George Floyd's Arrest and Cause of Death

Sometimes during slow nights at work, I like to pass the time by watching YouTube videos. One type of video I like watching are police-related vids - high speed chases, dash cam videos, officer involved shootings, etc. It's like watching a cop show, but for realzies. 

Anyway, I've watched hundreds of videos of officers arresting people, getting involved in shoot-outs and foot chases, perps resisting arrest, etc. 

So my first thought on seeing the video of George Floyd was that he probably violently resisted arrest, so the cops were holding him down firmly. Cops do this all the time with violent offenders. Since he was talking, it was clear that the knee on his neck wasn't actually choking him, despite that being the widely-accepted narrative. This is also something that suspects do all the time - resist arrest, then cry and complain when the cops take them to the ground. I typically don't have a lot of sympathy in those cases (of course, normally, they aren't actually dying). 

But there are more videos out there of the Floyd arrest that give a bit more context than the one that has been most widely circulated (the one with the knee on the neck). These include surveillance videos and another cell phone video, both of which actually show part of the initial arrest. 

So here are my thoughts after watching all these videos, and applying what I know from working in hospitals and from watching lots of these kinds of videos.

1) There's nothing in any of these videos to suggest that Floyd died because of anything the cops did. Pressing a knee to the back of someone's neck doesn't choke them. And the fact that he was speaking proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he could breathe. 

2) The arrest videos show that he was not violently resisting arrest, as I had initially assumed. However, he does appear to be giving trouble to the officers, because it takes two of them to get him out of the car and handcuff him. It's impossible from the videos to say why or what kind of trouble he was giving them. But it wasn't a simple arrest situation. 

3) He appears to already be in some kind of physical distress while being arrested. This may be why he was giving them trouble. After handcuffing him, he staggers to the sidewalk before collapsing against a wall for several minutes while a cop talks to him. Then the cop helps him to his feet and escorts him across the street to his squad car. There, he collapses a second time and multiple cops help lift him and take him around to the other side. Once there, he collapses for the third and final time. Unfortunately, you can't see on the videos what happens after that. The next video available shows him with the knee already in his neck. Perhaps body worn cameras will clear that up, but none have been released yet. 

4) Initial reports said cops thought he was drunk. Based on the arrest videos, I can see why. Instead of being drunk (or maybe in addition to being drunk), he was probably already having whatever medical emergency caused his death. Based on his age and size, he may have been having a heart attack. He may have already been in the middle of it before the arrest even started. 

5) None of this explains why the cops were pinning him down or why the one cop kept his knee on the man's neck for so long. Again, hopefully body cams can clear that up. What's clear is that they shouldn't have laid on top of him as long as they did. The cop with the knee almost seems to be defying the crowd. You get the impression he didn't want to look weak by moving after they demanded it, so he just stayed in place for no good reason. Despite that, I don't believe his knee caused Mr. Floyd's death. There's certainly nothing in the available videos to suggest that.  

An inability on the part of the public for calm, rational analysis of things like this is why we have riots and looting afterward. And unfortunately, the press, politicians, voices on social media - all these people make matters worse by instantly starting a bandwagon on one side or the other, and everyone seems to just fall in line. In the end, people like me are left wondering if anyone on either side of the political aisle has the ability to think sensibly or impartially anymore.