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Sunday, April 4, 2021

"I Can't Breathe!"

 The 1 hour+ body cam video of George Floyd's arrest is here.  Starting at about 10:00, he is complaining about claustrophobia as they attempt to force him into the back seat.  Then he says, "I can't breathe."  His behavior shows a person high as a kite, freaked out by claustrophobia, and unsurprisingly having trouble breathing.  (The occluded arteries doubtless aggravated the breathing distress.)  The carefully edited version of his arrest used to provoke race riots and race guilt is worse than the edit of the Rodney King arrest.  6/5/20 San Jose Mercury-News:

George Floyd had drugs in his system and severe heart disease when a Minneapolis police officer put a knee to his neck, but independent experts said the medical problems revealed in the full autopsy report don’t change the conclusion that the handcuffed man’s death was a homicide.

“He has some underlying conditions” that made it more likely he would not fare well under stress, said Dr. Gregory Davis, medical examiner for Jefferson County, Ala., and a pathology professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. But the circumstances of Floyd’s May 25 death are not ignored in Wednesday’s report, which said “restraint and neck compression are part of why he died,” Davis said.

Dr. Stephen Nelson, chairman of Florida’s medical examiners commission, agreed. Even if someone with severe heart disease died of a heart attack during a purse-snatching, “we’d still call it a homicide,” he said.

“Is this stress associated with his interaction with law enforcement enough to put him over the edge? Yes, it is,” Nelson said.

5 comments:

  1. what "Occulded arteries"?

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  2. Of course now it's revealed that the knee was on his shoulder blade, not his neck.

    But since the outcome is already set that really shouldn't matter, should it?

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  3. What they seem to be avoiding is the coroners finding that he had an absolutely lethal drug dose in his system. He was dead no matter what else happened.

    On top of which is that the neck kneel was accepted (and trained, IIRC) SOP in his department.

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  4. So, heart muscles the thickness of typing paper, stress brought on by claustrophobia brought on by as much of his drug of choice as he could buy and eat, and said claustrophobia aggravated by someone trying to arrest him. I'm beginning to believe that he could have died sitting in the back of the squad car, bolt upright, using his breath to complain that he can't breathe. When I was in Aerospace, every couple of years we'd get a class on CPR, with the Heimlich maneuver thrown in at no extra cost. We were told at that time that if they can speak, they can breathe.

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