about it further, the fact that Chauvin held Floyd down for three minutes after a fellow officer no longer detected Floyd’s pulse probably makes a third-degree murder conviction more likely. I understand that even though Chauvin is being tried for second-degree murder, the jury could convict him on a third-degree charge, which does not require proving intent to kill.

Anyway, thanks again to Robert VerBruggen for helping me to better understand this case.

The post VerBruggen: New Floyd Video Changes Nothing appeared first on The American Conservative.